From “BohemianKyle,” who works at the Bohemian Grove. Footage includes the Owl Shrine, the Lamp of Fellowship, the mock sacrificial effigy and its hearse, the druidic robes used during the Cremation of Care ritual, as well as a look at the camps Mandalay, Hillbillies and others.

Hillbillies Camp, which includes a representation of Pan, the cloven-hoofed god of the wilds.

Terry Melanson (August 5, 2012)

Anyone the least familiar with the Bohemian Grove has come across the claim that the 40-foot stone owl is a reference to Moloch, associated with child sacrifice in the Bible and rabbinic tradition. The owl, however – to the Bohemian club, as well – has traditionally symbolized wisdom. While there’s no ancient description of what a Moloch idol actually looked like, relatively modern representations have invariably depicted a bull-headed statue. Throughout history, in fact, not once was Moloch ever associated with an owl – until, that is, the age of the internet.

Classic Moloch illustration from the early 1700s (Johann Lund: Die alten jüdischen Heiligthümer ...)

I’d initially surmised that Alex Jones was the first person to put the Moloch spin on the owl. In 2000, as we know, he snuck into the Grove, videotaped the Cremation of Care ritual, and became an internet superstar – and rightly so. Numerous times in his film, Alex matter-of-factly states that the Bohemian owl represents Moloch.

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1984 Bohemian Grove News Report

1984 Bohemian Grove News Report - ABC

Peter Phillips - May 21, 2012

For much of the world, July 14th is celebrated as the end of a flagrantly out of touch French monarchy; the date in 1789 when the people of Paris rose up and marched on the Bastille, a state prison that symbolized the absolutism and arbitrariness of the Ancient Regime.

July 14th 2012 is, ironically, also the first day of summer camp for the world’s business and political aristocracy and their invited guests. Between 2,000 to 3,000 men will gather at Bohemian Grove, 70 miles north of San Francisco in California’s Sonoma County—to sit around the campfire and chew the fat—off-the-record—with ex-presidents, corporate leaders and global financiers.

One might imagine modern-day aristocrats like Henry Kissinger, George W. Bush, and Donald Rumsfeld amid a circle of friends sipping cognac and discussing how the “unqualified” masses cannot be trusted to carry out policy, and how elites must set values that can be translated into “standards of authority.”

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Bob Adelmann - 13 July 2011

Debra Saunders complained that, because she is a woman, she wasn’t invited to the upcoming Bohemian Club meeting which begins this Thursday at the Bohemian Grove retreat center an hour’s drive north of San Francisco. Even if she were a man, she most likely still wouldn’t be invited as she is not a member of the “elite.”

Founded just after the Civil War by Henry “Harry” Edwards as a private camp where bohemians — artists and writers — could go to relax and recuperate from the rigors of the work-a-day world, over time the club’s membership evolved to include the rich and powerful, which now numbers over 2,400. The secrecy imposed about the annual meetings has led many to speculate as to the purposes and impact such a conclave might have on the nation’s affairs, especially when membership lists included every Republican President since 1923 (and some Democrats), many cabinet officials, and CEOs of large corporations including the major financial institutions. Military contractors, oil companies, banks (including the Federal Reserve) and national media all have high-ranking officials as either members or guests.

Despite the club’s motto: “Weaving Spiders Come Not Here,” (see club emblem, above left) plenty of business, both economic and political, has been done there. As noted in Peter Phillips’ dissertation for his doctorate in philosophy at the University of California, Davis, “The Bohemian Grove has long been a political networking point for Republicans … along with significant numbers of cabinet members and White House officials. [Dwight] Eisenhower gave a premier political address at the Grove in 1950, setting himself on the path to the presidency.”

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Daurade (LOS) - March 12, 2011

I had an opportunity to watch The Order of Death (Alex Jones’ documentary on the Bohemian Grove) the other night. It’s a deft piece of propaganda and like all propaganda, it’s filled with an unfortunate bevy of distortions and half-truths, if not outright lies.

Bohemian Grove is a campground in northern California owned by the Bohemian Club, a men’s social club founded in San Francisco in 1872. Initially membership included journalists and artists, but it soon accepted businessman into its ranks. Today the club holds an annual gathering at the Grove which includes a largely GOP crowd, but includes a smattering of liberals, too. This is not some conspiracy theorist’s wild imaginings. Guests have included the likes of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Kissinger, George Shultz, Helmut Kohl, Colin Powell. The list goes on. Not only such well-known figures but a long list of power players in industries from petrochemical and media to defense. Celebrities are involved. Harry Shearer and Steve Miller, of all people, are members. So are Mickey Hart and Bob Weir, formerly of the Grateful Dead.

But what do they do? Given the highly secretive nature of the proceedings, a lot of what goes down is fairly well-known.

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William C. Bacon, in The Annals of the Bohemian Club for the years 1907-1972 (Vol V., Centennial Edition: Bohemian Club, 1972)

It is thought that one rather interesting period in Bohemia’s history merits a little space in these annals. Preliminarily let’s record that in 1944 a then young man, after twelve years of membership, was selected by the nominating committee as the next president of the Club. It is reported that Palmer Fuller, Jr., the chairman of that committee, called on the selected candidate and said to him, “Bill, it becomes my duty to tell you that our committee has, after long consideration, decided we must reach into the bottom of the barrel for our next president. And guess what we came up with your name!” He then tempered that with the statement that the candidate having served on all club committees, as chairman of the Jinks committee, as secretary and as director several times of the Board of Directors appeared to be prepared for the job.

The manager of the Club at that time was a man named Crabb. When the report of the nominating committee with the name of the nominee for president on it was posted, the manager immediately resigned for reasons known to him and the nominee. In his Thanksgiving dinner talk that year Fred Thompson said, “I shall always think of this administration as the “blue ointment regime”.

The period from 1944 to 1946 made up part of the time our country was engaged in the second world war. They were difficult years with many restrictions imposed upon the way of life of our people. Among them was the rationing of certain foods and gasoline which was felt by Bohemians like all other citizens and the limitations made operations a real problem, particularly in the dining rooms and bars, and whenever transportation was required. This was aggravated by the discovery of the new administration that the former manager left it short some 16,000 ration points. Fortunately, the Office of Price Administration was understanding and made it possible for the Club to carry on satisfactorily.

It was during this administration that San Francisco was selected for the meeting of The United Nations Conference on International Organization, which brought to our city delegations from fifty nations of the world headed by their foremost diplomats. The purpose of that conference was to prepare and adopt a charter of a World Organization to maintain peace for all nations and to promote the welfare of all men. After two months of serious effort the conference completed, approved and unanimously adopted the United Nations Charter. President Harry S. Truman came to the closing plenary session of the Conference on June 26, 1945 to express the thanks of our nation to the visiting delegations for their significant achievement.

Our little principality of Bohemia, while not a member of the conference, played an important part in getting it under way and entertaining the representatives of the member nations during their stay in our city. At the opening session Bohemian Earl Warren, then Governor of California, on behalf of our State, welcomed the visitors to California, and Bohemian Roger Lapham, then Mayor of San Francisco, extended the traditional hospitality of our city to them.

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Members of the ultra-exclusive Bohemian Club—2,500 of America’s richest, most conservative men, including Henry Kissinger, George H. W. Bush, and a passel of Bechtels, Basses, and Rockefellers—are known to urinate freely against the ancient redwoods that cover their 2,700-acre property. Have they been chopping down the trees as well? According to one former member turned whistle-blower, the San Francisco–based society may have logged some of its old-growth forest. Drawing on his own Ivy League ties, the author investigates, with a daring sortie into the ceremonial kickoff of the Bohemians’ annual encampment.

by Alex Shoumatoff May 2009

Aaron Dykes - October 3, 2008

During a somewhat gimmicky Today Show interview with George H.W. Bush, the elder ‘41′ reminisced about his debates with Geraldine Ferraro, the only other woman to run for Vice President in a major party, who sat alongside him in a discussion about gender roles and discussed the significance of Sarah Palin’s VP candidacy in anticipation of the debate.

At about 2:20 into the interview, the Today Show cuts to another location where the former President is wearing a ballcap displaying the Bohemian Grove owl logo along with his boastful ‘41′ wind jacket. As the screenshot (right) indicates, the owl is distinctly that of the Bohemian Club, as shown in the noted designs.

The elder Bush’s wearing it during a televised interview should be read as a ‘thumb up’ at the democratic will of the people and a reminder that the electoral process is little more than a sham thinly concealing the rule by secrecy that really goes on behind the scenes.

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