What is a Secret Society

A secret society is a club or an organization whose activities, events, inner functioning, or membership 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 warfare insurgencies, that 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, the denial about membership 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 have been deeply interlinked with the concept of the Männerbund, the all-male "warrior-band" or "warrior-society" of pre-modern cultures.

A purported "family tree of secret societies" has been proposed, although it may not be comprehensive.

Alan Axelrod, author of the International Encyclopedia of Secret Societies and Fraternal Orders, defines a secret society as an organization that: is exclusive claims to own special secrets shows a strong inclination to favor its members. David V. Barrett, author of Secret Societies:

From the Ancient and Arcane to the Modern and Clandestine, has used alternative terms to define what qualifies a secret society.

He defined it as any group that possesses the following characteristics: It has "carefully graded and progressed teachings". Teachings are "available only to selected individuals". Teachings lead to "hidden (and 'unique') truths".

Truths bring "personal benefits beyond the reach and even the understanding of the uninitiated." Barrett goes on to say that "a further characteristic common to most of them is the practice of rituals which non-members are not permitted to observe, or even to know the existence of."

Barrett's definition would rule out many organizations called secret societies; graded teaching is usually not part of the American college fraternities, the Carbonari, or the 19th century Know Nothings.

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