From: cj195@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (John W. Redelfs)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Secret Societies
Date: 25 Jan 1993 07:30:26 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Reply-To: cj195@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (John W. Redelfs)
NNTP-Posting-Host: thor.ins.cwru.edu


The following is an extract from the article "Secret Societies" in the
1971 edition of ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA.

SECRET SOCIETIES, any of a large range of membership organizations or
associations having secret initiation or other rituals, oaths, grips
(handclasps) or other signs of recognition.

[...] With all their diversity of type and origin, secret societies have
certain characteristics of structure and function in common and some of
their ceremonials reveal surprising similarities.

[...] STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION.--Secret societies are made up, ipso facto,
of persons presumably oriented toward similar ends, and these ends
usually manifest the characteristic differentiatin secret societies from
all others--that is to say, the ends are secret.  Moreover, admission to
membership almost always involves the explicit obligation to preserve
such secrecy, and penalties for its violation are likewise explicitly
stated.  The explicitness involved may sometimes apply only to the
members of the society, for secrecy may be so complete that even the
existence of some societies are not revealed to outsiders;
revolutionary, heretical and similarly subversive societies are cases in
point.  More frequent is partial secrecy:  the existence fo the society
is publicly acknowledged or even proclaimed, as by the Ku Klux Klan
(q.v.) in the U.S. after the Civil War and again in the 1920s and the
1950s and 1960s; at least some of the ends are made generally known;
parts of the society's ceremonial are performed openly; and public
co-operation with other groups having fundamentally differing ends may
occasionally be undertaken.

[...] Many secret societies operate through a system of degrees of
progressively higher rank in which secrets are revealed step by step.
Initiation is therefore hierarchical; members at the higher levels are
more fully aware of the ends pursued by the society than are those at
the lower.  Consequently, secrets of recognition are graded.  That is to
say, although there is ordinarily a grip, password, ceremonialized
greeting in question and answer form, esoteric phrase, or secret jargon
serving many of the purposes of a special language that distinguishes
even the lowest initiate from nonmenbers, the society has secrets within
secrets.  Those more fully initiated make every effort, by the use of
special names, ordeals or revelations, to set themselves apart, on the
one hand, and on the other to stimkulate the lower ranks to the effort
necessary to reach the exalted degrees.

The sedulous preservation of higher secrets serves several other
purposes.  For instance, beginning initiates are thereby impressed with
the necessity for silence.  Not only is this the case, but the art of
remaining silent without giving offense to fellow members at lower
levels is imparted by direct example.  This is especially important when
the "final truth" and the real ends of the society are known only to
those in the more advanced degrees, and even more so when, as in a few
societies, the supreme leaders remain unknown to the rank and file
membership.  An essential technique in all of this is that secrets
remain unwritten, so far as possible; they must therfore be transmitted
verbally in a master-pupil situation.

[...] An astonisihing number of secret societies, when thoroughly
investigated, can be shown to have ceremonials testifying to common
origins or, at the very least, remote historical connections.

-------------- end of extract

I highly recommend this article to anyone wanting to understand secrect
societies better.  There is much more than I have extracted here of
interest to one seeking additional knowledge about secret societies.

How is anything know of secret societies if they are so secret?  Why
someone "spills the beans," of course.  How can anyone know if the
informant is telling the truth?  Ahhh...that is a problem.  What is to
prevent a secret society from giving to some member the task of
pretending to defect from the society and spreading misinformation?
Who knows?

What is the point of this exercise?  I'd like all to know on
alt.conspiracy that there are secret societies.  A secret society could
exist within the Council on Foreign Relations and Ted Frank wouldn't
even know about it.  Neither would Chip Berlett.  And even if he did know
about it he wouldn't say so.

-- 


--------- All my opinions are tentative pending further data. ---------
------------ John W. Redelfs, cj195@cleveland.Freenet.edu -------------
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy