WEAVING SPIDERS COME NOT HERE

❧ BOHEMIAN GROVE ❧

When I was young the world wore masks,
and every road concealed a door.
The redwoods kept their whispered rites,
and fog rolled in from mythic shores.

My mother spoke of hidden men,
of presidents and kings of trade,
who gathered where the giant trees
held secrets older than the age.

I pictured spells and antlered gods,
strange lanterns glowing through the pines,
a hidden order guarding truths
that lived between the bark and time.

But years are thieves of certain dreams.
The curtain lifts. The wonder ends.
And often what seemed eldritch power
is merely wealthy, aging men.

Still, sometimes I miss mystery—
not them, nor what they came to be,
and being young but wise enough to see

those sick old men were playing grab-ass in the trees

Signs from the Redwood Court of Smoke, Ritual, and Secrecy

Hidden beneath the redwood canopy of Sonoma County, the Bohemian Grove has long occupied the strange border between private history and American folklore. Officially, it is the woodland retreat of the Bohemian Club: a secluded gathering place for artists, businessmen, presidents, industrialists, financiers, and men whose names tend to appear quietly behind the machinery of power.

Unofficially, the Grove has become something darker in the public imagination — a fog-bound sanctuary where the old world removes its mask only to put on another. Beneath the trees, club members gather around camps, stages, private roads, and ritual fires. The famous owl shrine watches over the proceedings like a stone god of silence, wisdom, and appetite.

The Grove’s best-known ceremony, the Cremation of Care, is described as theatrical symbolism: a ritual burning-away of worldly burdens before the summer encampment begins. But to the conspiracy-minded, that fire has always looked like something older than theater. Something priestly. Something imperial. Something meant to be seen only by those already permitted inside the circle.

These signs are inspired by that haunted visual language: warning placards, camp markers, private-road notices, occult pageantry, and the half-joking arrogance of men who know the gate is locked behind them.

Each piece is meant to feel like an artifact from a place you were not supposed to enter: a redwood trail marker, a restricted camp sign, a forgotten notice nailed to a tree at the edge of the firelight. Part history, part satire, part conspiracy relic — these designs belong to the imagined geography of the Grove, where every path leads deeper into shadow.

Weaving spiders come not here.

A motto, a warning, or an invitation — depending on who is reading the sign.

• Patiente Undeviginti