Cremation of Care

[TooStonedToType]

Excerpt from:
Lakeside Talk at the 1977 Spring Jinks by Kevin Starr, at Bohemian Grove, June 4, 1977, discussing the history of Bohemian Grove.

Kevin Starr is a noted California historian and the Bohemian Club archivist.  I have a copy of the entire speech, I'll post later if I have the time or get it scanned.  

Sure sounds like a religious type ceremony intended to induce mythical states, invoke gods and banish "demons".  Who are we to argue with Kevin Starr, if he says that's what it is, he should know? - well except for maybe that part where he says the ceremony is in taste and tries to dignify it.  Like his wife said, he writes history from his perspective at the Bohemian Club bar - hahahaha. So when he writes of the Bohemian Club literally at the Bohemian Club bar, you know he's casting things in there best light.

I get a bit freaked out when baby sacrifices are made to the Flames - even if it is an effigy.

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A truly indigenous form of outdoor theater arose from the Cremation of Care ceremony.  Although it was in the genre of American lodge rites, the Cremation of Care was a ritual of meaning and taste, taking place each midsummer encampment.  At night, before a bonfire beneath the redwoods, Club officiants consigned Care to the Flames.  The ritual began in the early 1880's, and as the years went on its pageantry increased.  Those who wrote of it praised the Cremation for its impressiveness.    Flickering light from the bonfire added further mystery to the redwoods overhead.  Watching the robed and mitred officials go through the ceremony, one felt closer to the dawn-world of myth and ritual, in which demon Care might indeed be banished and the gifts of the gods invoked.  By the early 1900's an original play was commissioned to lead into the Cremation ceremony.  Presented at night against a rising incline of redwoods, the Grove Plays brought to perfection that sort of outdoor drama which Californians were then making their own.  Taking subjects from history, romance, and myth (sample productions:  "The Man in the Forest," "Montezuma," "Saint Patrick at Tara,"  "The Green Knight," and "The Triumph of Bohemia"), the Grove Plays used no scenery but the redwoods.  Staging, costumes, and pageantry, on the other hand, were elaborate.  A full orchestra played an original score.  The lighting effects were nothing short of spectacular.  "Such was the spell cast by the text of the play, the acting, the lighting and the cathedral forest," recalled Arnold Genthe of the 1904 production of "Hamadryads" by Will Irving, "that it was as if a long lost dream had been given reality."