A secret society is a club or organization whose activities and inner functioning are concealed from non-members. The society may or may not attempt to conceal its existence. The term usually excludes covert groups, such as intelligence agencies or guerrilla insurgencies, which hide their activities and memberships but maintain a public presence. The exact qualifications for labeling a group as a secret society are disputed, but definitions generally rely on the degree to which the organization insists on secrecy, and might involve the retention and transmission of secret knowledge, denial of membership in or knowledge of the group, the creation of personal bonds between members of the organization, and the use of secret rites or rituals which solidify members of the group.
Anthropologically and historically, secret societies are deeply interlinked with the concept of the Mannerbund, the all-male "warrior-band" or "warrior-society" of pre-modern cultures (see H. Schurtz, Alterklassen und Mannerbunde, Berlin, 1902; A. Van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, Chicago, 1960).
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Other articles related to "secret society, secret, society":
... established on university campuses in the United States have been considered secret societies ... Perhaps one of the most famous secret college societies is Skull and Bones at Yale ... of Georgia has a similar, highly secretive society called Gridiron Secret Society ...
... Secret Society is an American hip-hop group from Brooklyn, New York ... formed in 2005, but its members had previously collaborated on numerous occasions prior to Secret Society's formation ... Previously, all five members of Secret Society had been notable contributors in the underground rap scene ...
... Elmo was the third senior society (after Berzelius, 1848 and Book and Snake, 1863) at the Sheffield Scientific School, Yale's sciences and engineering college from 1854 to 1956 ... societies at Yale Skull and Bones, Scroll and Key, Wolf's Head (secret society), Book and Snake, Elihu (secret society), Berzelius, and Mace and Chain ... The Society’s original Club House, at 111 Grove Street, was built in 1895 ...
... La Santa is a secret society within the 'Ndrangheta, a criminal organisation in Calabria (Italy) ... Security concerns led to the creation of a secret society within the secret society ... current highest rank of associazione (society) was established – reserved for the supreme bosses of the 'Ndrangheta ...
... North Carolina at Chapel Hill contains the archives of the Order of Gimghoul, a secret society headquartered at the Gimghoul Castle ... The society is open to "notable" male students (rising juniors and higher), and faculty members by invitation ... The society centers itself around the legend of Peter Dromgoole, a student who mysteriously disappeared from the UNC campus in 1833 ...
Famous quotes containing the words society and/or secret:
“Now different races and nationalities cherish different ideals of society that stink in each other’s nostrils with an offensiveness beyond the power of any but the most monstrous private deed.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“I know we’re not saints or virgins or lunatics; we know all the lust and lavatory jokes, and most of the dirty people; we can catch buses and count our change and cross the roads and talk real sentences. But our innocence goes awfully deep, and our discreditable secret is that we don’t know anything at all, and our horrid inner secret is that we don’t care that we don’t.”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)