This time the Donspiracist talks about a creepy private hangout and secret society that some of the most powerful men on earth belong to. This is good stuff. Enjoy.
What did you do for summer vacation?
Hopefully, you didn’t have to sit through Daddy Day Camp.
But, if you were lucky, you did get to go to camp, just like many of our richest and most influential politicians and businessmen. They congregate for two weeks in July every year at a place called Bohemian Grove, a very large encampment about an hour north of San Francisco. The Grove is owned and run by the Bohemian Club, an organization founded in the middle of the 19th century by men who felt isolated and exiled in the rough American West.
The club has evolved into a meetinghouse of the most powerful men in our society. Every Republican president since Coolidge and most Democrats have been members, as have most upper echelon government officials. The roster of recent members includes both Bushes, Bill Clinton, Reagan, James Baker and Henry Kissinger. Members from other areas of society are prominent as well, including Walter Cronkite.
The ostensible reason for their gathering is to get away from the cares of running the world. Reports from those who have attended or have investigated say a spirit of silliness and drunkenness pervades.
I know, you’re thinking, so what? And if that was all there was to it, I would not be writing this article. However, the main event of this summer encampment is the Cremation of Care ceremony, which involves burning an effigy at the foot of a 40 foot stone owl.
You read right: 40 foot stone owl. Here are some pictures from the Coast to Coast AM website.
Filmmaker and radio talk show host Alex Jones infiltrated the steep security at the Grove with a hidden camera in the summer of 2000. He claims to have uncovered some deep dark secrets. The entire film can be found here. Excitement gripped me as I began to watch. I’m always into rich people acting all perverted and pagan, ala Eyes Wide Shut. The sexual ritual scene inside the mansion where everyone is masked remains one of the creepiest pieces of American cinema in recent memory; for raising hairs on my arms, I’ll take that over gory horror any day.
The problem is, despite Jones’ claims of pagan rituals to a Babylonian god named Molloch, the film doesn’t really show more than a bunch of rich men acting weird and silly.
Even if the practices at Bohemian Grove are not occult, it still raises, for me, an interesting question. Why do the rich and powerful of our world join such secret clubs and keep them so secret and behave in such odd ways? I know the old argument that absolute power corrupts absolutely, but hey, I have a brother pretty high up the food chain at GM, and on vacation he takes his kids to the beach, barbecues and plays golf like the rest of us.
The point is Bohemian Grove is suspicious by its very nature. It contains many of the same members as the Bilderbergers, the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, and Skull and Bones. These are not just harmless social clubs. At the very least, these are groups that decide major issues that eventually affect you and me.
But what’s with the big owl? It does feel distinctly pagan. And if you look closely, the owl pops up in odd places.
That a view of the Capitol building from above. (I got it from here, another site worth checking out concerning the grove.)
Granted, that may be a coincidence. But I’m not a big believer in coincidences, nor am I foolish enough to believe that the world’s richest and most powerful men like to blow off steam by drinking themselves silly and dressing up like women and burning human effigies in a spirit of collegiality.
RELATED: The most in-depth account written about Bohemian Grove written yet, in Spy Magazine in 1989.
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