

Adam Weishaupt’s Illuminati was something of a fad among Europe’s intellectual and political elite in the late 18th century, making it a rather attention-seeking entity for a “secret” society. Philip IV of France accused the knights of heretical and licentious practices, but these charges were entirely unfounded, and Philip seems to have acted largely out of a desire to seize the Templars’ vast wealth. Such claims were made against the Roman mystery cults and were used to justify the ruthless suppression of the Knights Templar in the early 14th century. The very existence of secret societies has often prompted antagonism and fostered accusations of immorality, subversion, and heresy. The Sons of Liberty burning a copy of the Stamp Act in 1765. So widespread were these groups that the church created the Inquisition to hunt them down and prosecute their members. This was the case of the early Christians in pagan Rome and, in their turn, of various groups deemed heretical by the Roman Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. Whereas the mysteries employed secrecy to guard religious truths, other groups have been forced to adopt secrecy to escape or survive suppression and persecution. Among these were the cult of Dionysus, the keepers of the Eleusinian and Orphic mysteries, and the Pythagorean brotherhood. Secret societies throughout historyĪmong the earliest secret societies of which historical evidence exists were the mystery religions of ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, which had secret rites, initiations, and revelations of still more ancient wisdom.

college fraternities and sororities, the Ku Klux Klan, and international Freemasonry as well as to similar phenomena in ancient or precolonial cultures. The term may be applied to such widely divergent groups as U.S.
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Elements of secrecy may vary from a mere password to elaborate rituals, private languages, costumes, and symbols. Secret society, any of a large range of membership organizations or associations that utilize secret initiations or other rituals and whose members often employ unique oaths, grips (handshakes), or other signs of recognition.

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