Dema and Cern headed back to the pub. On the way there, they reviewed together the things The Green Man had revealed to them.

He was a very old spirit, like many such spirits who had followed the Celts and Druids on their migration to Britain, and still dwelt there even though the old ways had faded. Now a reawakening had begun among them, and that was why the circles appeared more regularly. 

 At first the circles were little more than a kind of resonance phenomenon that occurred when one of the old spirits was aroused by a strong spiritual presence, human or otherwise. But of late, as evidenced by Freddy and his group, there had been a confluence of resurgent awareness. The new activities of the old spirits was, in fact, a reflection of this new cultural reality. 

Dema was reminded that, while there is only one here-and-now physical reality, there are many different cultural realities, and in many ways these are far more important in people's lives than the merely physical. 

Back in the pub, Freddy was still there and they rejoined him. Dema asked him about the history of the circles, and he told them at some length.

It seemed that crop circles, then known as "fairy circles," were not uncommon in the Middle Ages, when the general cultural reality was more receptive to them.

Interest in them, and with it their occurrence, had begun to fade as Elizabethan Britain grew as a naval power and a trading nation. There was a resurgence in the time of Newton, when the phenomenon aroused some analytical study by the newly awakened scientific approach. Somewhat ironically, this ultimately resulted in a new skepticism about their true nature, which suppressed them further.

Freddy thought that the recent resurgence was part of the "new age" spiritual revival, part of a growing understanding that scientific analysis does not provide all the answers. 

Dema was thinking that the circles were a form of feedback phenomenon. When a certain intensity of cultural agreement was reached, the old earth spirits were aroused in sympathy with it, and this helped to focus the patterns of higher consciousness associated with the beliefs into energy configurations that were reflected in the evolution of the crop circle designs. She tried to convey this to Freddy, with some success, but he continued to think of the "beings" who created the circles as somehow alien, and superior to normal people. 

By now the pub crowd had thinned out, but Freddy was still going strong. Dema wanted to press her case, to find out how receptive he might be to the deeper truths of the spiritual side of the phenomena. So she began to speculate.

"Freddy, suppose some old earth spirit wakes up and a crop circle forms, more or less accidentally as he sort of stretches his energy field. Then some guy with a pretty strong spiritual sense sees the circle and knows it isn't just the wind doing it. He tells some other guys who are sort of on the same wavelength, and pretty soon another earth spirit tunes in and another crop circle appears. Which reinforces the group agreement, and it grows from there. Don't you think that might have something to do with what is going on here?"

"Well, I've heard ideas like that before, especially from the Wiccans and Pagans. They say that what the circles are telling us is not new knowledge from the cosmos. It's old knowledge from right around here."

Freddy was warming to his topic. He spoke quietly, because these ideas were not highly favored in some quarters. "Look," he said, "Human history goes back not just tens of thousands, but hundreds of thousands of years. The people who built Stonehenge and erected all those other old standing stones inherited a wisdom that goes way back, and they were tuned in."

Cern nodded. His ancestors were tuned in.

Dema said, "I think I'd like to meet some of these Wiccans."

Freddy went on. "Like I was saying before, over the past few hundred years, with the Age of Reason and the Industrial Revolution, lots of people tuned out. Lost touch with that deeper awareness. But now, partly because there are so damned many billions of people of all types around, plus the Internet and stuff, it's getting easier to gather a critical mass of shared beliefs and wake up some of those 'old gods' who haven't had much of an audience lately. 

"So we get crop circles. And other less visible manifestations. But we are just beginning to wake ourselves up to what it all means. And there aren't that many of us, really. Most people would rather believe it's all a big joke."

Freddy picked up his mug, drained the few swallows that were left in it, swept his eyes around vaguely trying to locate the bar maid, then slumped back in his chair, looking like he had just lost his last friend. Dema decided it was the alcohol catching up with him, and wanted to raise his spirits.

"Remember what Mr. Green said, how a crop circle is usually just a cross section that happens to be in the way when a spherical energy pattern appears? You'd have to be pretty clever to reconstruct the geometries in the sphere from what gets captured by the grain stalks in the cross section. It's got to be much easier to just look at the pattern and let the sphere emerge in your consciousness. 

"Don't you think the same is true in a broader sense? You're in on the beginning of something, something most people think they don't even care about, maybe don't even want to. But it's an emerging pattern. They are exposed to it, more and more. How can this help but gradually emerge into their consciousness, willy-nilly?"

Freddy perked up a bit. "I hope you're right." His eyes brightened. "In fact, I just remembered something else Mr. Green said. The circles are like atoms. Atoms both attract and repel each other. There's a certain distance apart where they stabilize, to form molecules or crystals. The forces that make the circles display a similar phenomenon, so many of the circle effects are self-organizing.

"He also said that there are a lot of people like Joe, and many crop circles really are man made, especially the more elaborate ones. But even in those there can be a sort of connection to a higher consciousness, so just because a circle is man made doesn't mean it isn't part of the message."

Cern and Dema were grinning, and Freddy was grinning with them, completely recovered from his funk. He said, "I used to think of the hoaxers as enemies, until I realized how committed they are in their own way. A lot of them are like Joe and come around after they've had a few experiences out there they can't explain."

Dema said, "Of course. Stonehenge, and the standing stones here around Avebury, are obvious evidence that people are capable of connecting with the land in a spiritual way."

"Right. There are energy patterns in the earth, and the ancient markers reflect them, even help to reinforce them."

Cern said, "I'm beginning to think we are all being drawn into an expanded reality, a sort of spiritual vortex that is growing because as people get more connected technologically, they are becoming more connected spiritually as well. Buried potentials are awakening, spiritual awareness is blossoming. This sort of thing has happened before, like in the Renaissance, but this time the new technological understanding has allowed a deeper patterning of the energies created by thought."

"I think you're right," said Dema. "A new phase of cultural evolution is in progress, a compounding of memes from many minds into something new, something vast, unforeseeable, but potentially beneficial."

They all sat quietly for a while. Freddy's eyelids were drooping. Finally he looked into his empty beer mug, set it back down and said, "What's unforeseeable for me right now is what my wife will say if I don't come home soon."

As they all stood up and started moving toward the door, Dema asked him, "Will you be here again tomorrow?"

"Oh yes, for sure! Lucky has something special planned, and I don't want to miss it!"

So as they left the pub they traded cell phone numbers, and agreed to meet again the next day.