"Secret societies have existed throughout history. In many ways they are microcosms of ordinary public society. Nevertheless, an air of menace clings to many famous but shadowy societies. Yet secret societies have often held spiritual goals. Christianity itself was in its earliest days a secret society in Rome, and was considered by the authorities from the start to be a dangerous innovation. The same was true of Islam. Some Arab groups today consider the Jews a dangerous secret society dedicated to the overwhelming of the world. Some Europeans, as well as some Druses and Yezidis in Iraq in Syria, think the same of the Arabs. Some Freemasons and Catholic groups hold identically suspicious views of each other. And many secret societies, dangerous or not, have been persecuted over the ages. Believing that social right and wrong should be the evaluator of secret societies brings us into difficulties. In Borneo, initiates of the hunting societies considered it meritorious to hunt heads. In many parts of the world, initiation into clan life (and consequent status) involves undergoing trials which can result in the death or madness of the candidate. Secret societies can never be totally repressed. The human desire to be one of the elect is something which no power has yet been able to reduce, let alone overcome. Whether this is a good or a bad thing depends entirely upon one's point of view and one's commitments at the time of judging the question. This book does not pretend to be an exhaustive account of secret societies: none such has ever been nor ever will be written. But in these pages will be found some of the characteristic Forms which secret societies and cults have taken--successfully and otherwise. The secret organizations dealt with in this book have been chosen in such a way as to illustrate the widest variety of their forms, rituals and beliefs. Much of the material has been obtained at first-hand and is published for the first time."--Jacket