LEONARDO DA VINCI
Italian engineer, artist, and scientist, 1452–1519. One of the greatest geniuses of the Italian Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci was the illegitimate son of a wealthy…
Author: Lux Ferre
LEGA NERA
The first important Italian political secret society, the Lega Nera (Italian for “Black League”) took shape around 1796 in the aftermath of the French invasion…
LEFT-HAND PATH
Hindu and Buddhist Tantric traditions are traditionally divided into two “paths” based on their attitude toward sex, alcohol, and meat. In the orthodox or “right-hand”…
LEAGUE OF THE JUST
In 1837, as the League of Outlaws was falling apart, several of its members in Paris drew up a new organization, the League of the…
LEAGUE OF OUTLAWS
A German revolutionary secret society of the 1830s, the Bund der Geächteten or League of Outlaws was founded in Paris in 1834 by a group…
LADIES AUXILIARIES
Most of the fraternal secret societies that flourished in Europe, America, and Australasia during the nineteenth century limited their membership to adult men. This echoed…
LABOR UNIONS
A major social movement throughout the western world during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, labor unions drew on methods pioneered by the fraternal secret societies…
KNOW-NOTHING PARTY
A major force in American politics in the 1850s, the Know-Nothing Party was at one and the same time a secret society and a political…
KNIGHTS OF THE GOLDEN CIRCLE
The most important pro-Southern secret society in the American Civil War, the Knights of the Golden Circle was founded in 1854 by George W.L. Bickley…
KNIGHTS OF THE FLAMING CIRCLE
Founded in 1923 in Pennsylvania, the Knights of the Flaming Circle was a secret society organized to oppose the revived Ku Klux Klan. Its members…
