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Here are two articles about the Sparsholt Face crop formation of 2002. The first was written immediately after visiting the formation and, lower down, the second has afterthoughts written a few days later.
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Photo by Steve Alexander, www.temporarytemples.co.uk
Staring right at us:
We have contact
The Sparsholt Face, August 2002
Palden Jenkins
Palden Jenkins
In all my years of croppying, this has been one of the most fundamental and deeply stirring of experiences, a privilege for which I feel deeply grateful. This is about my subjective experience of the formation - or more correctly, of the 'space' within it.
The picture the formation makes is impossible to distinguish on the ground. Unlike most formations it is not swirled and flowing, but definitely right-angular in the lay of the wheat. The face part is made up of parallel lines of varying thickness, using a 'rasterising' effect to create a subtly shaded image, as seen from above. Steve Alexander (the photographer) told me that, while hovering over it in a helicopter, it was very difficult to perceive exactly what the picture was, so he photographed it from as many angles as possible, and only saw the full picture when the film was developed.
The formation was very energy-dense. When we approached it I was in quite a balanced and calm state. Stepping into the first bit of the formation (its 'frame') I suddenly felt shocked, as if falling suddenly into a deep end, out of my depth. The magnitude of the experience was quick to be felt - a heart-fluttering thing. I felt almost forcibly 'pulled within' and found that, although there were several old friends there, my social skills were zeroed out immediately. It wasn't unpleasant, and I think everyone there was experiencing roughly similar things. As with some other formations, I felt as if I could be seen inside by X-ray eyes above me, read off and monitored. It's as if our normal relativistic universe dissolves, leaving us in empty, wide-open space - though, in another sense, as if we've come home - a bit like landing in a foreign country and feeling instantly familiar with it, even if you don't speak the language.
The 'energy-signature' of the formation was different from others I've been in. In the 'main series' formations over the years, I get quite an intimate feeling of a presence or of energy-fields, but these presences distinctly don't want to tell who they are or what they are saying or doing. It's a bit like being a child watching an adult, without understanding why adults do what they do though nevertheless knowing that there must be some reason and sense to it which is beyond us.
It seems that the main point of these is to present us with unanswerable questions which have a deeply transformative effect on consciousness and our sense of reality. An opportunity for communion, a chance to step into 'their' world while remaining on or in 'ours'. It seems clear to many croppies that these beings are not ETs as such, but interdimensional beings of a non-physical yet non-earthly nature. We don't know who they are, but somehow we know them well, and the experience is recognisable, tweaking deep memory, even if unique and entirely new. Then, of course, there are those who are desperate to assert that crop formations are man-made, but, sad to say, that's their problem, and their cosmic constipation will no doubt one day be relieved!
This formation felt like a personal message from a specific being, with a distinct identity 'he' was revealing to us. Sheila said she felt it was a rather shy being, tentatively offering itself to us, to see how we would respond. Clearly, the face in the aerial photos is an ET face - unlike the Face at Chilbolton (six miles from this one) last year, which was humanoid. The picture, when first seen, brings up mixed reactions, but the atmosphere in the formation is undoubtedly friendly and benign.
The Face of 2001 looked straight at us. To me it said 'We are watching/eyeballing you - and we are you watching yourselves'. The 2002 face looks over our left shoulder - and the feeling I got was that it was looking and communicating with our soul, which stands, as it were, just behind us (perhaps because we omit fully to incorporate our core and heart into our worldly lives).
I looked and felt my way around the face part of the formation for a while, but was drawn into the disk - and everyone else was there too, mostly lying on their backs and 'far away'. (It was a bit like a who's who of currently active croppies, actually!). The disk reminds me of psychic experiences I've had, of being given a 'rote ball', a hologram-bundle of multidimensional information which, once given, unfolds itself gradually over time (rather like being given a CD of information to look through, as you find ways of opening the files in it).
Settling down close to the centre of the disk, I went inside and felt as if an energy-information download had started to take place. At one point Tulki, my son, spoke to me, and I surfaced, only to feel that the download was half-way through, so I went inside again to complete the download, and a point came where I felt it was complete. A few others verified this experience too. God knows what happens next, with that experience, and today (Sunday), the day following, I'm left wondering what to do with it or, more specifically, what this ET wants of me. It feels totally okay, and a great blessing - and I guess I'll find out!
I opened my eyes at one stage and saw Tulki alone in another part of the formation, just standing there for some minutes, silent and utterly still, staring into space. There was a crackling, crisp aura around him, and he was just being. Later, he came charging toward us waving a few stalks of wheat, as if carrying a sparking antenna or a magic wand, and waving them around. Something in him probably knows more about all this than we so-called adults do.
The 'disk' is made up of a fine spiral, with 'blips' on it which are spaced and sized in such a way as clearly to represent a coded and decodable message - my croppy friend Michael Glickman, earlier in the day, had said "Well, that's given me a winter's-worth of work to do!". Someone will hopefully decode it in due course by linearising the 'track' of the spiral and analysing the patterns and spacing of the 'blips'. Virtually all previous formations (except the Chilbolton 'Face' and 'Code' of 2001) distinctly represent clear patterning, mathematical principles and geometry, while the specific 'message' cannot be interpreted, at least in the language and concepts we currently possess.
I opened my eyes at one stage and saw Tulki alone in another part of the formation, just standing there for some minutes, silent and utterly still, staring into space. There was a crackling, crisp aura around him, and he was just being. Later, he came charging toward us waving a few stalks of wheat, as if carrying a sparking antenna or a magic wand, and waving them around. Something in him probably knows more about all this than we so-called adults do.
The 'disk' is made up of a fine spiral, with 'blips' on it which are spaced and sized in such a way as clearly to represent a coded and decodable message - my croppy friend Michael Glickman, earlier in the day, had said "Well, that's given me a winter's-worth of work to do!". Someone will hopefully decode it in due course by linearising the 'track' of the spiral and analysing the patterns and spacing of the 'blips'. Virtually all previous formations (except the Chilbolton 'Face' and 'Code' of 2001) distinctly represent clear patterning, mathematical principles and geometry, while the specific 'message' cannot be interpreted, at least in the language and concepts we currently possess.
Yet this seems to be something we can decode, a specific message from a specific source. Some people threaded the spiral of the disk but, frankly, my capacity for physical movement was strongly reduced (until I left the formation, when it returned), so I didn't do that. My body felt like stiffened rubber, stable and grounded, but in another way my motion-connectors weren't wired up and motion was thus reluctant. Subjectively, I felt that each blip on the disk's spiral was not just a piece of information, but a kind of 'file name' to a whole bundle of information in its own right - it felt as if a whole library, not just a statement, was being given. I presume that a series or sequence of insights or life-experiences might follow from here.
This felt to me like a distinct 'close encounter' - a very intimate one, perhaps closer than we can get to our own selves. Interestingly, the face itself, though quite clearly ET, does not seem to be specifically one of the ET faces I've seen in people's drawings of the beings they've met in close encounters. In my own psychic adventures I have not met this kind of being before (though I've met a few). It was not a 'Grey' or a 'Nordic' or anything of that nature - nor humanoid.
Everyone stayed there for a few hours - it was difficult to leave, as if we were already 'home'. While in the formation and reflecting on the experience, I was aware of being a part of history. Perhaps the men who were with John Cabot when he 'discovered' Newfoundland in the 1400s would not have been aware of all that would unfold thereafter, and of the subsequent significance of their landfall (the whole history of USA/Canada). I felt this was similar, as if more will unfold in the centuries to come which will render this event significant in a new light. Of course, this event should be front-page news, but its true significance will hardly be noted or seen publicly. The materialists amongst us might well ask "What has this to do with Iraq, guns, cars and stock markets?" and, although the logical connections are perhaps flimsy, I'd say this event is totally relevant, by dint of its timing and also the larger light it throws on our vexatious human affairs.
'We have contact', and those of us who are open to it, whether or not you can visit the crop formation, need perhaps to send back the signal "Message received with thanks! And we await further developments". I do find myself wondering what I am to do with this gift, though I trust that answers will be revealed in due course. But one immediate conclusion is that I find myself reaffirming my commitment to the life-path I have chosen. Even though it's a ridiculously small number of people involved in croppie research, I feel blessed to be one, to suspend my intellectual neuroses, metaphysical control agendas and fear of madness and the Unknown, or of loss of reputation or friends, and to simply follow this trail.
The crop season is now ending - the combine harvesters are out as we speak - and the formation will probably be gone within days. These things are not built to be permanent. The wheat was crisp and ripe - most people were nibbling at it! However, several of us feel there is one more crop event to go this year. We shall see.
This felt to me like a distinct 'close encounter' - a very intimate one, perhaps closer than we can get to our own selves. Interestingly, the face itself, though quite clearly ET, does not seem to be specifically one of the ET faces I've seen in people's drawings of the beings they've met in close encounters. In my own psychic adventures I have not met this kind of being before (though I've met a few). It was not a 'Grey' or a 'Nordic' or anything of that nature - nor humanoid.
Everyone stayed there for a few hours - it was difficult to leave, as if we were already 'home'. While in the formation and reflecting on the experience, I was aware of being a part of history. Perhaps the men who were with John Cabot when he 'discovered' Newfoundland in the 1400s would not have been aware of all that would unfold thereafter, and of the subsequent significance of their landfall (the whole history of USA/Canada). I felt this was similar, as if more will unfold in the centuries to come which will render this event significant in a new light. Of course, this event should be front-page news, but its true significance will hardly be noted or seen publicly. The materialists amongst us might well ask "What has this to do with Iraq, guns, cars and stock markets?" and, although the logical connections are perhaps flimsy, I'd say this event is totally relevant, by dint of its timing and also the larger light it throws on our vexatious human affairs.
'We have contact', and those of us who are open to it, whether or not you can visit the crop formation, need perhaps to send back the signal "Message received with thanks! And we await further developments". I do find myself wondering what I am to do with this gift, though I trust that answers will be revealed in due course. But one immediate conclusion is that I find myself reaffirming my commitment to the life-path I have chosen. Even though it's a ridiculously small number of people involved in croppie research, I feel blessed to be one, to suspend my intellectual neuroses, metaphysical control agendas and fear of madness and the Unknown, or of loss of reputation or friends, and to simply follow this trail.
The crop season is now ending - the combine harvesters are out as we speak - and the formation will probably be gone within days. These things are not built to be permanent. The wheat was crisp and ripe - most people were nibbling at it! However, several of us feel there is one more crop event to go this year. We shall see.
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Photo by Steve Alexander, www.temporarytemples.co.uk
About The FaceAfterthoughts on the
crop formation at Sparsholt
crop formation at Sparsholt
August 2002
Palden Jenkins
I have been assimilating my experience of the Crabwood / Pitt / Sparsholt Face and reading others' thoughts about this crop formation. I want to bandy some notions around to see if it's possible to proportion and clarify a few of the issues. I take an unashamedly intuitive and metaphysical approach to this.
I have no doubt in the validity of my experience in the Face formation (on Saturday 17th August). To me, it was fundamental and deeply stirring. Something in me simply knows the formation is genuine. If, as it has been suggested by some, it was made by humans using secret advanced technologies, I would have felt something strange about it. This formation had a distinctly benign, friendly and clear feeling to it. Lots of signal, little noise - even from the radio transmitters nearby.
For me, therefore, all my thinking gravitates around this starting base-line: the formation is genuine. There are indeed weird aspects to it, but these throw us, not it into doubt. The formation is unequivocal and literal in its visual presentation, and I perceived it to have a very personal feeling to its energy-presentation. The 'main series' of formations over the years (generally accepted, high-quality ones we all know and love) have had an enigmatic quality which leaves us hanging: we never get answers in our own lingo and never find out who, exactly, is behind them. But the Face gives readable information, with an individual, specific flavour and source.
Last year's Chilbolton Face and Message and this year's Face have connected characteristics, such as close-by locations, a similar oblong and rasterised format, and a face presentation, but they also have critical differences, such as the method of rasterising and the difference in the faces. [Rasterisation is the way black-and-white photos are rendered into subtle shades, usually using dots.] My sense is that these formations were done by different, collaborating, sources, each with a style of its own. Some people have judged this year's linear rasterising effect to be in some way inferior to last year's dot-rasterisation. This is a hasty conclusion - we don't know the full story yet.
Some people react against ET stuff. In the croppie movement there was once some enthusiasm for ET connections with crop formations, but nowadays this has subsided. This might be correct, in that the originators of most formations seem, by consensus, not to be physical or semi-physical ETs - they seem to be multi-dimensional intelligences, and not of this Earth. I don't believe the occasional 'balls of light' seen around some formations are necessarily ET-related - they can equally be consciousness- or dimensionally-related. For me, the energy-imprint within most genuine crop formations is distinctly 'cosmic' in flavour (rather than 'ancient', 'natural', 'human' or 'ET'). Yet here, in the Face, we are faced with an ET, and each of us is therefore getting our ET buttons pressed. Strong reactions to this formation are to be expected.
Someone has suggested, "Why don't ETs just land in front of the White House, instead of bothering with crop formations?". Answer: ETs have shown themselves already, in the widest range of locations, for decades. Close encounters haven't changed much, affecting only a small minority of people. Second answer: crop formations are a new way of conducting 'interworld' communication. They possess many advantages over mass close-encounter events. Formations can be measured, photographed, meditated and picnicked in, returned to and discussed at length - no one disputes they actually happen. They appear next to motorways.
Meanwhile, for ET contactees, it is difficult believing fully in the experience one has had, let alone integrating it, remembering it, or sharing the experience with others. The worst bit is that no one believes you. As an object-oriented communication medium, the close encounter has diminished in effectiveness. Crop formations are a logical next step. Now, following from these, we have the Faces. The ante has been upped: now crop formations (or at least, the Faces) are becoming inextricably linked with ETs.
I've found that distinguishing rigidly between physical humans, ETs and non-physical 'intelligences' is inaccurate - they exist as 'types', but there are many variations and cross-overs. Ten years ago I talked at length with some 'deep space' intelligences, the Council of Nine, while compiling a book for them called The Only Planet of Choice. The Nine told how they worked with a collaborating network of civilisations and helper civilisations with a wide variety of characteristics. This loosened my perception, and now I see it as entirely feasible for 'intelligences' and ETs to be involved with each other.
In the transition from 'classic' crop circles to the two Face formations we see a shift of provenance from 'intelligences' to specific ETs. They might well be working for the same basic cause. But these ETs seem to derive from specific species and worlds. This would presumably imply that 'the management' has decided that human contact with ETs might be easier and more convincing than with formless metaphysical beingnesses. Whether or not this is true is being tested as we speak. You yourself are part of the survey sample population.
Someone commented that "The Face looks like it's out of Startrek", as if this somehow cheapens it. Gene Roddenberry, creator of Startrek, communicated with the Nine in the 1970s, obtaining much detailed information. The notion of the 'prime directive', now well-known, came from them (though they are not unique in having this idea). Other films, such as 'Close Encounters', have clearly drawn on insider ET information. Thus it isn't extraordinary if there is a resemblance between our friend The Face and certain Hollywood ET movie characters. All this said, I'd suggest it's not helpful to compare The Face with Startrek portrayals. The Face must be taken for itself. It is introducing itself to us. Let's take it as it presents itself. This is important. The creator of the Face is testing us and watching, to see what happens.
Milk Hill in 2001 represented a climax of the 'main series' formations we've seen through the years, and not a few of us figured that it might be something of an 'end statement'. The question immediately arose, "What follows?". We didn't have to wait long for an answer. This is what follows. We're into a new level of the game.
I've been thinking of Terence Meaden, and the way cereological events - the complex formations - simply overtook him and his meteorological Plasma Vortex Theory in the early 1990s. We might be facing another of these. The makers of the formations are testing the elasticity of our psyches, giving us another kick. It's an unfolding process: there is more to go. The answers aren't simple. The binary code shown in the disk will, I suggest, turn out to have further layers of meaning than what has so far been decoded - it could contain musical notation, various mathematical subtleties or be somehow multilingual. Even the Face section of the formation could be coded.
To me, there's a problem in cereology, arising from the attention given mainly to the corn and its lay. The empty space created within a formation is generally deemed unimportant. Naturally, there's a difficulty identifying and articulating characteristics to this 'empty space'. I've been suggesting for years that it might be far more important than we think. The way I see it, these guys are specifically addressing complex, educated, developed-world types living in a very materialist culture. This is tricky. So they have laid down elegant, intellectually satisfying, continually-evolving formations in order to draw us into these created empty spaces.
Milk Hill in 2001 represented a climax of the 'main series' formations we've seen through the years, and not a few of us figured that it might be something of an 'end statement'. The question immediately arose, "What follows?". We didn't have to wait long for an answer. This is what follows. We're into a new level of the game.
I've been thinking of Terence Meaden, and the way cereological events - the complex formations - simply overtook him and his meteorological Plasma Vortex Theory in the early 1990s. We might be facing another of these. The makers of the formations are testing the elasticity of our psyches, giving us another kick. It's an unfolding process: there is more to go. The answers aren't simple. The binary code shown in the disk will, I suggest, turn out to have further layers of meaning than what has so far been decoded - it could contain musical notation, various mathematical subtleties or be somehow multilingual. Even the Face section of the formation could be coded.
To me, there's a problem in cereology, arising from the attention given mainly to the corn and its lay. The empty space created within a formation is generally deemed unimportant. Naturally, there's a difficulty identifying and articulating characteristics to this 'empty space'. I've been suggesting for years that it might be far more important than we think. The way I see it, these guys are specifically addressing complex, educated, developed-world types living in a very materialist culture. This is tricky. So they have laid down elegant, intellectually satisfying, continually-evolving formations in order to draw us into these created empty spaces.
Formations contain energy fields which have given people time-warps, paranormal experiences, healings, sound phenomena, headaches, eye-openings and serious cases of unstoppable, obsessive fascination. They have an effect. This is a seriously under-researched element of the phenomenon. It might be that the energy field is more important than the imprint in the corn. A crop formation is a way of getting us to enter their world, without need for space-craft, spiritual adepthood, abduction or intercessors. Very ingenious. These guys are scattering information-capsules all over us, for present and future use, and dosing us up with magic radiations. We're in a healing crisis.
Photographs, patterns, the lay of the corn and design sophistication do the communication. But visits to the formations and opening up to them creates communion - an imbibing of those energy-fields. Much of this communion is semi-conscious - something happens, but we don't know precisely what. The more you give it attention, the more distinguishable and comprehensible it gets. Communication and communion are reciprocal processes - we are in a mutual logging-on process. Someone has already pointed out the parallels between the code in the disk of The Face and what in computer-speak are called 'handshaking protocols' - by which two separate computers establish terms of contact with each other. This 'handshaking', between us and a specific off-earth species, is both enticing and daunting. A diplomatic feeler has been sent to 'we, the people', to see how we will respond. The sociology of the response is probably as important a phenomenon as the formation itself.
I felt a person-to-person contact with that being, experiencing a 'download' lasting about 40 minutes. I permitted it and focused on receiving it. This kind of stuff rattles rationalists yet, for me, it was a surprisingly objective experience. It resembled meeting a person on the other side of a screen, a very different person with a different language and mind-set, and a charismatic, high-energy presence. I don't know what we communicated, but a detailed exchange happened. Afterwards, a classic symptom of a genuine profound experience came up - a feeling of privilege, humility and blessing.
I had initial anticipations about visiting that formation. Then, on arrival, I was neutral, easygoing. On entering the circle I rapidly fell into a sense of shock at the intensity that hit me. It challenged me to rise to it. Then, on settling down, there followed a series of profound inner experiences. I was in the formation with some 15-20 people. Many of them lay silently on their backs, 'out like a light', in the centre of the disk, for 1-2 hours. They would have been much more restless and talkative had the strong energy-field not been there. I submit these observations as evidence of the genuineness of this formation, however unscientific, subjective or personal such evidence might be deemed.
We ask so many questions. Yet it is we who are being questioned: do you choose to follow this process, or not? Choosing involves acts of trust. Trust means a suspension, not an abandonment, of rationality - rationality reconstitutes afterwards. Cereology engages a fine array of different people, and my 'mysto' viewpoint represents but one shade in a wide spectrum. Yet this testimony is valid. The strength and palpability of the energy-field in this formation, to me, decides the matter of its genuineness. The intensity and variety of people's reactions to seeing aerial photos of the Face is surely one more indicator of the formation's genuineness - there's energy there.
This story will keep on running. The speed of its progress depends a lot on our response. How to respond? For those closely involved with the phenomenon, it's a matter of saying Yes to what we have witnessed - they'll pick it up. To the wider world, it involves seeing our world affairs in a new, expanded light - something to do with appreciating how small we are, and how much we flail around in the complexity of our earthly affairs. If we are to establish relations with off-Earth beings, we'd better soon achieve a global consensus. Our nations become mere counties of a planet.
Over the years, the crop formations have given us a wake-up call. But 'the management' is now evidently raising the stakes. Our trip-switches are getting hot. Something is going on.
Photographs, patterns, the lay of the corn and design sophistication do the communication. But visits to the formations and opening up to them creates communion - an imbibing of those energy-fields. Much of this communion is semi-conscious - something happens, but we don't know precisely what. The more you give it attention, the more distinguishable and comprehensible it gets. Communication and communion are reciprocal processes - we are in a mutual logging-on process. Someone has already pointed out the parallels between the code in the disk of The Face and what in computer-speak are called 'handshaking protocols' - by which two separate computers establish terms of contact with each other. This 'handshaking', between us and a specific off-earth species, is both enticing and daunting. A diplomatic feeler has been sent to 'we, the people', to see how we will respond. The sociology of the response is probably as important a phenomenon as the formation itself.
I felt a person-to-person contact with that being, experiencing a 'download' lasting about 40 minutes. I permitted it and focused on receiving it. This kind of stuff rattles rationalists yet, for me, it was a surprisingly objective experience. It resembled meeting a person on the other side of a screen, a very different person with a different language and mind-set, and a charismatic, high-energy presence. I don't know what we communicated, but a detailed exchange happened. Afterwards, a classic symptom of a genuine profound experience came up - a feeling of privilege, humility and blessing.
I had initial anticipations about visiting that formation. Then, on arrival, I was neutral, easygoing. On entering the circle I rapidly fell into a sense of shock at the intensity that hit me. It challenged me to rise to it. Then, on settling down, there followed a series of profound inner experiences. I was in the formation with some 15-20 people. Many of them lay silently on their backs, 'out like a light', in the centre of the disk, for 1-2 hours. They would have been much more restless and talkative had the strong energy-field not been there. I submit these observations as evidence of the genuineness of this formation, however unscientific, subjective or personal such evidence might be deemed.
We ask so many questions. Yet it is we who are being questioned: do you choose to follow this process, or not? Choosing involves acts of trust. Trust means a suspension, not an abandonment, of rationality - rationality reconstitutes afterwards. Cereology engages a fine array of different people, and my 'mysto' viewpoint represents but one shade in a wide spectrum. Yet this testimony is valid. The strength and palpability of the energy-field in this formation, to me, decides the matter of its genuineness. The intensity and variety of people's reactions to seeing aerial photos of the Face is surely one more indicator of the formation's genuineness - there's energy there.
This story will keep on running. The speed of its progress depends a lot on our response. How to respond? For those closely involved with the phenomenon, it's a matter of saying Yes to what we have witnessed - they'll pick it up. To the wider world, it involves seeing our world affairs in a new, expanded light - something to do with appreciating how small we are, and how much we flail around in the complexity of our earthly affairs. If we are to establish relations with off-Earth beings, we'd better soon achieve a global consensus. Our nations become mere counties of a planet.
Over the years, the crop formations have given us a wake-up call. But 'the management' is now evidently raising the stakes. Our trip-switches are getting hot. Something is going on.
© Copyright Palden Jenkins 2002.
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