All humans make symbols to represent and explain their world. Symbols become a visual language which we call art which is both individual and universal. I see the Crop Circles as a symbolic language which speaks to the universal spirit in humans and nature. Crop Circles are similar to pictographs, rock art, cave art, directional signs and human marks made around the world.
Their creation is a mystery of sound and light energies using growing crops as the medium. Crop Circles occur in ripening grain, especially around ancient sacred sites in Great Britain. Over 10,000 have been reported worldwide. There is a visual record of fairy rings in 16th Century woodcuts. In the last 15 years, aerial photography has documented the formations which are cut at the season's harvest.
Circles are about wholeness, inclusion, uniting, bringing together. I see them as symbols of the Goddess, the divine feminine spirit, which exists in ALL. She is the creative spirit within, a great mystery, as are the Crop Circles.
My experience with the crop circles inspired me as an artist to make cast paper banners using bright color to create energy fields in which the archetypal universal symbol speaks at the level of spirit. The banners are 4 by 6 feet, much smaller than the original circles, but the size of a human in order to speak person to circle.
The handcast paper banners were created in Chicago at Columbia College Center for Book & Paper. The monoprints were done at Santa Reparata Graphic Arts Centre in Florence, Italy.
Crop Circles: Language of the Goddess was exhibited at the Assembly Rooms in Glastonbury, England in July 1994 and in Marlborough, July 1997. The Tointon Gallery for the Visual Arts at the Union Colony Civic Center in Greeley, Colorado presented the banners in October 1995. Sunrise Ranch in Loveland, Colorado hosted the banners in April, 1998.
My Crop Circle exhibitions are dedicated to: my life partner, Bob Ruyle, my son, Stephen Ruyle, my grandson, Bridger Jacob Ruyle, my daughters, Margaret Ruyle Rukstalis and Robin Ruyle Struve, and my granddaughters, Mae Elizabeth Rukstalis, Leeden Marie Rukstalis, Katherine Alice Struve, Alexandra Lee Struve and Remington Anne Ruyle. They are the magical renewing cycle of life in action.
LYDIA'S CROP CIRCLE STORY : LANGUAGE OF THE GODDESS
My fascination with crop circles began when I read about them in Gnosis magazine. In 1991, I traveled on a Magical Britain tour and one of the guides was John Michel, a researcher and lover of earth mysteries. He had just finished a conference on the crop formations and shared his slides and stories about them with our group. On the same trip, I met Julie Felix, and the result of that connection was the formation of Goddess Tours. There were many energies manifesting besides stone circles and the stories of King Arthur. I had hoped to see a crop circle formation in 1991, but as I was in England after the harvest, I would wait another two years.
The maiden voyage of Goddess Tours began July 19-August 4, 1993. One of my hopes was that we would see crop circles during the Tour. We did ! The first one appeared as we were driving from London to Glastonbury in a huge bus on the M 4. I told the group I was hoping to see a crop circle and the next minute a voice called out, what's that on the right? A large mandala whizzed by our window but we were not able to stop. Ten days later on August 3, the day before my birthday, the Tour rose at 4:00 am to visit Stonehenge at dawn by special permission from British Heritage. After that fantastic experience, I invited anyone who was interested to go looking for crop circles in the afternoon. About half of the group obliged.
The woman bus driver we hired in 1993 was not adventuresome by nature and required very exact directions from us on where she was taking the bus. I didn't know where to direct her. One of our other guides had explained dousing to us with earth energies and a pendulum. You hold a heavy weight on a string and ask it for a yes or a no. The pendulum swings one direction for one and at right angles for the other. I decided to dowse a map of the area around Marlborough where we were staying in order to find a crop circle. We told the driver which road to turn from the spot the stone indicated on the map.
As we drove over one of the rolling hills of Wiltshire, we saw a formation in the field. The group and I yelled STOP and we all bailed out of the bus and into the field. It was a very exciting adventure. The formation we walked into was a series of six circles at West Overton on the road to Alton Barnes.
It was lined up directly with Silbury Hill, the oldest and largest megalithic site in Europe. I realized that the formation was Goddess shaped as we began walking through it. It seemed a perfect image for Goddess Tours--a birthing image. Personally, I was very much into birth. Both my daughters had daughters that summer, our first grandchildren. Mae Elizabeth Rukstalis was born July 17, just before the birth of the first Goddess Tour and Katherine Alice Struve was born August 27, right after the Tour ! In September, Crop Circles, Language of the Goddess, a new series of cast paper banners was birthed in Chicago at Paper Press !
The grain in a crop circle is bent over at a ninety degree angle and not broken. The nodes on the stalk swell. The patterns in the grain look like flowing water in some places and woven baskets in others. I had a sense of excitement, energy, peace and ecstasy which intensified as I approached the head or top circle. I laid down in the center of it for a while, feeling the vibrational energy. When I tried to stand up, I felt a force holding me down, so I remained horizontal a bit longer. Eventually, we took a group picture, shared our feelings and experiences and tromped out of the formation. It was a great birthday present in 1993 !
In 1994, one of the guides for the Goddess Tour of England, Wales & Cornwall was Isabelle Kingston. She is a psychic who was called to move to Avebury 15 years ago and work with the sacred energies there. She is one of the foremost experts on the crop formations. She met us at the Castle and Ball, then took the bus and group to Alton Barnes to see several formations. She knows which ones are safe to visit and makes arrangements with the farmers beforehand. Some of the farmers are spooked by the formations and destroy them immediately. Others shoot trespassers and others charge admission. It's safe to find out where you are welcome. Isabelle has drawn formations before they occur. She took us into a large crop circle shaped like an eye which has appeared several days before our visit. The grain was still half green. The group did a seated meditation in the center of the eye. The energy I felt was not as strong as the energy had been in 1993.
In 1995, I visited several formations the last weekend in July. By now, I have learned to ask where they are and get good directions from those croppies who follow the formations. Ron Russell of Denver was in England with a group. He directed me to the area around Litchfield where I went into a formation of seven circles surrounded by an undulating serpentine border. I sat in the eye of the snake and felt pulsating, circular three dimensional energies coiling around me, especially between my hands. The waves of energy were a yard or more thick and I felt as if I were touching them sculpturally.
Several days later, I saw a dozen formations from the air when I hired a small plane for an hour to enjoy the view--my 60th birthday present to myself !!! One of those formations of sixteen connected circles also gave me the same sense of three dimensional sculptural energy.
The circles in 1997 were fantastic. I went into them with Ron Russell. In 1999, I arrived in Marlborough after The Goddess Conference. Louise Olivi was at the Ivy Hotel with a small group and she invited me to join them for several days. We were at the Henge at Avebury on August 11 for the solar eclipse. Lucy Pringle, a British croppie and author took us into several formations and joined us for tea afterwards in the proper British tradition. Louise and Lucy guided us again in 2000.
My banners and I were invited to The Goddess Conference and I invited a group for a Goddess Reunion to join me. After the Conference, ten of us went on to visit the 2000 crop circles. We had a wakeup call when we got into our first crop circle on the way to Marlborough. Our van was vandalized while parked at the layby just east of Devizes. We were in a circle about half a mile from the van. The lock on the passenger side was drilled open when we returned to it. I saw three people hanging out near the van while we were sitting in the circle, but I didn't think much about it. They had rummaged through the seats and taken five bags with passports, money, film, credit cards and my sister-in-law's insulin. It was a shock ! We reported the theft to the Devizes police, then went on to the Castle and Ball in Marlborough. After lunch half of us went to see crop circles and the other half spent the afternoon on the phone getting their cards cancelled and passports replaced. Louise Olivi, who was our croppie driver guide, Emailed me a month later that her bag and another woman's were found on the roadside by a couple who are mailing them. It was a lesson in letting go and experiencing the circles which is what we were there to do. Some women let go easier than others and one chose to miss the whole experience including Stonehenge.
Lucy Pringle, a British woman who had researched crop circles for fifteen years and is the author of Crop Circles. The Greatest Mystery of Modern Times , was our guide for circles the next day. She took us into a newly created one that morning in young barley. It was an eleven pointed star mandala resembling a quilt pattern. I carried Grandmother Spider Woman and Saramama of Peru into the circle and we did a meditation in the center.
Julie Wakefield, the author of Legendary Landscapes, lives near Alton Priors in Wiltshire, not far from Avebury. She and her husband did amazing research and found a huge body of the Goddess in the landscape. Julie joined us for our last day on the downs, the crop circles and Stonehenge. She lives in a tiny stone fairy cottage with a thatched roof which sits in a meadow with nine sacred springs and a two thousand year old yew tree nearby. I suggested to Kathy and Tyna that she would be an excellent speaker at the Goddess Conference next year.
When I got home to Colorado and went to www.cropcircleconnector.com to catch up on the August circles, I saw the August 13th beauty. I was in awe ! It occurred at Woodborough Hill near Alton Priors, just the spot where Julie lives in the body of the Goddess. The formation is a fourth dimensional portal of infinite triangles in the form of a sunflower or a pinecone and is a Fibonacci numbers hologram of increasing series. WOW ! a perfect metaphor for spiritual transformation of consciousness of the divine feminine. The 2000 season of circles began in April with a triangle in the Wiltshire landscape pointing to Silbury Hill and continued to expand on the pubic triangle theme to infinity !
Our last evening on the crop circle extension featured a private entrance to Stonehenge. It was my fifth time inside the stones in the last ten years. I took some of the banners in with us and laid them on the grass inside the inner circle, Grandmother Spider Woman, Mother Earth / Father Sky and Prajnaparamita / Wisdom Goddess of the Himalayas. I called in the Ancient Mothers and thanked them for all their gifts to me. The group did a ritual honoring this journey, my work and all the previous fourteen YA-YA JOURNEYS / Goddess Tours. It was very special for me..
I know and feel many energies. I share this in my art. I love the mystery of creation and the crop circles are a magical part of the mystery.
 Grandmother Spider Woman |
 Out-of-this-world |
 Great Goddess
|
 Moon Wisdom |
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 Trinity/Infinity |
 Silbury Shri Yantra |
 Star Glyph |
 Galaxy |
CROP CIRCLES BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Bartholomew, Alick, ed Crop Circles.Harbingers of World Change. Gateway Books. Bath. 1991
- Collins, Andrew The Circle Makers. ABC Books. Essex. 1992
- Delgado, Pat & Andrews, Colin Circular Evidence. Bloomsbury. London. 1990
- Davis, Beth, ed. Ciphers in the Crops. The Fractal and Geometric Circles of 1991. Gateway Books. Bath. 1992
- Glickman, Michael Corn Circles. Wooden Books. Wales. 1996
- Hesemann, Michael The Cosmic Connection. Gateway Books. Bath. 1996
- Mack, M.D.,John E. Passport to the Cosmos Human Transformation and Alien Encounters. Crown Publishers. New York. 1999
- Macnish, John Cropcircle Apocalypse. Circlevision. Shropshire. 1993
- Martineau, John Mazes and Labyrinths in Great Britain. Wooden Books. Wales. 1996
- Michell, John The New View Over Atlantis. Harper San Francisco. 1986
- Michell, John, ed. Dowsing the Crop Circles. Gothic Images. Glastonbury. 1991
- Noyes, Ralph, ed The Crop Circle Enigma. Gateway Books. Bath. 1990
- Pringle, Lucy Crop Circles. The Greatest Mystery of Modern Times. Harper Collins. London. 1999
- Reiche, Maria Mystery on the Desert Nazca, Peru Ground Drawings. Hohenpeissenberg. Germany 1968
- Taylor, Busty Crop Circles of 1991. Beckhampton Books. Marlborough
- The Wessex Series.Prehistoric Sacred Sites of WESSEX. 1997 Crop Circles of WESSEX 1996 Wessex Books. Salisbury, Wiltshire
- Wakefield, J.D. Legendary Landscapes. Secrets of Ancient Wiltshire Revealed. Nod Press. Marlborough. 1999
- www.cropcircleconnector.com
