Pranksters with garden tools and the foolish corn cultists- Library of Mu
- Library of Mu record:
- Title: Pranksters with garden tools and the foolish corn cultists
- Date: 28 June, 1993
- Journal: The Independent (tabloid section)
- Author: Marek Kohn
- Type of resource: Excerpts
- Status: text
- No. views: 1499
- Description: Possible KLF crop circle konnection mentioned in a book review
Pranksters with garden tools and the foolish corn cultists
By Marek Kohn (28 June, 1993, The Independent (tabloid section))
Excerpt from a Book Review: 'Round in Circles, by Jim Schnabel
THE GREAT souffle of human folly that was the crop-circle cult began to
collapse in July 1990, when Colin Andrews told Nicholas Witchell and an
astonished BBC morning audience that a 'major event' in a cornfield had
been captured by surveillance equipment. When Andrews and his partner, Pat
Delgado, entered the site of the 'event' some time later, they found
copies of a board game called Zodiac. Both in this incident and
throughout the history of the phenomenon, the actions of the hoaxers
were no more than a beginning: the 'cerealogists' themselves were the
architects of their own foolishness.
One of the suspects for the Zodiac hoax was the KLF, a rock band renowned
for pranks and stunts. Its leader, Bill Drummond, was subsequently
reported to have been seen in the area wearing a long straggly beard, a
skirt and a bowler hat. He must have blended into the crowd of circle kooks
perfectly.
As Jim Schnabel points out, the corn story is a people story, and he
leads the reader on a merry romp among the UFO spotters, the dowsers, the
gentleman from the Maltese Esoteric Society, the Japanese scientists who
tried to materialise ball lightning in the laboratory and the beginnings
of a visionary Earth cult that believed the formations to be a cry of pain
from an ecologically challenged planet. All this from a few planks and garden
rollers.
Schnabel's account, pacy and sly, is great fun, but light on analysis.
He is content to leave implicit the key to the whole circus, which is the
compulsion to deny triviality. Crop circle enthusiasts made much of
details such as the layering observed in the flattened stalks, claiming
these as evidence of a mysterious process. Freelance meteorologist
Terence Meaden concluded that what was at work were 'plasma vortices',
with properties as yet uncomprehended by science. His rival, Pat
Delgado, came to the view that the patterns were created by alien
intelligences that manipulated arcane forms of energy. Eventually,
rationalists such as the Wessex Skeptics, a group of scientists from
Southampton University, forced the cerealogists to recognise that all
the observed characteristics of crop patterns could be created by humans
using simple garden tools.
In retrospect, it looks as though Delgado and Andrews acquired their
faith too slowly. Had they announced a visitation and a new religion from the
word go, without bothering to set up surveillance cameras and enact the
rituals of investigation, they might not have been vulnerable to the mockery of
reason. Terence Meaden's project was always doomed; as he insisted that
his divinatory powers were scientific in character.
Eventually, Doug Rower and Dave Chorley came forward. Some time in the
Seventies, they said, inspired by a report of a 'nest' left by a UFO in
Australia, they had replicated the effect in a field. It turned into a
private craze, which was then imitated. Doug and Dave only claimed a
couple of hundred circles, a tenth of the total. Jim Schnabel owns up to
a few of the remainder, sketchily.
Happily, some of the larger mystery remains. One of the most remarkable
features of the circle circus is how few of the pattern-makers have revealed
themselves or been exposed, despite worldwide media attention and the
camaraderie of the Wiltshire cerealogists, pubs. Some were certainly
hoaxers; some may perhaps have done it for the sake of art. All made
fools of the cultists - and enabled Delgado and Andrews to sell 100,000 copies
of their first book. Fool yourself, and the world is fooled with you; be
sceptical, and you're on your own.
Comments
There are 0 comments for this record
You can leave a comment below.
