Mod+ 253. SUZANNE TAYLOR, THE SCIENTIFIC MYSTERY OF CROP CIRCLES

Have any of the investigators who believe some circles are anomalous and some are not identified which photos are of circles that are not man made, and which are man made under influence, and which are not anomalous?
Good question, Jim. In this bickering between Suzanne Taylor and Colin Andrews, Suzanne seems to be open to the possibility that the great majority are man-made, but I'd like to see specific examples of what Taylor, Andrews and other researchers believe are definitely not man-made. (I can't find such a list on the Andrews or Taylor sites.)

(The fact that Taylor has a picture of the Milky Hill galaxy circle on her last blog article doesn't do wonders for her credibility as a researcher.)
 
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I'm not that impressed with the 1880 Nature article mentioned in the podcast, but if there is (or was) anything to alien-derived crop circles, given that the "complexity argument" seems to have not much going for it, I find myself more curious about the earliest crop circles that appeared, in the 1960s. Richard Dolan mentions them cursorily in his first National Security State book.

This site, though skeptic, still says this (which is true): While it is generally claimed that ‘modern’ crop circle formations first appeared in the late 1970s, at least in Britain, during the 1960s there were earlier reports of circular formations from other places, particularly Australia and Canada, where some were referred to as ‘saucer or UFO nests’ implying they were produced by landing UFOs.

I just found this seemingly well-researched website devoted to the older circles that might be worth a look, and which says there were even some in the 1930s as well.
http://oldcropcircles.weebly.com/
Doug (Bower) and Dave (Chorley) made sweeping claims in 1991 that they had invented the phenomenon in 1978. This is clearly untrue, as this site proves, but has become widely accepted even by those purporting to represent scientific or rational analyses of the subject. We have a sister site just focusing on Doug & Dave, which dissects their version of events and proves it to be false. (Click here)
Doug is the Doug Bower that Trancestate linked an interview to earlier.
 
The images he produces make me suspicious for the same reason as Broeke's, I know what would lead to the way they look, and could probably reproduce them myself.


Under the Serios test conditions? $1,000 says you cannot. Or you name a figure. I supply the film and the camera, or a neutral party we both agree on. This is the kind of superficial 'it was probably done this way' nonsense that debunkers always trot out, without being familiar with the original test conditions.
 
In this thread, a lot has been made of the 'construction lines' and the 'stomp marks' and 'broken stalks' that supposedly show the M.H.G. image (among others) was man-made. Perhaps it was man made - that makes no difference to me - but those are not construction lines. I loaded the hi-res image into Photoshop and examined the 'construction lines'. They wander all over the place and were almost certainly made by visitors moving around the formation. And the stomp marks and broken stalks? What can that possibly mean without evidence that you were the first one on site?

This is the kind of sloppiness that happens when you set out to prove that what you are already certain about is true, but don't want to put a lot of effort into it.
 
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Under the Serios test conditions? $1,000 says you cannot. Or you name a figure. I supply the film and the camera, or a neutral party we both agree on. This is the kind of superficial 'it was probably done this way' nonsense that debunkers always trot out, without being familiar with the original test conditions.
What were the conditions? This blog and following comments track the "did he or didn't he" of Ted Serios's work (some of it from people familiar to us): http://www.echonyc.com/~horn/unbelievable/?p=2369
I'm not a stage magician, much less a visual channeller, but could certainly produce those images by known means. Debunking is a word that's thrown around here a lot, I use it to mean dismissing a phenomenon in the face of the known evidence. In Ted Serios's case, the evidence suggests he cheated, unless you want to debunk that? Parapsychology gets a bad name when proponents cling to the idea someone had unusual powers, when they were known to have rigged the evidence. The same is true of crop circles. Can I prove Serios didn't cheat? No, but there are more credible lines of enquiry for parapsychologists to follow.
 
What were the conditions? This blog and following comments track the "did he or didn't he" of Ted Serios's work (some of it from people familiar to us): http://www.echonyc.com/~horn/unbelievable/?p=2369
I'm not a stage magician, much less a visual channeller, but could certainly produce those images by known means. Debunking is a word that's thrown around here a lot, I use it to mean dismissing a phenomenon in the face of the known evidence. In Ted Serios's case, the evidence suggests he cheated, unless you want to debunk that? Parapsychology gets a bad name when proponents cling to the idea someone had unusual powers, when they were known to have rigged the evidence. The same is true of crop circles. Can I prove Serios didn't cheat? No, but there are more credible lines of enquiry for parapsychologists to follow.


Read the book. The blog suggests Serios cheated? So what? You can find every possible opinion on the web, and the so-called information is in fact quite treacherous. You can't just cite a blog and say, 'See? This proves my point.' Prove your own points by knowing the data. Study the data, and think with an open mind!
 
Read the book. The blog suggests Serios cheated? So what? You can find every possible opinion on the web, and the so-called information is in fact quite treacherous. You can't just cite a blog and say, 'See? This proves my point.' Prove your own points by knowing the data. Study the data, and think with an open mind!
The blog comments contain various links, some more dubious than others. It's known that Serios used a "gizmo" to "concentrate his powers". This happened to look like a cylinder capable of containing small photographic slides of the Viewmaster type referred to here. The vignetting is completely in line with what you'd get with a slide at the bottom of a shiny tube. His mother's house had copies of the Nation Geographic with identical images to the ones he produced. None of this is proof that Serios cheated in itself. Some will say he was under pressure to perform, and an alcoholic, who felt compelled to come up with something when his powers were on the wane. I want to know how he'd know the gizmo would produce precisely the effect he was looking for? This sidetrack to the crop circle debate is important in one way (I didn't bring Serios into the conversation), it shows that people have a sentimental attachment to their favourite inexplicable phenomena that persists when they become explicable. You don't have to be James Randi to infer reasonable doubt.
 
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I realize it's a derail, but last I checked Braude believes Serios was genuine. He argues against some of the skeptical explanations here:

 
I have taken a look and here I find the following must be true:
-Either something paranormal is happening or this is fraud.
-If it is fraud, then it would seem that Nancy Talbot must be party to the fraud. She is clearly very involved with Robbert. By the way, I am not asserting that she is being fraudulent just asserting that it logically follows that she must be participating in the fraud if Robbert is a fraud.

So, the question then becomes: "What evidence do we have for or against Nancy Talbott being fraudulent?" Psiclops, you have spoken with her. What are your thoughts?

Some links. I do not assert anything about the links. I don't know what to make of them myself.
http://www.colinandrews.net/Crop-Circles-BLT-Wrong.html
https://circularstateofmind.wordpre...circles-2014-robbert-van-den-broeke-a-primer/
http://colinandrews.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/nancy-talbott-and-robbert-van-den.html
http://thrivedebunked.wordpress.com...credibility-of-one-of-thrives-main-sources-2/
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=214437

I tend to agree that if Robbert is a fraud then Nancy is party to it.

And judging from her long conversations and marvelling over the phenomena she experienced in the early days of her investigation of Robbert I am pretty well certain that she wasn't fraudulent then and isn't now. I do remember in the early days she had no idea about a lot of this psychic stuff and I remember sending her links to Serios stuff and when they were getting the 'copied' photos, links to old Spiritualist similarities to help her to get her head around what might be going on.

She was a serious investigator into the early crop circles and appeared at many conferences where I met her and exchanged ideas.

It was not until the rumpus between her and Colin Andrews over a Levengood proclamation of a fake circle genuine, that any shadow was cast on her credibility.

That first link from Colin Andrews site includes my story - that's my photo folks, fame at last - about the two of them locking horns. And it was probably that article that severed any good relations she had with Colin and with me - even though as far as I could see, Levengood had been caught with faulty findings.

The event about a woman's past life and a mispelled word which the sceptics love, did have an explanation from Robbert - I forget the details right now but I seem to remember it was something like 'Yes well that document was viewed by me but not beforehand, because I didn't know this question was going to be asked - but by me clairvoyantly at the time together with the spelling mistake."

That last bit might not be accurate so don't quote me but I could probably find his defence if somebody thought it was important.

In summary as I've said before, mediumship is always a hit and miss affair but Robbert's specialty is the alleged ability to create paranormal photos without trickery. Everything, in my view, hinges on that and I like to think parapsychology will finally prove he can do it.

After all these years and with cameras handed him to do his magic and film of him doing it - don't you think he would have been rumbled if he was working some trick.

And the guy has been pleading for years for somebody to do proper research on him but it hasn't come to fruition.

And Andy Russell - a good friend of mine and the author of the sceptical Circular State of Mind blog you quote - has been contacted with a view to having Robbert on Fortean radio, but so far as I know, it hasn't yet happened.
 
If the complex designs are in fact created overnight, it would take a full-blown special-ops level effort to achieve them
Nope. The incredibly "complex" MHG could be done in 5 hours by 19 people, according to the Matthew Williams video I linked. In terms of what it takes time- and resource-wise to make them, I'll take the word of (very) experienced circle makers than what so far appears to be a somewhat starry-eyed researcher.

I found this interview really hard to listen to because it didn't say much about crop circles and that was what I wanted to learn something about.
Andy, I think you'll learn a few things if you take the time to read through this thread. ;)
 
Braude makes some excellent observations about parapsychological testing in his video preamble. When it comes to Serios he uses a lot of superlatives that may or may not bear scrutiny. In cases like this we have to assess how much weight we give to the fact images he produced were known to be in his possession. Is it relevant or irrelevant? Is the gizmo simply a blank tube as Braude contends, or can it be put to the use others have suggested? Serios is an interesting case for the debate around image projection, but it may muddy the waters for crop circle appraisal, and might warrant a thread of its own.
 
From Reality Sandwich - I don't agree with all of it but it is interesting:

Crop Circles, Jung, and the Archetypal Feminine

Some religious ideas of apocalypse do emphasize the importance of self-reflection, but most of these define the answer before asking the question (our sin or lack of adherence to their belief system requires a cleansing end-time). Despite our increasing awareness of the environmental dangers that we face, there is no call to look squarely at how we might have gotten here, and little call to take the radical steps that might ensure our own survival. Our response to the fact that we may be very near to ruining our own planet is a lukewarm “Well, we should probably do something.” Why? Why is our response to the possibility of our extinction, like our response to crop circles, one of so little urgency?

One of the chief features of the movement into modern consciousness has been the gradual redirection of our psychic energy away from outer objects (nature, God-images, etc.) into investment in ourselves. The awe and participation mystique that characterized our primitive ancestors’ engagement with the world around them are today no more, and we sit unattached and anxious at the center of our own worldview:

“[Our] autonomy has been purchased at a staggering price: the disenchantment of the universe. The high cost has been a gradual voiding of all intelligence, all soul, all spirit, all meaning, all purpose from the entire world—now exclusively relocated in the human self, through what from this point of view can be seen as an extraordinary act of cosmic hubris.”[iv]

We have come to see ourselves as alone in a clockwork universe. As a symptom of our masculine imbalance, our view of the world as clock shows our confusion of measurement with mastery—in measuring it we imagine somehow that we have actually created it. The clockwork illusion reflects our self-investment. We have purged out any mystery from our view of the world and today the ego sits enshrined in us unlike in any other previous human culture. We are lost in our own self-reflection, have made an idol of our own view, and believe that there are no other powers in the world (in parallel to the ego’s view that there are no other forces in the psyche).

We suffer from a “primitive grandiosity [that] does not want to acknowledge and respect any other center.”[v] Our view of the outer world as cold, dead, and machine-like reflects the ego’s relationship to the objective basis of the unconscious, from which it is distanced. The ego has usurped the power of that natural foundation within us for itself, and it is for this reason that Jungian analyst and professor at Chicago Theological Seminary Robert L. Moore understands us to have lost our ability to find the center, the axis mundi, the rejuvenating precinct where contact between the ego and the transpersonal takes place: “when you become truly modern psychologically and culturally, you cannot find the center anymore … it is [rendered] invisible.”[vi] Self-invested, we are blind to the larger forces inside of us and thus imagine none to exist outside of us either.
 
After years of looking into all this and having a personal friendship with Colin Andrews, the guy who first coined the phrase 'crop circle', I am convinced that all - or nearly all - are human made.

A good overview of what it's all about is this lecture by Rob Buckle:

Stick with the video - Rob's not a debunker and no stranger to the esoteric.

Basically rather like Colin Andrews, he believes that many of the 'hoaxers' - (and the word hoax maybe is not appropriate if there is no 'genuine' phenomenon) - are influenced by some other intelligence so in a sense the formations are 'channelled'.

It seems a way-out idea but I've spoken to several circlemakers who confirm that one of the main reasons they go out in the fields is because they are fascinated by paranormal phenomena which sometimes manifests as they do their work.
Thanks a lot for introducing Buckle's work, Psiclops. I've enjoyed that video a lot and am going and learning through his other ones. (His spiritual-in-the-human/internal message at the end of the video you posted also resonated with me.) He brings in a perspective that integrates man-made circles and the psi/Conciousness and spiritual aspects surrounding the phenomenon.

Lest it be unclear, this is what Buckle, in a youtube comment section, answers someone regarding the ET-view and the CC researchers:
I’m afraid you’re mistaken that the complex circles are not made by people, they most certainly ARE. I know many of the circlemakers personally. Do you know any circlemakers? Once you have spoken to them and maybe gone out with a team to witness a circle being made, maybe then will you start to see the bigger picture. There are many erroneous stories put out by ‘researchers’ about the mysterious origins of some circles, such as the ones you mention, but I can assure you that these too are manmade. I explain my reasons re the Julia Set formation in my previous talk ‘The Truth & the Lies’ and I even know the names of the people responsible for the 7.7.7 formation. The film claiming to show its creation even shows them in the circle! The ‘researchers’ ignored the obvious and put out a story that the figures in the formation were ‘mysterious beings’. This is how crop circle ‘research’ works. Basically they are not interested in proper research or truth, just a good mystery to flog to the masses. There is a good mystery to crop circles, as I explain in my talks, but its not about who made them.
 
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Here's another interesting comment from below Buckle's The Magick of Crop Circles:

When you ask artists about their inspiration, they usually don't know, where the ideas come from, "they just feel how to do it". Also time distortions, bizarre syncronicities are things which artists often experience. These sensations are probably connected with extreme concentration during the creation process, when one extends one's mind's boundaries...So...maybe... the creation process itself is a source of energy.. Maybe a work of art can be a source of energy too. Has anyone measured levels of energies around Rothko's paintings? I wonder if it would show something extraordinary...
 
Maybe a work of art can be a source of energy too.
Much of art education is learning by doing, the object reveals itself to you as it is being made. The creative act is not always about "design", in fact the process of pre-analysis often stymies creativity.
 
Well, this is not related specifically to crop circles, just to any macro-scale, socially noticeable anomalous phenomena - from poltergeist to UFO sightings...

I mean the article of parapsychologist and parasociologist Eric Ouellet's recent article in Issue 18 of Society of Scientific Exploration's Edge Science magazine, pp. 5 - 11. Here he present the summary of his position on the social dynamics of large-scale anomalous phenomena, inspired by Walter von Lucadou.

It is an intersting read.
 
I find the pattern to be beautiful and I'm impressed by whoever did it, whether it be an artist or an alien spaceship with a tractor beam aimed with a computer. I count 5x13x6+1 circles of about 8' to 50' across. It's truly amazing. I wish we had real crop circles in the United States.
 
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