Bohemian Grove

What It Is

The Bohemian Club was founded in San Francisco in 1872. Each summer, for a little over two weeks in July, its members gather at a private camp of about 2,700 acres of redwoods near Monte Rio, California. The camp is called Bohemian Grove. Its membership has included business leaders, publishers, military men, and former presidents of the United States. The club’s motto, taken from Shakespeare, is “Weaving spiders come not here,” meaning no business is to be done inside the gates.

The Cremation of Care

Since 1881 the encampment has opened with a ceremony called the Cremation of Care. It is held at night beside a lake, at the foot of a hollow concrete owl about thirty feet tall. Robed participants carry a figure representing “Care” to an altar before the owl and burn it. The meaning given is simple: worldly worries are burned away so the men can enjoy their summer.

The club says the owl stands for wisdom and the ceremony is theater. Critics often call the owl Molech. Scripture never describes Molech as an owl, so this page does not rest on the bird. It rests on everything else.

What Torah Says About Every Piece

The place. Torah names the nations’ favorite place of worship: “upon the hills, and under every green tree” (Deuteronomy 12:2). Israel’s kings set up their asherim “under every green tree” (1 Kings 14:23). Bohemian Grove is a sacred-looking gathering held deep in a stand of the tallest trees on earth.

The image. Torah commands Israel to “break their images, and cut down their groves” (Exodus 34:13). A towering figure set up as the focus of a night ceremony is the very thing the command addresses, whatever name is given to it.

The fire. The nations burned offerings before their images, and the worst of them burned their own children (Deuteronomy 12:31; Leviticus 18:21). The burning of a human figure on an altar before an idol, even as play-acting, rehearses the shape of that rite.

The intention. Members insist it is only for fun. Torah does not grade by intention. It forbids asking “How did these nations serve their gods? even so will I do likewise” (Deuteronomy 12:30). Imitation is the sin, whether it is done in earnest or in costume.

Josiah Did Both

Second Kings 23 records King Josiah cleaning out the land after the book of the Law was found. In one chapter he did two things that line up with this camp. He carried the asherah out of the house of Yahuah and burned it at the brook Kidron (2 Kings 23:6). He also defiled Topheth, the place in the valley where men made their children pass through the fire to Molech (2 Kings 23:10). The grove and the fire were cut down together. What Josiah tore down, modern men rebuild in the redwoods and call it a summer holiday.

The Word “Grove”

The English word “grove” in the King James Bible usually translates the Hebrew asherah (H842), a carved wooden idol rather than a stand of trees. The name of the camp is a coincidence of English, but the camp has made the old mistranslation literal: a gathering among the trees, an idol, an altar, and a fire. The full study, The Grove That Was Never a Grove, traces the asherah through Scripture.

Closing

Revelation describes a great city whose merchants “were the great men of the earth,” and says that by her sorceries all nations were deceived (Revelation 18:23). The powerful have always kept their own groves and their own fires. Revelation also records how that city ends, in a single hour (Revelation 18:10).