Category: Miscellaneous

The most influential book in the history of modern antisemitism and the original source for most of the key themes of contemporary conspiracy theory, The…

The most spectacular secret society hoax in recent history, the Priory of Sion (Prieuré de Sion) was founded in 1956 in the small town of…

A Greek offshoot of the Carbonari, the Philike Hetairia (“Brotherly Association” or “Friendly Society”) was founded by a group of exiled Greek patriots in Odessa,…

A perennial interest of inventors since the Middle Ages, perpetual motion machines of various kinds have an active presence in today’s alternative scene, although terms…

One of the most spectacular hoaxes in the history of secret societies, the Palladian Order was the brainchild of Léo Taxil (Gabriel Jorgand-Pagès), a French…

Unlike Isis and the Hellenistic god Serapis, the great Egyptian god Osiris, judge of the dead and lord of the underworld, did not become the…

The system of spirituality and philosophy underlying the Dionysian mysteries, Orphism took its name from the legendary musician Orpheus, who was considered to be its…

According to several accounts from the late nineteenth century, a group of occultists active in London during the 1830s and 1840s, practicing clairvoyance with crystals…

According to an origin story circulated by eighteenth-century Rosicrucians, the founder of the Rosicrucian Order, an Egyptian priest and mage of Alexandria who was converted…

Among the standard elements of the secret society toolkit from the seventeenth century to the present are romantic origin stories that link orders and degrees…