Secret Societies of All Ages and Countries

About this book

Some societies guarded a ritual. Others concealed a political purpose. Charles William Heckethorn puts both kinds beside one another in a sprawling tour of secret associations, initiations and forbidden signs.

His examples range across revolutionary Europe, religious orders and institutions described through Victorian accounts of Asia and the Middle East. The breadth is exhilarating and frequently unreliable. Heckethorn sometimes repeats inherited legends or judgments shaped by colonial attitudes. Even with those limitations, his catalogue records the many reasons people have chosen to meet behind closed doors, and the suspicions those doors create.