Author: Steven Sora
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1594778671
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289
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Book Description
An expose of the dark and critical role secret societies play within the ruling families in America and their influence on American democracy, current events, and world history. • Reveals the enormous influence secret societies still have on contemporary American life. • Shows how the secret Masonic cells that smuggled in the democratic ideals inspiring the American Revolution also enabled the future elite of the new society to build huge fortunes. Elite and secret societies have always been a major force in the history of Western civilization. The alliances formed in secret societies such as the Knights Templar, the Knights of Christ, and the Freemasons transcended patriotism and religious beliefs and had a powerful influence on the establishment of the United States of America. While these secret associations of merchants, smugglers, occultists, gamblers, spies, and slavers succeeded in freeing the United States from foreign domination, the dark side is that the elite used their secret connections to further their own wealth and power. These secret cells did not hesitate to sponsor the assassination of a president and even attempted to break up the union on several occasions when it was deemed expedient. From the Sons of Liberty and the Essex Junto to the Ku Klux Klan, secret societies have played critical roles in building the fortunes of America's elite. Now Steven Sora reveals in alarming detail how secretive societies continue to wield power even today as organizations such as Yale's Skull & Bones unite America's modern ruling families as strongly as Masonic Lodges once connected the Astors, Livingstons, and Roosevelts. Their immense power and wealth allow this elite to control America to an even greater degree than the Templars once dominated Europe.
Author: Mark A. Lause
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252093593
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 234
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Book Description
This unique history of the Civil War considers the impact of nineteenth-century American secret societies on the path to as well as the course of the war. Beginning with the European secret societies that laid the groundwork for Freemasonry in the United States, Mark A. Lause analyzes how the Old World's traditions influenced various underground groups and movements in America, particularly George Lippard's Brotherhood of the Union, an American attempt to replicate the political secret societies that influenced the European revolutions of 1848. Lause traces the Brotherhood's various manifestations, the most conspicuous being the Knights of the Golden Circle (out of which developed the Ku Klux Klan), and the Confederate secret groups through which John Wilkes Booth and others attempted to undermine the Union. Lause profiles the key leaders of these organizations, with special focus on George Lippard, Hugh Forbes, and George Washington Lafayette Bickley. Antebellum secret societies ranged politically from those with progressive or even revolutionary agendas to those that pursued conservative or oppressive goals. This book shows how, in the years leading up to the Civil War, these clandestine organizations exacerbated existing sectional tensions in the United States. Lause's research indicates that the pervasive influence of secret societies may have played a part in key events such as the Freesoil movement, the beginning of the Republican party, John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, Lincoln's election, and the Southern secession process of 1860-1861. This exceptional study encompasses both white and African American secret society involvement, revealing the black fraternal experience in antebellum America as well as the clandestine operations that provided assistance to escaped slaves via the Underground Railroad. Unraveling these pervasive and extensive networks of power and influence, A Secret Society History of the Civil War demonstrates that antebellum secret societies played a greater role in affecting Civil War-era politics than has been previously acknowledged.
Author: David Alan Richards
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1681775816
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 633
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Book Description
The mysterious, highly influential hidden world of Yale’s secret societies is revealed in a definitive and scholarly history. Secret societies have fundamentally shaped America’s cultural and political landscapes. In ways that are expected but never explicit, the bonds made through the most elite of secret societies have won members Pulitzer Prizes, governorships, and even presidencies. At the apex of these institutions stands Yale University and its rumored twenty-six secret societies. Tracing a history that has intrigued and enthralled for centuries, alluring the attention of such luminaries as Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Skulls and Keys traces the history of Yale’s societies as they set the foundation for America’s future secret clubs and helped define the modern age of politics. But there is a progressive side to Yale’s secret societies that we rarely hear about, one that, in the cultural tumult of the nineteen-sixties, resulted in the election of people of color, women, and gay men, even in proportions beyond their percentages in the class. It’s a side that is often overlooked in favor of sensational legends of blood oaths and toe-curling conspiracies. Dave Richards, an alum of Yale, sheds some light on the lesser known stories of Yale’s secret societies. He takes us through the history from Phi Beta Kappa in the American Revolution (originally a social and drinking society) through Skull and Bones and its rivals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. While there have been articles and books on some of those societies, there has never been a scholarly history of the system as a whole.
Author: David Luhrssen
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1598849042
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 329
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Book Description
Grounded in extensive historical research, this eye-opening survey reveals the long-undervalued role secret societies have played in American history. Americans are fascinated by secret societies and have devoured exaggerated claims for their influence. At the same time, scholarly assessments of covert groups that have shaped American social, cultural, and political history have often undervalued their role or even questioned their existence. This survey challenges both the exaggerators and the deniers. Freemasons? They may not be the hidden rulers of the world, but a significant number of America's founders were Masons. The Know Nothings? Two American presidents joined the movement. The Bohemian Grove? Republican politicians and corporate leaders really did engage in strange behavior under the redwood trees through the 20th century. Revealing fascinating facts about some of the most talked-about covert societies, including the Mafia, the Skull and Bones and the Ku Klux Klan, Secret Societies and Clubs in American History exposes the truth about the subcultures that made their mark on some of the most important events in the nation's history and contributed to the shaping of the country itself.
Author: Robert Hieronimus
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1594778655
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 251
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Book Description
An exploration of the influence of secret societies on the formative documents and symbols of the United States • Reveals the Founding Fathers’ spiritual vision for America as encoded in the Great Seal • Traces the influence of the Iroquois League of Nations upon the Constitution • Exposes the deep connections the Founding Fathers had with the Freemasons and other secret societies All children growing up in America learn who the Founding Fathers were. Most, however, never learn of the founders’ connections to the Freemasons, the Rosicrucians, and other esoteric orders. In Founding Fathers, Secret Societies Robert Hieronimus investigates these important connections and how their influence can be traced throughout our most significant national documents and symbols, especially the Great Seal. He reveals in detail how the reverse of the Great Seal--which appears on the back of the one-dollar bill--is a blueprint that conveys the secret destiny of America. By understanding the kabbalistic meaning of the Great Seal’s reverse, he shows how our current era presents unique opportunities for the fulfillment of our Founding Fathers’ spiritual vision.
Author: John Lawrence Reynolds
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.
ISBN: 161145042X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 310
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Book Description
Provides a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the world's most notorious secret societies, chronicling their origins, history, initiations, rituals, beliefs, activities, secret signs, members, and influence.
Author: Craig Heimbichner
Publisher: Feral House
ISBN: 1936239159
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 361
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Book Description
"Adam Parfrey is one of the nation's most provocative publishers."—Seattle Weekly "Secret society historian Craig Heimbichner follows the Middle Path to wisdom. He works the graveyard shift in the secret lodge."—Joan d'Arc, Paranoia magazine Secret societies—now a staple of bestseller novels—are pictured as sinister cults that use hooded albinos to menace truth-seekers. Some conspiracy books claim that fraternal orders are the work of serpentine aliens and interbred humans who wish to supplant earth of its energy, and later, its very existence. On the other side of the aisle, books by high-ranked Freemasons—skeptical in tone but no less partisan in approach—protect their organization's public image by denying the existence of its most contentious ideas. Ritual America reveals the biggest secret of them all: that the influence of fraternal brotherhoods on this country is vast, fundamental, and hidden in plain view. In the early twentieth century, as many as one-third of America belonged to a secret society. And though fezzes and tiny car parades are almost a thing of the past, the Gnostic beliefs of Masonic orders are now so much a part of the American mind that the surrounding pomp and circumstance has become faintly unnecessary. The authors of Ritual America contextualize hundreds of rare and many never-before printed images with entertaining and far-reaching commentary, making an esoteric subject provocative, exciting, and approachable. Adam Parfrey is the author of Cult Rapture: Revelations of the Apocalyptic Mind and It's a Man's World: Men's Adventure Magazines, the Postwar Pulps. He is editor of the influential Apocalypse Culture series Love, Sex, Fear Death: The Inside Story of the Process Church of the Final Judgment. Craig Heimbichner has recently appeared on a National Geographic documentary about the Bohemian Grove, contributed to the Feral House compilation Secret and Suppressed II, and wrote about the famous occult order the O.T.O. in Blood and Altar.
Author: LIFE Magazine
Publisher: Time Home Entertainment
ISBN: 1547856408
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 144
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Book Description
Mysterious and insular associations are a phenomenon as old as the pyramids. People have formed clandestine organizations, with idiosyncratic rules, rites and practices that have attracted the wealthy, respected, and powerful. From Freemasons and Knights Templar, to Sons of Liberty, Black Hand, and Skull and Bones, these groups have been religious, political, nefarious or just plain silly, and now this special edition from LIFE unlocks the door to these secretive worlds. From those organizations that were hidden behind the Founding Fathers that helped shape the course of history to those that have dabbled in the occult, this beautifully illustrated edition takes you deep inside these fascinating organizations.
Author: Evelyn Lord
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 308
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Book Description
Lord sets aside the gossip about the Hell-Fire Clubs-- orgies, prostitutes, erotica, extreme initiation ceremonies-- in order to paint an accurate portrait of their membership, their beliefs and activities, and the reasons for their proliferation.
Author: Arthur Goldwag
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307456668
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 386
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Book Description
Did you know? • Freemasonry's first American lodge included a young Benjamin Franklin among its members. • The Knights Templar began as impoverished warrior monks then evolved into bankers. • Groom Lake, Dreamland, Homey Airport, Paradise Ranch, The Farm, Watertown Strip, Red Square, “The Box,” are all names for Area 51. An indispensable guide, Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies connects the dots and sets the record straight on a host of greedy gurus and murderous messiahs, crepuscular cabals and suspicious coincidences. Some topics are familiar—the Kennedy assassinations, the Bilderberg Group, the Illuminati, the People's Temple and Heaven's Gate—and some surprising, like Oulipo, a select group of intellectuals who created wild formulas for creating literary masterpieces, and the Chauffeurs, an eighteenth-century society of French home invaders, who set fire to their victims' feet.
