The concept in 1987 was dreamed up as therapy for PTS from an auto accident by Marshall Lyons, an Arborist from San Francisco and his partner John Bogard, a potter from the local Black Rock area. Larry Harvey was a landscape gardener in San Francisco at the time.
In the current lawsuit between “non-profit” BMOrg, and non-profit BurnBC, a Canadian arts collective, BurnBC claim that “Burning Man culture” was something that arose in Canada independently of how the US Burning Man culture developed and was seized by corporate interests.
Certainly, TTITD was not called “Burning Man” for many years. The first trip by the Cacophony society in 1990 was called “Zone Trip # 4”. Their first permit was issued in 1991 – it is not clear to whom, or if the permit mentioned Burning Man at all. By 1992, they were marketing the Cacophony Society event with the words “Burning Man” and asking for donations of $25. The first ticket sales were in 1995. In 1997, they formed a corporation “Paperman LLC” and registered the trademark. Larry Harvey let the corporation’s registration lapse, and the trademark was filed again in the US in 2003. The trademark has now been transferred from “The LLC” (Black Rock City, LLC, which puts on the Nevada event, and this year was sold to The Burning Man Project), to “Decommodification, LLC” (a private, secretive company created by Burning Man’s founders in 2010 to own and monetize the intellectual property assets).
We can date this flyer to 1987 because that’s when June 20 was on a Saturday. The )'( logo was probably added later
the Cacophony Society’s 1990 flyer mentions “the Burning Man” and “Burning Man committee”
Cacophony Society and Burning Man founder John Law says that the Cacophony Society came up with the name Burning Man, and used it to describe the Baker Beach burn in 1989. This is in direct conflict with Burning Man’s trademark filing, which claims the mark was first used on June 1, 1986. To put that in perspective, their first Solstice burn (with a wooden dog effigy also) happened on June 21, 1986. Either they called it Burning Man before they ever built and burned a man, and had a vision for it being a money-spinner from the get-go, many years before they first sold tickets; or someone is being fast and loose with the truth. Here’s Larry Harvey saying the event began in 1985, a claim that is not supported anywhere else:
Note that the capture and deliberate incarnation of a spirit is the stated purpose of the event.
Burning Man’s trademark application was filed in 2003, and approved in 2010. It claims that the mark’s first use anywhere was 6/1/1986 and its first use in commerce was 6/1/1987.
International class code 41, and US classifications 100, 101, and 107: “Education; providing of training; entertainment; sporting and cultural activities”
ORGANIZING COMMUNITY FESTIVALS FEATURING A VARIETY OF ACTIVITIES, NAMELY, LIVE MUSIC, ART DISPLAYS, AND PARTICIPATORY GAMES; CONDUCTING ENTERTAINMENT EXHIBITIONS IN THE NATURE OF ART FESTIVALS; AND ENTERTAINMENT IN THE NATURE OF ART FESTIVALS
According to Wikipedia, the first ticket sales were in 1995 ($35). It’s hard to see how the mark was used in commerce before then, although Larry’s friend Flash used to sell t-shirts: “I had my concessions. I was the only one who made money, every single time” (This is Burning Man, Brian Doherty, p 111)
“In 1997, the claimant, Michael Mikel, formed a Limited Liability Company with respondents Larry Harvey and John Law. That company is known as Paperman, LLC…[it] owns one asset – the federally registered mark BURNING MAN – and Paper Man has one business activity, to license the mark BURNING MAN to its licensed operators of the desert arts festival that uses that name… Ever since its creation in 1999, Paper Man LLC has licensed the mark Burning Man to Black Rock City LLC for its use in connection with the desert arts festival
…on May 14, 2000, Paper Man LLC and Black Rock City LLC entered into a re-stated license agreement…[that] gave Black Rock City a non-exclusive, non-asssignable license to use the service mark for a period of 7 months…at a license fee of $1800
….in 2004, however, Black Rock City LLC announced that it would no longer be bound by the written agreement. Instead, Black Rock City demanded that Paer Man sign a one paragraph document that granted Black Rock City an exclusive license but failed to include any terms for quality control or maintenance of Paper Man’s right to police the mark. Paper Man, nonetheless, has continued [to] exert control over the mark, despite Black Rock City’s regular protests
…Michael Mikel learned, under established principles of trademark law, the type of “naked license” that Black Rock City demanded from Paper Man can be worse than no license at all…it would be possible that the designation BURNING MAN, and thereby the event itself, could fall into the hands of a corporate owner, in direct contrvention of every principle of which the BURNING MAN festival was founded
…Larry Harvey presumed to act for Paper Man LLC, and then used that position to obtain a benefit for himself in his capacity as Director of Black Rock City LLC…His action was simply the latest in a series of efforts to seize control of the BURNING MAN mark, to exclude other members of Paper Man LLC from participation in the comapny’s operations and control of its assets, and ultimately to divert ownership of the mark from Paper Man LLC to Black Rock City. These actions, undertaken in secret and in complete contravention of Paper Man LLC’s interests, constitute a breach of the fiduciary duty…Larry Harvey’s conduct over the past several years towards Paper Man LLC and its other members demonstrates his on-going disregard of – indeed, contempt for – the obligations of utmost good faith and loyalty that he owes them.
John Law then got involved in the suit, arguing that BURNING MAN should be in the public domain. The case was settled out of court.
If Burning Man is really a movement, the name should belong to everyone, not three guys who don’t get along anymore,” Law said.
a crucial point is Law’s contention that it was the Cacophony Society that came up with the name “Burning Man.” His suit claims that the term was coined in a 1989 Cacophony newsletter. Law claims he and the Cacophony Society also played a critical role in moving the event to the Desert. Harvey was “completely defeated and dejected” when police blocked the 1990 Burn in San Francisco, but Law says he suggested burning the Man at an already-planned Cacophony trip to Nevada. The Nevada Burn was successful, although Law claims Harvey “did not participate at all other than to arrive at the event as a spectator after it was completely set up.”
John Law: “I was sleeping in Golden Gate Park in 1976, after hitch-hiking here with an arrest warrant out for myself in some central state…then I met all these weird people and it’s been ongoing ever since”
This film from 1994 shows the term BURNING MAN being used at the event’s gate, and on t-shirts.
In 1994, Australia’s government TV channel ABC aired this documentary from Journeyman pictures. Check out the drive-by shooting range, including bicycle drive-bys.
Larry considered himself a “social engineer” even way back then, and Satanic (death of god) religious values were very much a part of it: “it’s like a religion that you make up as you go along”…”the camp was divided into Heaven and Hell, with angels and demons competing for lost souls”…”Bill Smythe is known in Hell as the father of devil spawn”…”this is just a big slumber party for Boy Scouts from Hell”.
One of the more astonishing claims in this video is that “the Monks from Heaven” were recording video of Burning Man and uploading it to the Internet at $9/minute via a satellite phone. This was before the first advertising appeared on the Internet. In 1994, it had only recently become possible to view color graphics on the World Wide Web. There was no standardized digital format for video files, there were no browser plug-ins to play video – there were barely even any browsers. Stanford spin-off Yahoo was a document you downloaded with a list of web sites, not a search engine. The first YouTube uploaded was in 2005. This demonstrates that as early as 1994, Burning Man’s attendees had access to the world’s most advanced technology, very probably military-grade.
The first video footage ever shown over the Internet was probably a live feed of a June 24, 1993 performance by Severe Tire Damage, a garage band consisting of employees of DEC Systems Research Center, Xerox PARC (company), and Apple Computer. The footage was broadcast on the Internet just a few months before researchers at the Computer Laboratory of the University of Cambridge created the first webcam by broadcasting static footage of the Trojan Room coffee pot on the Internet in November 1993…conditions were so primitive by today’s standards that broadcasting the video of Severe Time Damage into cyberspace required hogging almost half of the bandwidth of the entire Internet.
The first image posted on the World Wide Web, July 1992
A random bunch of hippies could use half the entire Internet for their desert festival? Who the Hell was watching?
Must’ve missed this one on the way to Cargo Cult: last August, the Huffington Post published some rare photos of the first burns. Burning Man began on the summer solstice of 1986, when Larry Harvey and his “latte carpenter” buddy Jerry James burned an effigy of a “Man” and a dog.
This collection of photos, taken by Stewart Harvey, reveals a simpler side of The Burn. Founder Larry Harvey (Stewart’s brother) and his cohorts are shown setting the scene first on SF’s Baker Beach…Behold, a rare glimpse inside the origins of what is now a worldwide way of life:
Baker Beach Arrival, 1989. Raising the Man, Baker Beach, 1989. Loading Seven Sections on Seven Pickups, 1989. Pioneer Burners, 1989. Drummer, 1990. Assembling the Man, 1990.
What about earlier than that? What about the very first Burn, in 1986? For that we’ll have to go to my old mate Pig, at Mad Nomad films:
Burning “Man” 1986 – image from Mad Nomad films
The “Man” Burns
Here’s a photo of the Man burning in 1987, from CNet:
The annual event now known as Burning Man began as a bonfire ritual on the summer solstice in 1986 when Larry Harvey, Jerry James, and a few friends met on Baker Beach in San Francisco and burned a 9-foot (2.7-meter) wooden man as well as a smaller wooden dog. Harvey has described his inspiration for burning these effigy figures as a spontaneous act of radical self-expression.
The event did have earlier roots, though. Sculptor Mary Grauberger, a friend of Harvey’s girlfriend Janet Lohr, held solstice bonfire gatherings on Baker Beach for several years prior to 1986, some of which Harvey attended. When Grauberger stopped organizing it, Harvey “picked up the torch and ran with it,” so to speak. He and Jerry James built an 8-foot (2.4-meter) wooden effigy for 1986, which was much smaller and more crudely made than the neon-lit figure featured in the current ritual. In 1987, the effigy grew to almost 15 feet (4.6 meters) tall, and by 1988, it had grown to around 40 feet (12 meters).
Harvey swears that he did not see the movie The Wicker Man until many years later, so it played no part in his inspiration. Accordingly, rather than allow the name “Wicker Man” to become the name of the ritual, he started using the name “Burning Man”.
There’s more official history from the Burning Man web site. We’ve also covered Burning Man’s early days before, here.
The movie “The Wicker Man” was orginally made in 1973, and starred Edward Woodward, Christopher Lee, and Bond Girl/Peter Sellers’ wife Britt Ekland. In 1979 it won a Saturn award for “Best Horror Film”, and was nominated for Best Actor, Best Director, Best Writing, and Best Music. It was also nominated for a Satellite award in 2006 for “Best Classic DVD” in (DVDs were discs that movies used to come on, Millenial kiddies).
Note the antlers, the scene on the beach, and the man base. If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth a look, it scared the absolute beejeezus out of me as a kid.
Iron Maiden released a song “The Wicker Man” in 2000.
The Wicker Man was remade by Mel Gibson’s Icon Entertainment starring Nicolas Cage in 2006. It’s considered to be one of the worst remakes ever. From Wikipedia:
The film holds a 15% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 105 reviews. The consensus says, “Puzzlingly misguided, Neil LaBute’s update The Wicker Man struggles against unintentional comedy and fails.”[2] On At the Movies, the film received two thumbs down from Richard Roeper and Aisha Tyler. The film garnered five Razzie Award nominations, for Worst Picture, Worst Actor (Cage), Worst Screenplay, Worst Remake, and Worst On-Screen Couple (Cage and his bearsuit).
Wikipedia says that the both films are based on David Pinner’s 1967 novel Ritual.
The movie might not have played any part in Larry’s inspiration, but the idea of burning an effigy was the entire theme of the 1986 solstice burn. The Summer Solstice is a sacred date in Pagan ritual, which is also known as Wicca magic. Even giving Larry the benefit of the doubt that he’d never seen the original Wicker Man, he is a very well read person – an “autodidact” – and he seems to be very learned when it comes to history and ritual. When he first called Jerry James with the idea, he said “I want to burn a figure for the solstice”.
The Wicker Man movies didn’t invent the idea of ritual effigy burns, and neither did David Pinner’s novel. It’s an ancient druidic tradition, one of the earliest descriptions of the ritual is from Julius Caesar – the emperor, not the Shakespeare play. In those days, druids were so powerful that their intervention could stop two opposing armies from starting a war. The druids would punish those who did not bring them offerings, placing the culprits – and their animals – inside a giant wicker structure, and burning them to death in it so that the rest of the village could hear their screams, and thus fear the Druids. Fire was a significant technology back in those days, that’s why we still have the concept of “The Eternal Flame” today. Wicker Man burns still happen all over the world, including at San Francisco’s annual Illuminati theme camp hangout where commerce is banned and everyone goes by special names: Bohemian Grove.
This site describes the Wicca magical nature of the ritual quite well:
Traditionally, burning a human effigy is intended to create a spirit messenger – to connect the celebrants with energies and powers which would ordinarily be beyond their control.1 For early peoples, the energy of fire was connected with the sun which brings light, health, and growth, as well as the hearth fire of food and hospitality. Fire was the spark of life which connected human hearts with the stars; for some it was the fire of inner change and transformation, the quest for knowledge and power.
There’s some debate about whether the first, 1986 figure was 8-feet tall, or 9-feet tall. One creation myth says that the effigy was burned to symbolize Larry Harvey breaking up with his baby momma, and that the man was originally a woman. From Outside Online’s story Hot Mess by Brad Wieners:
JOE FENTON(member of the Black Rock Rangers, Burning Man’s security team): I didn’t go to the burns on the beach, but I did a paper about them for a college course on the anthropology of festivals. Larry told me very specifically that the figure was an effigy of his ex-girlfriend, the mother of his son. He told me he wanted to burn her out of his memory.He moved off that soon afterward. I guess he figured it wasn’t very politically correct, and now that idea is actively suppressed.
Other myths suggest it was always supposed to be androgynous. The 1986 and 1987 photos seem to prove otherwise – with those horns, later removed for some unknown reason, the wide hips, and the goat-like face, it looks more like the Satyrnic god Baphomet to me. From Abraxion.com
Proposed statue for Oklahoma State Capitol building, 2013
The symbol of the left handed path, usually portrayed as half human, half goat figure, or a goat head. It is often misinterpreted as a symbol of Witchcraft in general, it is used by those who practice the black arts. The origin of the name Baphomet is unclear. It may be a corruption of Mahomet ‘Mohammed’, or even a combination of two greek words, baphe andmetis, meaning ‘absorption of knowledge’. Baphomet has also been called the Goat of Mendes, the Black Goat, and the Judas Goat.
Note the similarities to the 1986 Baker Beach effigy with the wide hips, goat’s head, the single raised arm, and the pentagram…
If anyone was there for those Baker Beach burns, we’d love to hear from you. Got photos? Video? Stories? Please share, this is history now…
