It is rare these days to find anyone who has not seen photos of the stunning array of crop circles that have been appearing around the world for the past 30 years or so. Indeed, as any number of publications on the topic will attest, the complexity of their shapes and patterns has evolved, particularly over the last decade, into a veritable smorgasbord of art forms tied to Sacred Geometry.

In many ways, the huge crop circles seem to be related to the crosses of light which have been discovered around the world since 1988. These have generally appeared in regular frosted-glass windows and they cast a healing glow on those people and communities that they grace. Since 1997, however, there is "a new kid on the block." Indeed, circular patterns of concentrated light have been seen to glow on buildings across the northwestern United States and beyond.

J. D. Rabbit, a U.S. correspondent for Share International magazine, has documented this new occurrence since its inception and collected photos of several buildings with circles of light. "Far from a fleeting occurrence," she states, "the phenomenon has continued to proliferate. Circles of light have lately been found in several European countries — Germany, Austria, Switzerland — and in Australia and Argentina." "Our reporting contacts are limited," she says, "so it is pointless to try to number how many there are. I’d guess way over 100,000 by now. A big building can reflect dozens, and they’re all over New York City and Boston, for example."

"The circles of light are best seen in full sunlight," Rabbit explains, "when the sunlight strikes a window at a fairly perpendicular angle and then reflects onto a suitable flat surface closely opposite. The angle of the sun and the angle of its reflection determine where the light circle is seen." "It is also worth noting," she adds, "that there is a variety of patterns and shapes that appear within the circle, some common like an "X" or a figure of eight, others more rare, like the Sacred Geometry figure known as the vesica pisces or Flower of Life. At first, there were about eight basic shapes, but as with the crop circle pictographs, more recent ones have been different and more complex. Perhaps they share a common origin."

Some circles of light are seen only in the early morning; others appear at midday or late afternoon for a few hours; others can only be seen in spring and fall. Some have been observed in the same place for several years, while others appear for a while and then vanish. Because this is a phenomenon of light, however, the designs can change or evaporate over as little as fifteen minutes. Circles have appeared on huge buildings, like the hotel in Denver whose outside walls were covered in them in November 2000. If a building is large and has many windows, there will be multiple reflections, and these may range from distinct forms like an "X" to reflections that are simply window-shaped or round but brighter than normal. Circles of light have also appeared on sidewalks, bedroom walls, automobiles or passing buses, clothing, and in one reported instance, on a man’s shirt as he went inside.

Physicists who have examined this phenomenon note that in order to produce such a focused image, the windowpane would need to take on an extreme curvature or concavity, as much as several millimeters, which is not evident under normal observation. The extreme force needed to produce such a bending deformation would certainly threaten the integrity of the glass itself. Furthermore, sheets of glass are not normally flat but slightly wavy due to the solidifying process during fabrication. This "waviness" is random, which makes it very unlikely to result in straight interference (i.e. straight lines such as the patterns produce in the image). Finally, the limits of coherence in sunlight itself (its coherent length is 1 micrometer) would not allow it to reflect without fuzziness on such a large scale. This means in sum that the shapes within the circular reflections cannot, from a physical point of view, be caused by mere focusing of light.

Based on the physical evidence to date, investigators in Ljubljana, Slovenia have raised at least three important questions for which there are, as yet, no answers: (1) Why would light circles sometimes appear as reflections from some windowpanes only, and sometimes as reflections from all windows of a building? (2) Why, if a windowpane’s surface is concave, does there appear an additional form like a bright "X" in the center of a round reflection? (3) Why would the concave surfaces appear in such masses just recently?

British author Benjamin Creme claims that a wave of "signs" (including the crop circles, the crosses of light and the circles of light) has been deliberately created across all cultures and religions and is proliferating now to help create a climate of expectancy, as millions worldwide view these unexplained and yet dazzling phenomena. Creme believes they herald the emergence onto the world scene of the Lord Maitreya, the Christ returned as World Teacher for the Age of Aquarius. There is an impressive body of evidence to substantiate Creme’s claim, some of which can be found on the Internet at www.themiraclespage.org and www.share-international.org. Whatever their mysterious origin or raison d’être, it is worth considering these beautiful gifts of light and watching for them in the course of everyday life.