From: mcgrath@cs.uiuc.edu (Robert McGrath)
Subject: Comments on "The Goddess of the Stones"
Reply-To: mcgrath@cs.uiuc.edu
Organization: University of Illinois, Dept of Computer Science
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 18:56:47 GMT

In a departure from my usual practices of "let the other guys post 
stuff, and then pound it", I'll post an original topic myself.
Pound away!

I accidently ran across the book "The Goddess of the Stones:  The
Language of the Megaliths" by Gearge Terence Meaden (Souvenir Press Ltd, 
London, 1991).  What caught my eye was his discussion of crop
circles.  As this seemed relevant to s.s, I attach the following
comments.

Crop Circles

In a chapter titled, "The Circles Effect", Meadon recounts the
following tale:

  "In the year 1678 in Hertfordshire, the night after a rich farmer
 had fallen out with a poor reaper over the price to be paid for
 harvesting his oats, several passersby noted the `field of oats...
 to be all of a flame'.  In the morning this was reported to the
 farmer who `no sooner arriv'd at the place where his Oats grew, but
 to his Admiration he found the Crop was cut down ready to his
 hands; and as if the devil had a mind to shew his dexterity in the
 art of Husbandry, and scon'd to mow them after the usual manner, he
 cut them in round circles, and plac't every straw with that
 exactness that it would have taken up above an Age for any Man to
 perform what he did that one night.
  The seventeenth-century publisher's illustration of the devil at
 work (p. 42) leaves little doubt that these were the results of
 spiralling vortices." [Meaden, "The Goddess of the Stones", p. 41.]

The illustration shows the devil himself creating a classic spiral 
crop circle!

The interesting thing to me was that, despite the author's endorsement
of the ``vortex'' hypothesis (which persists throughout the book),
the description is also consistent with the Nickell ``pixies'' and
McGrath ``grafitti'' hypotheses.  Nasty, skeptical, people would
note that there is an both an obvious suspect and evidence of 
what might have been human (or pixie) activity (lights in the night),
and the technology of making crop circles definitely is in the
reach of folks (human or pixie) in the 1600s.

The Rest of the Book

The rest of this book set my teeth on edge.  As long as I've gone
to the trouble to mention it, I'll explain what I thought of the
whole book.

The book is (I think) an interpretation of the symbolism of the 
markings and design of (mainly British) megaliths and related 
artifacts.  The author appears to be a believing pagan, and is 
interpreting what he sees in terms of his hypotheses of the
religion of the period.  His interpretations are within the 
bounds of the evidence, as he sees no UFO's or mysterious "energies", 
for instance.  However, his personal belief in a long, continuous, 
holy tradition, one which he participates in today, colors his ideas.  
This is a risk whenever anyone examines artifacts associated with 
strongly held personal beliefs.  Meaden is clear enough about his
own beliefs, though, that there is no question of deception or cheap 
propaganda.

However, problems can be seen in his treatment of crop circles.  He 
presents and accepts the theory that crop circles are created by 
downward moving vortices.  He totally ignores the non-circular "crop 
circles" (e.g., "Mandebrot" patterns, etc.), and other evidence that 
the vortex theory has difficulty accounting for.  Still, SOME crop 
circles might well be made by atmosphereics, so he's not too badly off.

However, he then projects the vortices into the prehistoric past,
seeing them as inspiring awe and incorporated into the symbolism
of ancient people.  In particular, he sees the spiral motif which is
quite common on megaliths and other prehistoric artifacts as based on 
and representing spiral vortices, and crop circles.  He might be
right, but there are other natural sources he ignores:  water
vortices, vines, astronomical data, and the fact that spirals are 
a pretty simple geometric form that is likely to be spontaneously 
'discovered' and admired by anyone who doodles in the dust even a 
little.  And his analysis of the symbolism of burials is laughable:
a body curled in fetal position lying on its side curls either
clockwise or counter-clockwise.  It is difficult to build a deep
symbolism on this forced choice, and certainly a stretch to connect
this fact to clockwise and counter-clockwise crop spirals!  I think
that projecting his own wonder and admiration of crop circles 
onto the archaeological evidence may well have led him astray.

Much of the rest of the book consists of similar projections, so
I really have to reserve judgement about them.  But since he DOES
respect the evidence, Meaden's ideas are at least worth examining.
And one certainly should pay as much attention to a pagan interpreting
pagan symbols, as to a christian or atheist attempting the same.

Enough from me, I don't want to push my ignorance too far.

-- 
  Robert E. McGrath
  Urbana Illinois
  mcgrath@cs.uiuc.edu