Crop circles have been through peaks and troughs over the years, and, although some might suspect it has been fading off recently, they'd be wrong. This Summer has only just started and yet we have already witnessed some of the best designs yet.

The first to hit it out of the park was this awesome jellyfish, which got me excited as headlines like "Jellyfish appears in farm field" made me think it was an air kraken crash but I wasn't disappointed by the reality when I saw this 600ft long monster from Kingstone Coombes, Oxfordshire:

It is worth underlining quite how big this bad boy is, as well as the unique design:

Karen Alexander, a crop circle expert, said: "We have seen butterfly and bird patterns in the past, but this is the first jellyfish crop circle in the world.

"It is absolutely huge - roughly three times the size of most crop patterns and extremely interesting. People have been aghast at the size of it. It is a complete monster.

Source

Now more appear like this stunning 150ft long dragonfly from Yatesbury, Wiltshire:

Source

Hat tip

Earlier circles from this year include an impressive Yin-Yang circle but, I'll end on a more classic design that appeared on the 4th May 2009 at Clatfor, Wiltshire:

Both the Guardian and the Telegraph have been jumping on this with both offering galleries of images: Guardian / Telegraph. The latter going one further and offering a video:

Over at the Guardian, as well as providing naughty advice on how to make your own, John Vidal has provided an excellent overview of the phenomena and why it is on its way back:

There are many explanations as to why the circles barely appeared in Wiltshire. The suicide of one of the chief circle-makers in 2006 and the death of two others, as well as boredom in the ranks of pranksters, have all been cited. Mostly, though, it is thought that heavy rain and high winds have made crops hard to handle and have deterred aliens and humans alike.

But just as the demise of the peculiarly English rural tradition was predicted, the circles - which can take the shape of DNA structures, scorpions, snowflakes, helices, webs, knots and complex geometric patterns - have abruptly returned in force.

The 2009 season began in April with an unprecedented six formations. The first was a series of simple circles in a field of rape; then came a 350ft yin-yang symbol in a barley field near Devizes. Three ambitious formations were reported over the last bank holiday and on Tuesday this week a giant 600ft jellyfish was found in a barley field on Bill and Sally Ann Spence's farm near Kingston Coombes in Oxfordshire.

As of yesterday, there have been more than 20 major formations spotted. Potts, who could claim to be something of an expert on the subject, has a hunch that this will be a good summer for circles: "The crops are not true enough yet. Weather permitting, I'd say the best ones will start now. In the next two weeks there should be a burst of activity."

Of course, that assumes they are anthropogenic and we shouldn't overlook the other explanations that have been trotted out over the years: perhaps it was bad weather for randy hedgehogs, or the conditions didn't help the plasma vortices form, or the aliens just went somewhere balmier!! Vidal doesn't overlook this angle even if his sympathies lie with those who create these circles but this is no simple hoaxing. A lot of them have strong artistic and Situationist backgrounds and this is an important example of how this kind of thing can have unplanned for impacts on the wider culture in general and belief systems in particular (I'd suggest there are parallels with Ummo and Ong's Hat):

One group, now calling themselves the Circlemakers, includes situationist artists Rod Dickinson and John Lundberg, the sculptor Gavin Turk, Rob Irving and others. They say on their website that they latched on to the circle believers, created images from reading the same books that the believers read, and that they now team up with other teams of circle-makers to create ambitious formations. Together they say they have made crop circles an essential part of our popular culture, part of the myth of the English countryside.

"We weren't pushing paint around on a canvas that sat in a sterile gallery environment; we were quite literally forming and shaping the culture that surrounded us," Lundberg said in 2004. "We are the heretics, calling their belief system into question by the mere fact that we exist and talk about our circle-making activities. Sometimes this spills over into threatening behaviour on the part of the believer. We've had potatoes stuck up our exhausts, wing mirrors ripped off of our cars, and threats of physical violence, in person, over the phone, via email and through our letterboxes."

For a long time the Circlemakers kept their identities secret but they now openly claim to have made many hundreds of circles. However, they play the game that there is some inexplicable force out there by not claiming to have made them all, and never revealing which particular ones they created.

I'll end with a quote from on of the Crop Circle faithful as it contains my favourite quote (which I used in the entry title):

Blake dismisses any idea that the phenomenon is driven by art or by money. "Something important is happening. It's raining shapes every day now. Nothing man-made could be like this. That's why people can't get their heads round it."

Source

Previously:

• Crop circle tour on Google maps
• Pi in the... field: Britain's most complex crop circle
• Pentagonal crop circle

Also see our discussion on the jellyfish crop circle.