The GIANTS
By: Michael A. Krapek, ©10/15/11.
The Giant Redwoods at Muir Woods, California.
The original site of the Bohemian Grove secret society Campground,
under Mt.Tamalpais.
They would be Giants
The Hippie movement, preceded by the Beatniks, has its own lineage from the Bohemians. This was a loosely knit art guild that met in nightclubs and bistros in San Francisco, and spread to urban centers in the US and Europe in the 1870s. California’s original Bohemian Society held its first midsummer camp at Muir Woods in 1892. Though founded as an artist’s club, the society soon attracted wealthy donors of San Francisco’s elite society, soon to include Union Pacific railroad tycoon Charles Crocker, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone, and John Muir himself. But it was when President William Howard Taft became a member that the agenda changed, and the club quickly became a secret forum for affairs of state. It remains so to this day. Within the drawing’s image one can see the bonfire looming deep in the darkness of the forest at sunset. Imagine this pyre illuminating a mock sacrificial scene of “The Cremation of Care” set before chanting cloaked “druids” in front of a 40 ft. effigy of an owl. Booming from the loudspeakers, the voice of member Walter Cronkite is heard admonishing the neophyte members to throw off their care and worries of the world as the coffin is thrown into the fire, and enjoy the revelry of the forest.
“Enter here only those who have gained the world and lost their souls.”
When the society was overtaken by wealth and power, a secret forum of heads of state and power brokers began consorting at the camp with ideas for wealth and power accumulation, consolidation, and monopoly. Nicknamed the BOJOs, many good acts were dreamed of here, like member Woodrow Wilson’s dream of the League of Nations, but it was also here that terrible things were concocted under their “Owl God” in effigy. Among these are: FDR’s Manhattan project, the peacetime arms buildup of the 1980s under Reagan, PNAC, and the Neo-cons. This leads to the further conclusion of the recent creation of the tea party and the current efforts by the Wall Street elite to corporatize democracy. This has been going on for a long time, and is rent with corruption and intrigue, many more sordid world events were hatched here under the silent redwoods then can be imagined. Even those very redwoods themselves were logged to near decimation by the industrialists, if not for their regenerative abilities. Long after the gross misdeeds of those society members like Nixon and Bush are forgotten, children will enjoy the true giants: the redwoods, and recite the wise legacy left by the true Bohemians of our age, The Grateful Dead, Janice Joplin, and other legends of the San Francisco priesthood of “Rock and Roll.”
Fort Funston, and Burning Man.
Long after the original Bohemians were co-opted by wealth and power, the end of WW2 brought a separate “New Bohemian” movement, and with it a new community covenant born of sharing the community bowl. Beatniks and Harley-bobbers gave rise to the youth culture of the 1960s in California, surfers, Hippie acid adventures, and Hell’s Angel Club meetings were held at Fort Funston, a decommissioned Howitzer battery on the beach south of San Francisco. It was here that the BURNING MAN had its introductory effigy fire. Now held every August in the Nevada desert north of Reno, this counter-culture event is an answer to the “Cremation of Care”...for it is the burning of corporate man, the beast, the machine...7 Macaw!
Inspiration and references:
Muir Woods National Forest, California.
(Placards mark the original Bohemian encampment in the forest)
Brad Meltzer’s Decoded: Bohemian Grove episode.
Wikipedia’s Bohemian Grove chapter.
For more on the power brokers Google: David Icke.
“Giants in the studio!”- Pink Floyd, Atom Heart Mother.
Footprints, large and small.
Although the image I have drawn evokes a greater peace, we must remember our responsibility to all life, to return a greater sense of sanctity to our world then was left by the men who would be giants, but lost their souls. For THEIR day is drawing to a close.
Like all things popular, what starts as a movement, grows into a business, then becomes a racket...
such is the way of organizations with leaders.
THIS IS WHY Occupy Wall Street must remain leaderless, a 6th sense.
Native American proverb: “Leave a small footprint upon the earth.”
Seen here in Muir Woods in the 1890s, originally the Artist’s effigy was of a Buddha.
-photo source: Muir Park Placard.
