What Bohemian Grove Is
The Bohemian Grove is a 2,700-acre private campground in Monte Rio, Sonoma County, California owned by the Bohemian Club — a private men's club founded in San Francisco in 1872. Every July for two weeks, the club's annual encampment brings together approximately 2,000-2,500 invited members and guests — all male, all from the highest levels of government, banking, media, military, and entertainment. Documented attendees have included every Republican president since Herbert Hoover, multiple Democratic presidents, Henry Kissinger, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, both Bushes, Alan Greenspan, Walter Cronkite, Newt Gingrich, and hundreds of CEOs, generals, and senior government officials.
The Grove's motto is "Weaving Spiders Come Not Here" — a line from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream interpreted as a prohibition on conducting business during the encampment. Wikipedia and mainstream sources emphasise this as evidence the Grove is purely social. GA researchers note: the same men who meet privately for two weeks in a guarded forest, performing rituals before a stone owl, and making the most important informal networking connections of the year, are the same men who make decisions of civilisational consequence the other 50 weeks of the year. The networking IS the business.
The Cremation of Care
The Grove's opening ceremony — which Alex Jones filmed in July 2000 from within the grounds using a hidden camera — is the "Cremation of Care." It involves: hooded figures in robes processing with torches to a large artificial lake at the base of a 40-foot concrete statue of an owl (Moloch — the Canaanite deity associated with child sacrifice in biblical texts, though the Bohemian Club identifies it as the "Owl of Bohemia," their symbol); a symbolic effigy is placed on a small boat and floated across the lake; the effigy is set alight; recorded voices and theatrical effects accompany the ritual; the announcement is made that "Care" — meaning the burdens of worldly concern — has been "cremated" for the duration of the encampment.
Alex Jones and Mike Hanson infiltrated the Grove on July 15, 2000 disguised as members. Jones filmed the Cremation of Care ceremony using a hidden camera. The footage was released and broadcast on multiple mainstream television programmes including the BBC. The reality of the ceremony — the owl statue, the robes, the fire ritual — was then widely acknowledged by establishment media, which characterised it as "theatrical" and "harmless." Richard Nixon is quoted in his own private tapes (released 1999) saying: "Bohemian Grove — which I attend from time to time — it is the most faggy goddamn thing you could ever imagine." The Grove's existence is not disputed. What is disputed is whether a gathering of the entire global elite performing fire rituals before a stone owl matters.
The Manhattan Project Connection
According to investigative journalist Peter Phillips (Giants: The Global Power Elite, 2018), the decision to build the atomic bomb was made in a private conversation at the Bohemian Grove in 1942 between Ernest Lawrence, Robert Oppenheimer, and Army officials — before any formal government authorisation. The Grove has historically been the venue for informal decisions that were then formalised through official channels. The informal decision-making structure was the point: no records, no accountability, no democratic consultation.