Once referred to as "Croppiedom's King of Controversy" Michael Glickman has long occupied a central space at the heart of public comment on the crop circle phenomenon. A former architect and teacher, he is now a renowned and inspirational speaker and writer. His work on the geometry and interpretation of the crop circles has spanned over 16 years. Michael has written several regular columns on the crop circles over his career, both in print and on the internet. Wheat from the Chaff is his latest incarnation. His book, I visited the Barbury Castle formation three times, first in its pristine newly- minted state and finally after it had been much battered by many astonished visitors. It is, perhaps, the best known crop circle of all time and I do not need to re-describe it here. From the start I was intrigued by the symbol on the eastern corner of the triangle. It was a ratchet spiral which swirled outwards from a central 14 foot diameter circle along a 2 foot wide path.
From the central circle the path moved out in a short straight line and then turned through a 90° anti-clockwise arc. It moved outwards for another two feet to connect with another 90° anti-clockwise arc and so on. The crop was laid outwards from the central circle and continued along its spiral path. It formed six arcs, six short connecting paths and it turned through eleven right-angled corners. The path rotated through one and a half full circuits, or 270°, before it landed exactly on the eastern corner of the 180 foot equilateral triangle. Whatever else, this was a remarkable feat of engineering, surveying, construction or navigation! The length of the path, from the centre of the starter circle to the point at which it connected to the main triangle was precisely 333 feet. (I have been told that 333 is the number of Hermes Trismegistos, but I am unable to comment on this).
In the seventeen years since those bewildering visits I have thought often (and worked a great deal) on the Barbury spiral and, of the numerous unresolved questions, two seem to nag more than others.
The first is the orientation of the spiral. The base line of the big triangle itself was aligned accurately east-west. This meant, obviously, that the truncated flower-of-life feature at the top pointed exactly to the north. As the spiral feature was based on two right-angle axes, it was logical to assume that they, too, would be aligned north-south and east-west. In fact the spiral was rotated approximately 4° clockwise. Its east-west axis was not true but lined up exactly with the western point of the main triangle.
The second is its labyrinthine nature. A maze offers false turnings and dead-ends and is designed to confuse. A labyrinth, on the other hand, is single-pathed or unicursal and is designed to enlighten. The crop circles often display a labyrinth quality and the Barbury Castle spiral was the first formation to show it so clearly. The traditional labyrinth has an external entrance and the path leads inexorably to the centre. In this case, the path was swept outwards from the 14 foot central circle. You could get to the centre from a considerately placed tramline (and then move outwards) but walking inwards along the narrow jagged path against the swept crop was impossible.
What could this mean?
Barbury 1. 1991
Now, seventeen years later, and less that a kilometre from its predecessor, arrives the majestic 2008 Barbury Castle ratchet spiral.
It is much larger and more elaborate. Barbury 1 swirled anti-clockwise through 270° (1 1/2 circuits) while Barbury 2 swirls clockwise through four full circuits or 1440°. Barbury 1 features one short straight outward path or ratchet for every 90° arc while, in its four circuits, Barbury 2 has no less than five in the inner starter circuit, only one in the second, two in the third and two ratchets again in the fourth or outer circuit.
Unlike Barbury 1 which was based on a simple 90° division, Barbury 2 is based on ten-fold or 36° radial geometry. I never worked on the concentric nature of Barbury 1, but Barbury 2 is constrained by ten equally spaced concentric rings.
I was always convinced (though utterly without evidence) that the Barbury Castle 1991 formation was started at the central circle of the ratchet spiral. I felt (again without evidence) that the inexplicable bend in the western edge of the big triangle was a response to the energy surge generated by the spiral.
Barbury 2 culminates in the elegant sequence of a trio of beautifully and regularly diminishing circles. The central circle of the formation has a diameter of 43 feet and the length of the path, walked from the centre of the central circle would be, by my rough calculation, 2,880 feet.
Karen Alexander called me to suggest that the three elegant circles were in fact an ellipsis, a sequence of three dots indicating, in English, the omission of a sentence or phrase and, in Mathematics, an irrational or infinite number. She also suggested that the small grapeshot might be a decimal point.
She was uncannily prescient!
Given that the formation goes through four circuits and is therefore based on 40 segments of 36°, I set about counting the number of 36° segments in each arc of the formation from internal to external.
Assuming the grapeshot is a decimal; point and the the rings are the signifier of an irrational number we get 3.141592654...This is Pi (π) the constant used in calculating all aspects of circularity. The hawk eyed will note that the Pi sequence should read: ...926535897...but in order to keep it to the available ten digits the crop circle designers have rounded it up to 92654. I have been convinced for some years that Pi has been in evidence in the unfolding crop circle narrative and here, unquestionably, it is.
The remarkable thing is that, while Karen and I were coming to this conclusion, Peter Leadbetter e-mailed to say he had made the same discovery. I must call this the Alexander Glickman Leadbetter Barbury 2 π Conjecture.
Please note that "ellipsis" should not be confused with "eclipse" as has been elsewhere on the internet.
I cannot easily recall a formation of such richness so early in a season and, as always, it poses more dilemmas than it resolves. This conversation continues in a symbolic language which still perplexes us. Perhaps it suggests that, instead of our relentless need to find the centre, we should accept and know that we are already at the centre. We should have the courage to move outwards. MG
