Five Crop Circles: Mexican Wave & Water Wakeup Call

One of five crop circles in Tlapanaloya, Hidalgo, Mexico last weekend

In the last few years the eyes of the world have been fixed on Crop Circles in the (Northern hemisphere) summer months. The eyes of the world are elsewhere at the moment. So it is not surprising that five crop circles which appeared over last weekend’s Vernal Equinox in two oat fields in Tlapanaloya, 33 miles north of Mexico City were given little media attention. Reuters, the Washington Post and Mexico’s El Universal seemed to be the only news media interested in the phenomenon. They are the first new appearances since the January surprise in Java.

TLAPANALOYA is the old name for this fertile farming region, still tilled and irrigated along indigenous/traditional lines and miraculously spared in Mexico’s headlong drive for industrial ‘revolution’. In its new guise as Tepeji del Rio de Ocampo, Hidalgo, Mexico, it is surrounded by industrial development: several hydro dams, effluent canals, a bauxite-cement works at Cruz Azul, a large military installation, several multi-lane highways (autopista), a national rail line and access roads to feed nationally-supported mineral extraction and mining operations to north and west.

Tlapanaloya lies at latitude 19º52’ N longitude 99º21’W.

Mexican Cordillera L to R: Iztaccíhuatl, Popocatepétl, volcano Malinche, Cofre de Perote and Citlaltépetl

Latitude 19º is significant as the Parallel along which the southern boundary of the North American tectonic plate meets with the Central American plate. Here a line of volcanoes rising to 16,000 feet –the Cordillera de Mexico (or Neovolcanic Ridge)– stretches from the Revillagigedo Islands in the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. Seismic activity is frequent here, and the valley is considered an earthquake-prone zone.

Located thirty-three miles north of central Mexico City, Tlapanaloya lies within the closed basin of the ancient Valley of Mexico. At around 7,000 feet, it was the original picturesque Lake District of five lakes, and domain of the people of Teotihuacan, the Toltec and Aztec. The Toltec and Aztec spoke Nahuatl.

The Nahuatl name for the Valley of Mexico was the Anahuac, meaning the plateau or ‘place between the waters’.

Now those waters are crying out for help.

There were originally five great lakes in this stunningly beautiful setting, hemmed in on all sides by mountain peaks that rise to 16,000 feet. But in the last 200 years successive dams and reservoir construction schemes have funneled and tunneled the waters away from their traditional lakebeds and aquifers. Their clear streams were instead diverted to become waste carriers: ‘effluent’–glorified drains for the population of megalopolis Mexico City–now bursting at the seams with a central population in excess of nine million souls (2010 census 8,851,080, see MCMA, below).

Image of Eagle on Cactus in miraculous growth from Stone: Mexico-Tenochtitlan in the Mendoza codex

Mexico City’s ancient name was Mexico-Tenochtitlan after the Nahua-Aztec tribe, Mexica: it means the ‘co-‘ ‘place of the Mexica among stone cactuses’. In symbolic terms, the image (represented in Mexico’s coat-of-arms and flag) is one of an eagle perched on a cactus which grew from a stone (supreme achievement through the greatest of adversity in environment)

The Rio Tula–the Tula River, from which the nearby industrial town of Tula Allende takes its name–is, according to Mexico’s National Water Commission [Comisión Nacional del Agua de México], one of the most polluted rivers in the country. Tula (Tollan) was the Toltec capital, Tollan-Xicocotitlan in its heyday–AD8th-10thCC (Post-Classic period)*–but suffered brutally under Spanish invasions of 16thC, when its society collapsed.

The Toltec called their capital Tollan, surrounded by natural wetlands–a fertile gift from their Sun-and-star god Quetzalcoatl–Xicocotitlan, the ‘place among the reeds near the home of the wasp/bee’.

The Atlanteans of Tula Grande, basalt figures over 12feet high carved from volcanic rock guard the Toltec Tollan temple to Quetzalcoatl (AD10th-12thCC)

The great Atlantean statues which guarded the temple of serpent-god/Venus-morning-star-Queztalcoatl, prior to Tollan‘s destruction by the Spanish, have been reinstated to stand on their original plinths, rescued from the ignominious ditch where they were found buried–hidden by retreating Toltec from Spanish gaze.

Today Tula and Tlapanaloya reflect Toltec civilization in name only. And even that has changed. Tlapanaloya is now called Tepeji del Rio de Ocampo and Tula is Tula Grande or Tula Allende– a far cry from its original endearing Toltec-Oromi name: Tollan-Xicocotitlan: ‘place of the bumble-bee.’ Implication is that bees flourished in a rich hinterland where agriculture, flowers, and fruit trees blossomed. Much has changed since their culture died.

Popocátepetl, Aztec 'smoking mountain' stands at 17,802feet 33miles S of Mexico City

Coincidentally, 33miles SE of Mexico City stands the stratovolcano Popocatépetl. At 17,802 feet, its massif is also contained within the 19th parallel and its location is within one degree of longitude of the Tlapanaloya crop circles–at 19°1’24″N 98°37’20″W. It erupted last year (2010) and its present rumblings are ongoing. Its eruptions were recorded in Aztec codices and its legendary lahars and pyroclastic flows (mud and ash slides) are seen as a constant threat to Mexico City in modern times–since the city’s massive sprawl has gradually spread into the volcano’s sphere of influence.

FIVE LAKES: how many remain?
Although originally flowing through the wide Tula Valley, which could accommodate its wild seasonal fluctuations, the river was guided by an ingenious 17thC drainage system, itself a replacement for indigenous waterworks built with native stone, which for the previous 500 years supplied the local population with much-needed water in the dry season. The Tula works simultaneously provided essential water for agriculture (as the ancestors had done) and allowed excess floodwaters in the rainy season to channel from the Basin of Mexico into the Gulf. Now–thanks to gigantic 19thC dams and, more damaging to culture and ecosystems, massive bureaucratically-driven hydro-related and industrial concrete construction from 1930s onwards, the Tula River is catchment for what is left of the rivers of the Valley of Mexico basin which originally tumbled out of the five lakes: Texcoco, Chalco, Xochimilco, Xaltocan and Zumpango.

Five Great Lakes of (15thC) Valley of Mexico: only one remains and it is dammed

Tula River is part of the Pánuco Hydrologic Region, which has a long history of exploitation for its fresh artesian ground-water. The Tula itself feeds into the Rio Moctezuma which empties into the Pánuco, one mile outside the industrial ports of Tampico/Altamira and Cuidad Madero on the Gulf Coast. Altamira has major industry-standard docks for container-vessel traffic. It is no longer known for its (previous reputation as a) bird sanctuary. Tourist traffic is usually carefully diverted south to the coastal resorts of Vera Cruz or the Yucatan peninsula.

According to data from the National Water Commission of Mexico, the Tula is one of the most polluted rivers in the country. It ‘generates 409.42 million cubic meters of “wastewater” annually.’ Tula River’s pollution stems from this stream’s manmade adaptation as a channel for solid (untreated) human waste along with industrial effluent from both the Mexico City Metropolitan Area (MCMA, sic), and the ‘industrial zones’ around Tula de Allende.

Lake Texcoco was described in 15thC historical records as a huge natural reservoir–a ‘visual masterpiece’ of mountain-fed streams, wildlife-filled marshes and brackish pools. It was home to the Pelican. Agriculturally-adept and innovative, the native Indios harvested salt from the saltlakes and dammed the ‘sweet-water’ lakes for use in their agricultural terraces (traditional Chinampa ‘gardens’ or small fields). Aztec tradition records that the northern lakes were inaccessible by canoe during the dry season between October and May. When the (summer) rainy season came, Texcoco was known to ‘join up’ with its four sister lakes and canoes were again able to navigate within the lake system.

Lake Texcoco is now dry. The other lakes have gone.

Zumpango Lake (Nahuatl=Tzompantli), the northernmost of the historical lakes in the main basin of the Valley of Mexico, between the towns of Zumpango and Teoloyucan, is the only body of water left of the original five. It lies within 12 miles of the five Equinoctial crop circle formations. It is a manmade version of the original whose boundaries were formed when a canal begun in 1605 started the process of drainage in the Valley, North into the Tula River. It is still home to the 10-meter-deep canyon, the sewage-laden Gran Canal. The original lake has been drained. Only the canal and west drainage tunnel system remain.

Zumpango reservoir has suffered a gradual process of degradation by the presence of industrial operations on its shores and the influx of sewage from Mexico City. The ‘West Issuer’ tunnel, which was originally used exclusively for stormwater drainage, now transports wastewater with a high heavy metal content while increasing tonnage of human waste is discharged into Presa tributaries. Currently, state and local government officially designate it a ‘Water Sanctuary’, but there are no active conservation plans to maintain its high ecological value in the Basin for numerous migratory bird species that take refuge in its waters.

Pelican persevere here. But pollution continues by the local population, compounded by motorized tourism (aquaplaning, outboard motors), and water verges are not maintained. Motor boats disturb avian habitat. Few tourists shown the neighboring solid waste effluent make return visits. At this rate, it is a matter of time before both birds and visitors will have no refuge here.

Formerly part of five legendary lakes that made the Valley beautiful, the name Zumpango is also derived from the Nahuatl meaning ‘the place of the row of skulls’. It was a place of sacred prayer and reverence for the Ancestors. That, too, has gone.

Tourist trajineras on the canals of former lake Xochimilco

The remaining three lakes were drained by settlers from the time of Spanish Conquest, accelerated by subsequent labor, military and government initiatives. The old lakebeds are now almost entirely covered by urban development. One remnant canal at (former Lake) Xochimilco is maintained as a tourist attraction where visitors tour in trajineras (gondolas).

The axolotl, a rare salamander endemic to Lake Chalco, moved house when that Lake was drained, to take up fragile residence near the Canals of its neighboring ‘Lake’ Xochimilco, It is now considered a ‘critically endangered species’ by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Otherwise, the historic Lake Region is now without lakes.

A whole settlement flooded by the Army in 1931 to form Presa Taxhimay

Tlapanoloya is itself ringed by further waterworks–all artificial. They are called Presas=reservoir, dam.
Presa Escondida at the southern end of the Requena Reservoir, is a small dam 3km N of Tlapanaloya; the Presa Requena Tepeji itself, within the town limits, is a reservoir still frequented by wildlife, including pelican; the Presa Escondida, a dam to the west, is polluted and has no wildlife whatsoever; the Presa Encinillas 5miles distant at Jagüeyes is skirted by six-lane Highway 57 at a busy intersection. It no longer attracts fowl and is polluted by industrial effluent from the Cruz Azul plant. It seems ironic that Highway 57 headed 100 miles NW brings pilgrims to the tiny rancho Chahin at Tlacote near Querétaro. There Señor Jesus Chahin gives away samples of spring water from his own ‘miracle’ well, an artesian supply of unrivalled purity believed to cure all ills.

Back in Tlapanaloya, the largest dam, Presa Taxhimay, formerly Laguna Taxhimay, three miles south of town, is the largest man-made Presa of them all. It was flooded by design in 1931 on the order of General Manuel Avila Camacho. In so doing he completely annihilated the Post-classic, colonial and Spanish settlements of Hacienda Catarina and San Luis Rey, whose church towers remain above the waters of Taxhimay dam surface.

Tlapanaloya Crop Circles in Chinampa ‘Gardens’

Farmer Enrique Hernandez in one of 5 crop circles in his oats in Tlapanaloya

Fortuitously, all five of last weekend’s crop circles appeared in oat meadows still farmed in the Chinampa style–planted and lovingly tended in traditional small rectangular-shaped fields by local Tlapanaloya farmer Enrique Hernandez. He was reported to be mystified by their choice of location but delighted that his crop was not spoiled. On the other hand, if he had been assured that his own way of life and his organically-grown porridge oats–now with their hugely enhanced CC/ET-vibration–were teetering on the edge of extinction, he might feel proud.

It is becoming clear that–whatever one feels about the provenance of crop circles the world over–they do occur in locations which require our attention.

Given that the Tlapanaloya crop circles did NOT contain elaborate interior designs–as are now commonplace in sophisticated annual formations on Salisbury Plain and the fields of Wiltshire’s electromagnetic aquifer–it seems a simple intuitive leap from the five Mexican crop circles to a crisis water situation, symbolized by the five extinct Great Lakes of the Basin of Mexico–along with their important historical contribution to this crucial aquifer.

They also occur as part of a triangle of 33: Their point is 33miles N of Mexico City. Also 33 miles NE of the city lies Teotihuacan, where equinox is seriously celebrated each year. And Teotihuacan lies approx.33 miles E of Tlapanaloya.

Equinox sunset over the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan, Valley of Mexico, March 20, 2011

The crop circles appeared on Equinox weekend when hundreds of thousands of Mexico City residents head for the pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan–to pay their respects to the setting sun as it disappears behind the pyramid. Teotihuacan, Toltec ‘place where men become gods’ lies just 33miles east of Enrique’s field. Its central avenue’s due N-S alignment, on which the pyramid’s shadow casts a precise shadow at the moment of dusk, remains today a fascination for Mexicans who traditionally celebrate the onset of spring on Equinox. This year was no exception. Teotihuacan was mobbed.

It was also the weekend before the world-wide celebration of World Water Day, March 22nd.

Water is becoming scarce in many countries with over-population and rising mean annual temperatures. Water will soon be a commodity more precious than the metals mined in the Mexican hinterland.

The present explosion of shanty towns — barrios — which have sprung up in the last decade around the Mexican megacity have bolstered the population of MCMA (see above) to 21 milion people. While canals and drainage systems channel their human waste North into the Valley of Mexico agricultural region centered on (the crop circles of) Tlapanaloya, a clean drinkable water supply continues to be a problem in the city.

Industrial growth within an enclosed basin has not only produced pollutants in smog, but water quality issues for the Valley. Over-extraction of ground water has caused new flooding problems for the city as it sinks below the historic lake floor. Seasonal flooding was thought to have been historically ‘cured’ by the Spanish and successive Mexican governments by the very act of drainage. Now excessive drainage–and extraction of more water than is being replenished naturally causes subsidence and the need for further infrastructure–more pipes and tunnels.

For a high mesa totally enclosed within mountain ranges, the Valley is completely dependent on its groundwater supply. This has traditionally come from the underlying aquifers, the upwelling of seasonal springs supplemented by (previously unwanted) flooding and rains. These underground springs and wells are now almost exclusively the source of drinking water for the greater metropolitan area of Mexico City. With the rapid addition of shanty barrios around the city’s outer limits, more water is being pumped out of the city’s underground reservoirs than Nature is pouring in–[main aquifer currently pumps 880,000 USgallons/minute while the water table refreshes at around 440,000 gals/min]–that is, water is replenishing at around half the extraction rate.

Much of the city has now sunk below the ancient lakebed level and it continues to sink at around 15 inches per year. Water from the surrounding mountains which always flowed towards the city, now passes through shanty towns where there are no city ‘services’ (water supply or sewage removal), so the rivers become sewers–which contribute to an ongoing health risk in the capital. MCMA is struggling to prevent this contaminated water from entering the drinking supply.

The present dilemma is specific to Mexico. But in the West, clean and clear water is a blessing and a gift we may not have appreciated enough until now.

All this communicated by a chance appearance in two traditionally-planted-and-irrigated Chinampa fields in a rural district of central Mexico? you ask?

Perhaps not explicitly, but we have had a little experience of messages transmitted in the last decade of crop circles in other areas of the world where aquifers–and their underlying electromagnetic mysteries–have contributed enormously to the medium.

This Mexican Wave may indeed be sending us a High Five: a reminder to reconnect with our traditional lifestyles. But it is more likely to be a distress signal–a wakeup call.

We would be well-advised to listen and heed its message.
©2011 Marian Youngblood
*Postclassic in its historical context refers to Mexico’s original peoples whose culture flourished until Spanish domination: Aztecs and Toltecs in Central Mexico, the Mixtec in Oaxaca, the Tarasco in the West, the Huasteca in the northern plain of the Gulf of Mexico, and the Maya in the Yucatan peninsula and Guatemala|

Crop Circles, Nazca Lines: A Perspective

Assyrian tablet depicting Phoenix rising from its own ashes

Thanksgiving is a time to honour our blessings, to look to the future, and remember our past, but not to dwell on it. It is a gift to be able to live in the sacred moment of Now, holding a perspective of present and past; even future. For that it is sometimes useful to look to the stars.

Nobody wants to be bogged down by deadlines, traffic jams, daily pressures which business imposes on our lives, but they are a reality. The gift is not to allow those pressures to impinge on our conscious-ness ALL of the time: to set aside some moment, daily, for what’s going on INSIDE, not outside in our lives. The trick to maintaining a healthy mind within a body that’s built to withstand some stresses is simple: it’s called switching off.

Everyone needs to switch off, to become unglued, to take a Holiday. That’s why Thanksgiving is such a huge celebration in the American continent: the international home of Big Bizness. This time of gratitude covers every race, creed, religious sect and subgroup: everybody celebrates. A timeout that takes us away from the increasing world pressure to ‘take care of business’. It gives us an overview of life; if only for one weekend in the year.

With a feeling of joy for what we are grateful for in our lives comes a per-spective on how our lives have turned out; from where we started. We look at the last year and give thanks: for our home, our family and our friends. Sometimes we give thanks for a lot of years: and see how our past has become our present.

They say it’s not good to dwell in the past. However there are some lessons from the past that we, with the miracle of technology, may use. They teach us to hold an overview.

Yes. Crop circles, among others, point the way.

Over the last decade we’ve been treated to a deluge of them: now more than a mere curiosity: they are perhaps showing us how to ‘be’.

Using techniques as diverse as pictograms, mathematics, animal and nature symbolism and digital ‘language’, these crop glyphs have become increasingly sophisticated and, like our own society and consciousness, their influence is expanding.

Last summer alone brought eye-witness reports from unbiased observers who believe personally and irrevocably in their ‘power’ to convert. Visitors to crop circles have experienced a ‘transformation’, feeling of ‘oneness’, a change in conscious-ness, a sensation of love for their fellow beings. These human emotions are backed up by changes and fluctuations in on-the-ground readings monitored by digital and electronic equipment used to measure the electromagnetic flow.

Even for those of us not conversant in the language of mathematics, the evidence has already brought the scientific community on board. Carl Sagan, astrophysicist and author of ‘Cosmos’, said before he died in 1996 at the age of 62: ‘Mathematics is the Rosetta Stone of the Universe’. This interpretive Rosetta Stone is evident in enough crop circles to satisfy the most skeptic mathematician.

Euclidean sacred geometry in pyramid crop circle July 2009

Gerald Hawkins, the great Cambridge Observatory scholar, astronomer and author of ‘Stonehenge Decoded’ and ‘Beyond Stonehenge’, wrote an amazing treatise on Euclidean Geometry in Crop Circles and their relationship to Diatonic Ratios – also shown in crop circle imagery. His primary interest before he died in 2003 was work on his archaeo-astronomical computer devised at Cambridge, Mass (in the days before computers were commonplace) to calculate the placements of stones within Stonehenge and other British stone circles and their alignment to rising and setting sun, moon and constellations. The fact that his interest was transferred in later life to discussing similarities in sacred geometry with crop circle designs is a huge statement of support for their precision and authenticity.

Optical Pyramid at Chesterton, Harbury Warwickshire July 2009

It is intriguing to note that a crop circle of perfect sacred geometric pyramidal proportion appeared in July 2009 in a field next to a defunct observatory (now converted to a windmill) built in 1632 by astronomer Sir Edward Peyto to house his simple telescope. Like the crop circle which appeared in a field next to the Chilbolton radio telescope in 2002, the message would appear to be saying, once again, look to the stars.

Take another form of Kornkreis symbolism: images depicting birds, insects: the dragonfly, the human butterfly, the honeybee and bumblebee; swallows: all symbolic of flying, reaching beyond ourselves into the stratosphere of consciousness, beyond our mortal coil: suggesting our need to connect with our higher selves, superconscious, looking perhaps to encourage Mankind to connect as one, as a collective conscioiusness; holy, whole.

Hummingbird crop circle of July 2009 at Milk Hill, Wiltshire

In this respect the crop circle phenomenon is reminiscent of a cultural device used by ancient civilizations to instruct their people in a religious fervor and belief in their gods, which would gather them together and guide them through difficult times: in creating images of superbeings directing their lives, kings and emperors and rulers of all ancient empires were able to use mass belief to maintain harmony and rhythm in daily lives. The Egyptians’ pantheon is superb: gods and goddesses carved in stelae, tombs and great city walls were depicted as immortal effigies of the pharaohs themselves, the god-king of their people whose power was omnipotent. Assyrians did it. Greeks and Romans followed suit, with temples, statues, sculptural images and mural art of astonishing beauty.

Nazca line Hummingbird, created between AD300-600 in Peruvian High Desert

Perhaps the Peruvian rulers and god-kings of the Andes ought to be placed in this category; for they, too, had a way of subjugating their people and using their labour to create beautiful, if taltalisingly obscure symbols: the Nazca Lines.

Stretching for hundreds of miles through the Altiplano Peruvian high desert, the lines form geoglyphs cleared in the land surface. Made by Nazca laborers, they follow riverbeds that flow from the Andes. This high desert terrain stretches for over 1400 miles along the Pacific coast and the Pampa Colorada, or Red Plain of deep red sandstone where Nazca art was created, runs 15 miles inland and for 37 miles alongside the Andes. Nazca workers cleared the surface of stones, revealing lines of lighter clay underneath. Because of its dry climate (humidity quotient almost zero), these imprints have remained in the landscape for the last millennium and a half.

Nazca Monkey line drawing in the Peruvian Altiplano AD300-600

Like their modern counterpart the crop circles, appearing regularly throughout recent summers in English fields, the Nazca lines show not only geometric and conceptual shapes, but also glyphs of animals and plants in stylized form. Like crop circles, the Nazca lines are most spectacular when viewed from the air.

Because of our programming as a society, taught for millennia to believe what we see in our three-dimensional world, it has taken us all of the last hundred years even to agree with Einstein that the possibility of a fourth dimension is conceivable. Only now are we beginning to realize that the suggestion, taught for centuries by esoteric spiritual disciplines, that we are part of an even-greater Whole of seven, nay, twelve, perhaps infinite dimensional realities, may have validity: that we may indeed be sending ourselves messages to trigger our soul memory that it is time to wake up and become the spiritual beings we were intended to be.

We Are The Ones We Have Been Waiting For. It has a ring to it.

Yatesbury Phoenix appeared June 2009

It is tempting to conclude, therefore, that our own group consciousness, that ever-expanding nebulous concept which our linear-embedded society has until now refused to conceive as a genuine possibility, is sending us messages embedded in our beautiful planet earth. And each summer, not only are they getting more beautiful, more complex and more meaningful, but they are triggering in us a desire, like the mythical Phoenix, to rise from the ashes of our past and become, as they suggest, the star-children of our dreams: the ones we have been waiting for.

Looking to and from the stars: are we indeed beginning to see the stellar perspective?