Photo © Steve Alexander
Centre point of the formation
Swirled nest in star point
Swirled nest in star point
The different qualities of energy we experienced in each of the 5 stars of this crop formation (see previous post) at Chute Causeway in Hampshire has been nipping at a corner of my mind since we came back like a small dog that wants to play. So I finally got down to working with it.
The formation was discovered on July 26, so it was quite possibly formed the night of July 25. It’s interesting that July 25 was the day designated by Masaru Emoto as the day of giving love and thanks to water, and this formation as a whole is quite reminiscent of Emoto’s water crystal images, as well as evoking a number of watery descriptions from us in our attempts to describe the energies we experienced in it. The majority of Emoto’s water crystal images show 6-fold symmetry though, not 5 as here, so any resonance is likely to be rather more general and thematic than specific. (In the context of what follows, note that water is, of course, equated with emotion.)
The formation appeared as both Venus and the newly-discovered planet Eris were turning retrograde (relative to the Earth’s motion) – Eris turned on July 18, Venus on July 27. A retrograde period is viewed astrologically as a time during which the psychological archetypes represented by the planet in question have an inward focus and call for review and reflection. 5 is a number with strong associations to both Venus and Eris. Note how all the outer stars in the formation are inward-looking – oriented such that they point in toward the centre of the formation.
Venus is associated with love, harmony and proportion, emotional processes and attitudes, and social attitudes and behaviour. But both the Aztecs and Babylonians saw the planet in dual aspect. As the morning star, Venus was regarded as benefic, but as the evening star, malefic, representing what we might now call the Jungian shadow. Interestingly, in medieval astrology the attribution was reversed. The morning star – Lucifer, the light-bringer – came to be seen as malefic and the evening star as heralding good fortune. This crop formation contains 2 pentagons; the outer, larger and darker, with the lighter inner contained within it – the two sides of the same coin? with the larger shadow as yet unseen? – and at their centre the 5-pointed star that represents both Venus’s cycle (below) and the core of the apple in cross section associated with Eris, the goddess of discord.
It was Eris whose golden apple inscribed καλλιστη (kallistei) – “to the fairest” – precipitated a spat between the other Olympian goddesses at the wedding party of Peleus and Thetis. Paris, Prince of Troy, was appointed as adjudicator in the dispute, and all 3 goddesses attempted to bribe him to pick them. He awarded the apple to Aphrodite (= Venus) and claimed the most beautiful woman in the world – Helen, wife of Menelaus of Sparta – as his bribe, precipitating the Trojan War which was waged for 10 years, became one of the most important focal events of Greek mythology, saw the deaths of many heroes including Achilles (the son of Peleus and Thetis) and Ajax, and was eventually ended by the deceptive ruse of the Trojan Horse.
Venus goes into retrograde motion relative to the Earth infrequently and briefly – once every 18 months or so for just a little over a month at a time. Its 584-day cycle completes 5 rounds every 8 years, tracing a 5-pointed star or pentagram around the ecliptic and conforming to the ratio of the Golden Mean. This cycle was known and monitored by both the Mayans and the Babylonians. (See John Major Jenkins’ work here and here.)
Venus relates to how we give value and meaning to life experience. Attempting to attribute value and meaning to a Venusian formation thus becomes a somewhat self-referential and recursive process (Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems anyone?) particularly when the geometry of the formation is itself recursive! That aside, you could either see this formation as a fractalised representation of a single 8-year Venus cycle, or a series of five 8-year cycles totalling 40 years. Perhaps on some level it may represent both.
There are other Venus resonances in this formation. The total of 225 grapeshots equals Venus’s 225-day year. The key angles in the formation of 36° and multiples of 36° (72° and 108°) echo the steps of 36 days or multiples of 36 that feature in each Venus cycle. Maximum brightness occurs 36 days after the inferior conjunction; the next step, maximum elongation, occurs 36 days later; and the superior conjunction occurs 216 days (6 x 36 days) after maximum elongation. In the evening star phase, maximum elongation occurs 216 days after the superior conjunction; maximum brightness takes place 36 days following maximum elongation and 36 days more brings the inferior conjunction. (See article.)
All this appeared highly promising, but I was wondering where the energetic qualities of each star might come into the picture. While thinking of keywords to characterise the different energies, the words ‘cardinal’, ‘mutable’ and ‘fixed’ came into my head. Still without seeing quite where this was going, I figured it might be interesting to see if I could pin the energetic qualities down to the astrological triplicities and quadruplicites and hence to signs and their ruling planets. It was unexpectedly straightforward, though I initially had the two fire signs the other way round (coloured by our starting point in the formation – Aries = beginnings – rather than a more precise appreciation of the exact qualities of the energies). But as soon as I reversed them (the explosiveness of star 4’s energy is far more Martian than solar), it was immediately apparent that the energetic signatures of each of the 5 stars in the formation exactly echoes the pattern, position and order of the signs in the pentagram formed by Venus’s inferior conjunctions over this present 8-year cycle – see below.
The diagram shows the approximate orientation of the formation (within a 10° margin of error – I didn’t have a compass with me). The numbers in the stars are the order in which we walked the lay (see previous post) and the keywords the qualities of energy experienced in each, together with astrological signs (and their ruling planets) that felt appropriate for each of them.
Compare this with the pattern of Venus’s inferior conjunctions between 2001 and 2007.
In the context of this pattern and Venus’s current retrograde motion, it was interesting that we unknowingly started our walk of the circle in the star representing the present: the forthcoming inferior conjunction in Leo on August 18, and from there effectively walked back in time in a symbolic repeated ‘rebirthing’ of Venus as Lucifer, the light-bearer.
The juxtaposition of Venus and Eris – harmony and disharmony, accord and discord – and both in retrograde motion and encapsulated in the 5-fold recursive geometry of this formation, emphasise the process of internalisedself-reflection and self-creation.. It’s also interesting to note that the vast majoirty of the posts on the subject of this circle on the Crop Circle Connector forum are not about the circle so much as a squabble between participants. Not particularly unusual for these forums, but an appropriate resonance nevertheless, as was the initial dual posting of information on the formation in the context of the dual aspect of Venus and the connection between Venus and Eris.
It’s worth reiterating perhaps the deeper meaning of Eris, since mere squabbling is a somewhat superficial understanding of the planet’s energies. DIS-CORD (lit. “hearts apart”) is not just about strife. Fundamentally, it’s about dissimilar resonance, and relates to breaking the ties of conditioning – the customs, rules and laws that bind us societally and culturally as well as individually. It’s about the challenge to think for ourselves and to REAL-ise our deeper “truer” natures (which are embedded in chaos to a far greater extent than we take them for). It’s about creating the dissonances in belief systems that shake them at their foundations and wake us up to the full extent of our being and our connection to the entirety of existence. Pure Zen, and just as hilarious, just as anarchic.
With Venus loosely conjunct Saturn (= the customs, rules and laws that bind us societally and culturally as well as individually) for much of this retrograde period and trine Pluto, the planet of transformation, which is stationary over the Galactic Centre, it seems these two intensely creative feminine energies are being chanelled to similar ends. This formation appears to be a very clear heads-up to what we should be paying attention to right now.
Large number of additional images of the formation here.
Lots of articles on Venus retrograde around – just Google.
