Cremation of Care
annual theatrical production written, produced, and performed by and for members of the Bohemian Club
The Cremation of Care is an annual ritual production written, produced, and performed by and for members of the Bohemian Club. It is staged at the Bohemian Grove near Monte Rio, California, in front of a 40-foot-tall (12-meter) image of an owl, at a small artificial lake amid a private old-growth grove of Redwood trees.
The dramatic performance is presented on the first night of the annual encampment as an allegorical banishing of worldly cares for the club members and "to present symbolically the salvation of the trees by the club", but the secretive nature of the Bohemians and the political power of some of its members have been criticized.
History
″In accordance with [a recommendation from Albert Gerberding and others who remain nameless], the Club for the first time held its solemn Midsummer festival under the wide-spreading branches that overshadow the pure and limpid waters of Austin Creek, the price of tickets being five dollars, to be paid for on delivery, each member providing his own blankets and the Club munificently providing straw, on which the members reposed in Spartan simplicity.″ – Anonymous Member, The Annals of the Bohemian Club · Volume 3, pp. 12-13.
In 1878, the Bohemian Club of San Francisco first took to the woods in Taylorville, California (present-day Samuel P. Taylor State Park) for a summer celebration that they called Midsummer High Jinks. Poems were recited, songs were sung, and dramatic readings were given; the practice was repeated each summer in other areas, primarily near the Russian River in Sonoma County. In 1881, the ceremony of the Cremation of Care was first conducted after the various individual performances, with James F. Bowman as Sire. The ceremony was further expanded in 1893 by a member named Joseph D. Redding, with a Midsummer High Jinks entitled The Sacrifice in the Forest, or simply "Druid Jinks", in which brotherly love and Christianity battled and won against paganism, converting the druids away from bloody sacrifice. Redding formed the framework of the ceremony but the main actors, including George Tisdale Bromley as High Priest, were asked to supply their own major speeches.
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