THE GREAT TURNING: Crop Circles and their Message to Humanity. by MICHAEL GREEN. Edited by Mary Coales. The Squeeze Press, 2024.We are currently, some would say ‘at last’, concerning ourselves with the fate of the planet and all of life. For most this is a practical, science based issue, but it was, and is, in fact an equally spiritual concern of which we are all - in one way or another - involved. The late Michael Green saw this clearly in the final decades of the 20th century, and wrote his book to show how, as he put it: “That this was not a mere freak weather phenomenon, but something much more significant. It appeared to be a sophisticated communication process, the product of a non-human intelligence of a high order. Mandelic symbolism seemed to be used, but the complex pictograms seemed ancient and obscure.”His book was left unfinished at the time of his death in 2018, and we have had to wait some time for it to appear. It is, for all of this, still as timely now as it was when he began it - perhaps more so as we begin to see the possible ending of all life as we know it in a far less distant future than we might have considered fifty years ago.Michael's argument is both simple and profound: the universe is sentient and able to project communications to those of us able and willing to understand them. One such method is through the crop circles, strange and complex patterns appearing in unploughed fields, which have been appearing since at least the 16th century, and more recently in ever increasing numbers, with a resultant degree of interest. They may not be currently the object of as great a focus as they were when Michael Green founded the Centre for Crop Circle Studies in 1990, but there are still many people studying them as they continue to appear every year - often with ever greater complexity.The premise behind Michael Green's work has a firm base on ancient theogony, the belief that the world is alive, every bit as much as we ourselves. It involves us all in what is termed ‘The Great Work’, a concept which has remained central to esoteric investigators since the 12th century and probably earlier. It is present in Vedic, Taoist, Zoroastrian, Platonic and Neo-Platonic mysteries, all of which point to an essential reassessment of mankind's journey towards enlightenment.Studying the proliferation of crop circles Michael Green began to see parallels with the symbology of ancient times, and from here he found that the crop circles formed a kind of symbolic language - and alphabet, if we will, which spelt out a warning to humanity. We may sum this up to mean that if we do not turn back and change our ways, we will perish, and the opportunity offered by the creation of the species will be lost. Michael saw this repeated in the channelled writings of numerous more recent esotericists, from Madame Blavatsky in the 19th century, to Alice Bailey, in the early 20th, and more recently in the writings of the contemporary R.J. Stewart, who conveyed his own vision, experienced while visiting a Neolithic tomb on the island of Jersey, which suggested that mankind was required to make ‘a great turning’ towards what Stewart's communicator described as ‘earth-peace’.Following seasonal, directional, and physical shapes and signs, Michael Green set out to show how the patterns appearing in the fields of rural Britain, and other areas in Europe, spelled out a message which reflected an even older symbol, the labyrinth, which represents the many turnings of humanity towards a promised communion with the divine.Michael Green’s untimely death in 2018 took him away before he had time to complete this book, and it is only recently, thanks to the untiring work of Mary Coales and Michael's widow, Christine, that it has finally come to be completed and printed. This is an important book which shows how we may read the crop circles, and even how the ‘great turning’ might yet be made.John Matthews
