Kevin's Watch

Even Great Britain’s Queen Elizabeth showed up in 1983. Her Majesty was honored with an ecstatic pagan dance ceremony, complete with expensive, elaborate stage props such as Egyptian pyramids and Babylonian ziggurats. Yet, even the Queen of England could not join this club if she applied for membership. Why? Because this club is exclusively all male. Women have not ever been allowed since the club’s founding in 1873.

So what is this ultra-elite club with the bizarre Druid customs? They are the Bohemians, formally known as the Bohemian Club. They practically own their own county north of San Francisco, a 2,700-acre summer camp they call the Bohemian Grove. Since the 1890s, the “Grovers” (as they are known to intimates) have gathered amongst these redwood trees to “get away from it all,” have a little summer vacation fun, and avoid business dealings altogether for two weeks. At least, that’s the official story.

Then, there are the other stories…some of them too strange to believe. Tales of world leaders plotting the world’s destiny there in secret “war rooms,” hand-picking Presidents and future leaders from the Bohemian Grove. Reports of occult rituals being conducted by these same powerful men, clad only in hooded red, black and white robes, offering an effigy of a human being to be sacrificed by fire to a towering 45-foot stone owl God, the “Great Owl of Bohemia” in a ceremony called “The Cremation of Care.” Sometimes, they discard the robes, don women’s clothing and parade around onstage in theatrical productions or – if the spirit so moves them - they wear no clothes at all!