Crop-circle Central

Hengist Journey #7

Reagan

In the third Hengist book, “Reagan” is the boy closest to my own heart – a total geeky math-nerd. Comes in handy when you have to solve complex puzzles involving numbers, patterns and geometry. This picture was from the original cover of the paperback and I had poor Connor sat at my kitchen table surrounded by magical artefacts to get this piccy - photoshopped beyond recognition to get all the cool magical effects.
Like Archer, Reagan gets bullied by Edlyn, and has a couple of cute girls fussing over him. But unlike Archer, he's not naturally bristling with courage - although he finds it from somewhere when he needs to. Like when he's threatened by fierce Renegates - just as Archer was. The supporting cast in this one are particularly fun – an equally geeky mentor (with a side-line in using torture to hammer points home), an irascible female blacksmith and an irreverent painter – the spit image of a young Brian Blessed/John Rhys-Davies.

Wessex White Horses

I saw my first crop circle back in the early naughties when I took my kids on an adventure which included Avebury, Stonehenge and Woodhenge – a real whistle-stop tour. I’d never been up-close and personal with a White Horse, and while scrabbling down to see the one at Pewsy, there it was in the adjacent field. We didn’t have time to walk all the way down to it, but it was not the last. I later discovered that this day was actually Lughnasadh (1/8/2) – pretty cool huh? And yes, there is a bit of a theme going on (see previous post about Beltane in Glastonbury).

Doug - aka Tu-Bardh

Exactly six years later, I was in Edinburgh for the fringe festival and saw the most incredible drummer band (Clanadonia) who provided me with the idea for Archer’s favourite band Celtic Sound. Check out one of the vids on their website and you’ll see Doug in all his glory. Early on in Archer, we sow the seeds with Archer and his friends talking about having a song sung about them, and this has proved to be a fun part of pretty much every book since.
Still with the dates (yep I do have a file called holidays which starts in September 1985), I planned a visit with my Dad in September 2009 where we followed a dozen or so of the sites in Hamish Miller’s awesome Sun and Serpent book about the Michael and Mary alignments. I made myself a couple of dowsing rods and was chuffed to little pieces when they worked. Our visit coincided with the Autumn Equinox (Herfest).

Crop circle designs

So, about these crop circles.
I discovered a database, from which I extracted cool facts like a huge percentage of the world’s crop circles occurred within a small radius of Silbury Hill – which is coincidentally UFO-central.
For those non-believers, one book shows a guard at Stonehenge gazing out a nearby field where a design appeared within minutes of the time-stamped photo. I'm not saying they're all kosher - hoaxers create poor-quality designs using boards to flatten the crops, but they invariably result in messy, geometrically imprecise knock-offs.
Farmers report that on the authentic designs, all the stalks are neatly bent in the same direction and all have identical holes at the bend as though a tiny explosion weakened them. They continue growing and the seeds from those plants produce a bumper crop in the following year(s).
Many investigators have noticed peculiar effects, and there are definitely some weird energies around. On a couple I visited, my dowsing crystal went totally amok and my phone stopped working. I reckon you shouldn't write them off as fakes without checking them out first.