An essay by S D Anugyan
I woke one morning in Oxford with an advert living rent free in my head, as they say. People talk about getting stuck with ‘earworms’. This was more like a brainworm.
It was an advert running on TV that year showing two kids who had sneaked into their dad’s office. They get onto the computer and see this amazing car with all the details, flashy gizmos and all. They are so absorbed they don’t notice their father’s car pulling into the driveway outside. He gets out. He looks like a grim, very serious man you would not want to mess with. The kids continue playing with the computer graphics of the amazing car, oblivious to their impending doom as their dad enters the house and starts walking up the stairs. They are laughing happily. Then the door opens. They look up, their faces frozen in anticipation. Suddenly his face relaxes into a warm smile. “What do you think?” he asks, indicating the car on the computer screen. They had been looking at the planned new family car, and everyone is happy.
It was very corny and stuck in my head going round and round.
Not to distract myself from it, but because this was something I did regularly, I checked online for new crop circles in the area. At first sight, it seemed disappointing. There was a new one in rapeseed (canola) crop near Barbury Castle south of Swindon, but it was only a straightforward depiction of the kabala, the Tree of Life. It was a shape familiar to anyone interested in such things and easily available to find in many esoteric textbooks. 1 This formation was so basic and clumsy, it had even got one of the connecting paths wrong so that it curved rather than going straight. 2 The website declared it was obviously done by hoaxers and not worth bothering about, an assumption with which I agreed.
There were two things that intrigued me though. One was that the previous night when it had formed was during a particularly wild storm. The hoaxers would have had to be very determined to do their business then.
The other point of interest was that it was quite close to another formation I thought of as a cog wheel, which had been created a few days earlier. This one was considered genuine i.e. of unknown origin. I think it was also the first of the year so considered to be the one ‘setting the tone’.
Neither were of particular interest to me as they seemed unimaginative, but it was a slow crop circle week and I had nothing better to do, so I decided to investigate.
The storm of the previous night had abated but it was still raining as I drove towards Swindon, and still I had that stupid advert in my head which I attempted to get rid of by playing loud music.
My plan was to drive up to Barbury Castle, which was an old hillfort on the ancient Ridgeway. There was parking there from which I hoped to see down onto the plain where the formations would be, even in this weather.
When I got there, I wandered out along the edge of the fort. The weather was foul up so high but I had on my trusty Drizabone wax coat and hat (thank you, Australia) and was well-protected. I also had my binoculars and found that there was just enough clarity that I could see the Cog Wheel formation down below to the west. What I couldn’t see was the Tree of Life. This was before the days of ubiquitous mobile phones, GPS etc., so all I had to go on was my sketchy notes and an Ordnance Survey map.
Another piece of equipment, other than binoculars, compass, matches and revolver (just kidding), I always carried was a pair of dowsing rods. I had only tried dowsing with one or two formations previously and the results had been interesting, so I decided to give it a go.
Dowsing is an odd phenomenon. It seems contradictory, being both imaginative yet pragmatic. The key thing always is to ask the right questions. Beginners often get it wrong by wandering onto a field and asking, ‘Is there anything here?’ and the rods will swivel all over the place, because there are lots of things there. This is why water diviners are very specific, first specifying flowing water perhaps under their feet, then being precise with depth and volume.
With earth energy work you also have to be very specific. In this case, I knew from my previous experience that I could pick up very straight lines of strong white light/energy coming from crop formations. This was unique to my knowledge as ley lines, whilst they may be going in a straight direction, meander all over the place in order to do so, like a road or river. This is consistent with the lung mei (dragon veins) in Feng Shui, concentrations of ch’i in the landscape. What I had discovered around crop circles was different, but it felt benign, like a healing of the land.
My theory with the Tree of Life formation was that if it had those lines, one would be heading straight to Barbury Castle, where I was standing, as it was a principal part of the landscape. I had hardly got the rods out when they crossed swiftly, and in my mind’s eye I could see a white line coming from the east. They had shown me exactly where the formation was. I was confused. If the formation were a hoax how could it be producing an energy line like that? I hadn’t really expected to pick up anything.
But now I knew where it was. I got back in the car and drove back down from the fort, stopping off by the Cog Wheel as it was on the way. It was easy to get to. As I walked around it I got an uncomfortable feeling, that someone was watching me. The occasional euphoric feelings from a formation, plus physical phenomena such as cameras breaking down – which I’ve been told happened around Osho a lot too – normally occur within a few days of a formation being created, after which any residual energies fade. This formation was much older, but this sense of being observed was a new one for me. I could see army buildings further away, but they were residential as far as I knew and not likely to be the source of my mild paranoia. Whatever the cause, I didn’t like it and left quickly.
There was a small road heading towards the field where the Tree of Life was. When I got there, to my dismay I found the rapeseed crop had grown to its full height. I couldn’t see anything beyond a few metres.
Out came the dowsing rods again. No white line this time, but a clear indication of which direction I should take through the field. I kept using the rods to guide where I was going, then as I was doing so, a number of thoughts struck me:
First, how could anyone co-ordinate a geometric pattern in the middle of the night during a howling storm? I had just mild rain to contend with and it was bad enough.
Second, how could they hide their footprints? I was taking care not to damage the crops by walking between the rows, but my welly boots were sinking deep into the wet mud. I was definitely leaving a trail.
Third, how could they possibly see what they were doing with the stalks so high, even if they weren’t operating at night time during a storm? This was broad daylight and my line of sight was severely limited to the next row.
Other questions abounded, such as how to do something like this at night without detection from the farmhouse I could see on the hill overlooking the field. But the main question was, WHY? It made absolutely no sense to me that anyone would brave horrible weather in the middle of the night to do a diagram from an esoteric text book. That was dedication way beyond the norm, incomprehensible to me because it served no obvious purpose.
My thoughts were getting out of control as I tried to make sense of it all, and at the back of them was that bloody car advert stuck on a loop.
Then I stepped into one of the circles of the Tree of Life, known as a Sephirot or Station in the kabala, and everything changed.
My thoughts disappeared into silence. I was in the midst of Mystery. It was wonderful. I wandered around in bliss. As was typical of crop circles, you can study them, you can appreciate their beautiful art, but to actually enter them is another thing altogether, and a great privilege.
Effectively, they can function as modern-day labyrinths – sometimes the mystical ones to enlighten, or the fun ones known as mazes to bewilder and enjoy. Here, I was definitely in one that was enlightening.
I don’t recall what Station I entered into. What I do know is that as I did so, not only did my noisy mind quieten but the annoying car advert also disappeared, because now I understood its message.
Although meditation is the most important thing for me spiritually, outside of that my affinity tends to be with matriarchal spiritualities as in much of shamanism. Dowsing, earth energies and all that, very matriarchal. This is because, having grown up under the patriarchal yoke of Christianity, I could no longer see the good in it or any of the Abrahamic religions, associating them with oppression, dogma and cruelty. Despite having known beautiful Christians, Jews and Muslims who lived their deeper truths rather than adhering blindly to any scriptures, I was still stuck in a rigid attitude, my own prejudice. And yes, I am well aware of my relationship with my father being a factor.
Now I was being challenged by a mystical construct that was rooted in the Jewish faith.
For I understood now, the advert was about the Patriarch seeming harsh and unyielding but was, in fact, loving and kind. It’s an aspect of the religions west of India that is often forgotten, particularly of late.
I wandered happily without purpose around this mystical labyrinth, simply enjoying being there, my mind now quietened.
When I was ready, I drove back to my life in Oxford.
Notes
- For more information see: kabbalahsociety.org
- To this day I still don’t know for sure whether the formation was constructed by hoaxers or something more mysterious. As regards the curved path, I now regard it as an artistic flourish, much as a Chinese or Japanese calligrapher may add their own personal, subtle touch to a kanji character they have drawn. My experience taught me that as regards the kabala, despite what critics said of the formation, it didn’t need any further, ornate flourishes. It was wonderful as it was.
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