WRITING SYSTEM

WRITING SYSTEMS

Some writing systems transmit far more than others. Not all scripts play in the same league: some compress a density of ideas into a single sign, while others merely align sounds. Our Western alphabet is practical, fast, efficient — but it remains too limited to encode, on its own, layers of concepts, images, and relationships.

Let’s take a classic example from sinography: the Chinese character 王 (wáng, “king”). In a traditional reading, we see three horizontal lines — Heaven, Human, Earth — connected by a vertical axis. It is not just a word: it is a miniature map of the world, a visual thesis on the role of the “king” as the link between the levels. One sign, several layers of information.

Now let’s project this idea towards a field that concerns us directly: imagine an “exotic” writing system in which each motif encodes — like a hanzi — several layers of information at once: geometry, rhythm, orientation, location, context. This is precisely my hypothesis for certain crop circles (not all of them): signs that superimpose levels — mathematical, astronomical, geodesic, symbolic — into a single imprint readable from above.

In this perspective, reading a large motif is not instantaneous. It requires time, comparisons, cycles — sometimes several decades. Just as the character 王 appears “simple” until the day one sees the structure it carries, a crop circle only reveals its logic to those willing to connect all the layers: the form, the location, the date, the solar angle, the echoes with earlier figures. It is not necessarily rustic decoration nor land art: it is also a form of writing.

And writing, at times, needs asymmetry — you know, that asymmetry which, years ago, made it possible to classify a crop circle instantly as “board-made”, such as Galaxy. When compared with the years required to understand a motif of non-identified origin, it certainly gives one pause.

By contrast, tracking a “hidden message” in the work of hoaxers usually takes far less time. There is one thing hoaxers have great difficulty doing: predicting future events — far… very, very far ahead.

To be continued…

Anne L.