Societies & Subjects
Encyclopedic reference pages on individual societies and subjects, from the Knights Templar and the Freemasons to the Bilderberg Group and the Eye of Providence.
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Ancient Mystery Cults: From Eleusis to Mithras
The ancient mystery cults were the most influential and most fully documented secret societies of the pre-Christian Mediterranean. Emerging in the Greek…
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College Secret Societies: From Phi Beta Kappa to the Modern Campus
An encyclopedic history of American and British college secret societies, from the founding of Phi Beta Kappa in 1776 to the modern Yale senior societies and…
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Freemasonry Explained: Origins, Structure and Modern Practice
An encyclopedic account of Freemasonry, from its medieval stonemason roots to the Grand Lodge of England, the Scottish and York Rites, and contemporary…
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Gnostic and Mystical Brotherhoods: Theosis Through Secret Knowledge
Gnosticism is a term used by historians of religion to describe a group of religious and philosophical movements that flourished in the Mediterranean and…
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Hermetic Orders and Theosophy: From Hermes Trismegistus to Madam Blavatsky
The 19th-century revival of Western esotericism is one of the most important and least understood episodes in the history of esoteric traditions and mystical…
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Hidden Symbols in Architecture: Cathedrals, Capitols and Lodges
Almost every important private association in the Western tradition has, at some point in its history, used architecture as a vehicle for its symbolism. The…
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Medieval Secret Societies: Templars, Assassins and Hidden Brotherhoods
The European and Middle Eastern Middle Ages, conventionally dated from the fifth to the fifteenth centuries CE, were a period in which the late Roman…
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Odd Fellows, Foresters and the Long 19th-Century Lodge Boom
The history of the major non-Masonic fraternal orders of the long nineteenth century: the IOOF, the Foresters, the Knights of Pythias, the Elks, the Moose…
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Secret Handshakes and Signs: How Brotherhoods Recognize Their Own
The handshake, the sign, the grip, the password, the coded gesture in a crowded room — these are the most familiar and most stereotyped elements of any…
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Secret Societies and Government Power: A Historical Relationship
Few historical questions generate more heat than the relationship between secret societies and the actual exercise of governmental power. The topic…
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Secret Societies of the Renaissance: Humanists, Hermeticists and the Rosicrucian Manifestos
The European Renaissance, conventionally dated from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century, was one of the most fertile periods in the history of secret…
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Skull and Bones: Yale's Most Notorious Secret Society
An encyclopedic account of Skull and Bones, the Yale secret society founded in 1832: its founding, the Tomb, the 322 number, the Knights of Eulalia legend…
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The Bavarian Illuminati: The Real Order Behind the Legend
A factual account of the Bavarian Illuminati, founded by Adam Weishaupt in 1776: its rationalist aims, its infiltration of Masonic lodges, its suppression…
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The Bilderberg Group: Inside the Most Talked-About Shadow Conference
The Bilderberg Group is, by almost any measure, the most discussed and most mythologized private conference in the modern world. It is also, by the standards…
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The Eye of Providence: Meaning, History and Misuse
The Eye of Providence — a single human eye, often surrounded by rays of light, frequently enclosed in an equilateral triangle, and sometimes resting on an…
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The Knights Templar: From Crusader Monks to Masonic Legend
An encyclopedic history of the Order of the Temple, from its 1119 founding to its suppression in 1314 and its later legacy in Freemasonry.
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The New World Order: Origins of a Modern Myth
The phrase "New World Order" is one of the most contested pieces of political vocabulary in the modern English language. In the hands of statesmen it has…
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The Rosicrucians: Manifestos, Mystery and the Order That May Not Exist
The Rosicrucians are, in one sense, the most successful secret society that ever existed: for more than four centuries, people have believed that the…