"Cremation of Care" ritual at Bohemian Grove, page 6

Well as I scoured the net for more info on the grove I think I actually found some truth about this place let me elaborate.

Back to the topic first. I found a good article by a journalist from Spy magazine who snuck into the encampment in 1989

The Cremation of Care. The cremation is intended to put the busy men of the club at ease and banish the stress of the outside world, but it arouses critics of the encampment because they interpret it to mean that Bohemians literally don't care about the outside world. Cremation of Care, they fear, means the death of caring. Demonstrations outside the Grove a few years back often centered around the "Resurrection of Care."

The cremation took place at the man-made lake that is the center of a lot of Grove social activity. At 9:15 p.m. a procession of priests carrying the crypt of Mr. Dull Care came out of the trees on the east side, along the Grove's chief thoroughfare, River Road. They wore bright red, blue and orange hooded robes chat might have been designed for the Ku Klux Klan by Marimekko. When they reached the water, they extinguished their torches.

At this point some hamadryads (tree spirits) and another priest or two appeared at the base of the main owl shrine, a 40-foot-tall, moss-covered statue of stone and steel at the south end of the lake, and sang songs about Care. They told of how a man's heart is divided between "reality" and "fantasy," how it is necessary to escape to another world of fellowship among men. Vaguely homosexual undertones suffused this spectacle, as they do much of ritualized life in the Grove. The main priest wore a pink-and-green satin costume, while a hamadryad appeared before a redwood in a gold spangled bodysuit dripping with rhinestones. They spoke of "fairy unguents" that would free men to pursue warm fellowship, and I was reminded of something Herman Wouk wrote about the Grove: "Men can decently love each other; they always have, bur women never quite understand."

Then the crypt of Care was poled slowly down the lake by a black-robed figure in a black gondola, accompanied by a great deal of special effects smoke. Just as the priests set out to torch the crypt, a red light appeared high in a redwood and large speakers in the forest amplified the cackling voice of Care: "Fools! When will ye learn that me ye cannot slay? Year after year ye burn me in this Grove.... But when again ye turn your feet toward the marketplace, am I not waiting for you, as of old?"

With that, Care spat upon the fires, extinguishing them. The priests turned in desperation to the owl. "Oh thou, great symbol of all mortal wisdom, Owl of Bohemia ... grant us thy counsel!"

Every year there are new wrinkles on the cremation ceremony. The big improvement this year was to project a sort of hologram onto the owl's face so that its beak seemed to move. Also, it was Walter Cronkite talking. (Cronkite camps in Hill Billies along with George H.W. Bush, William F. Buckley Jr. and former astronaut and ex-Eastern Air Lines chairman Frank Borman.) Cronkite, as the owl, said that the only way Care could be cremated was to use fire from the Lamp of Fellowship before him, an "eternal" gas flame that burns day and night while the encampment is on.

That did it. Care went up in blazes. Around me the men exploded in huzzahs. Fireworks went off at the lakeside, and a brass band in peppermint-striped jackets and straw boaters came out of the woods playing "There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight."

The sudden appearance of men in striped jackets shows what a bouillabaisse of traditions the Grove is. Bohemian Club literature is pious on this score. It boasts that the Cremation of Care ceremony derives from Druid rites, medieval Christian liturgy, the Book of Common Prayer, Shakespearean drama and nineteenth-century American lodge rites.Masters of the Universe Go to Camp: Inside the Bohemian Grove -by Philip Weiss - Spy Magazine, November 1989, pages 59-76

Seems from day one the club has been a social hangout for the individuals attending to act some sort of fantasy type lifestyle at the grove.

The club was founded in 1872, just three years after the transcontinental railroad was completed, by a group of newspapermen and artists who plainly felt social anxiety about their surroundings.Masters of the Universe Go to Camp: Inside the Bohemian Grove -by Philip Weiss - Spy Magazine, November 1989, pages 59-76

There are few rules, the most famous one being "Weaving Spiders Come Not Here" -- in other words, don't do business in the Grove. The rule is widely ignored so in other words it doesn't mean individuals attending are not shaping our realities in some sort of way or another. here is an example of a attitude projected in 1989 by Ronald Wilson Reagen and fellow members at a lakeside talk.

The only surprises came when he took questions. He got rousing applause when he called for greater regulation of the media. "You know, the press conferences were adversarial bouts -- they were there to trap me in something or other."Masters of the Universe Go to Camp: Inside the Bohemian Grove -by Philip Weiss - Spy Magazine, November 1989, pages 59-76