Structure and function of secret societies

Secret societies are, by their very nature, made up of persons presumably oriented toward similar ends. These ends usually manifest the characteristic that differentiates a given secret society from all others; that is to say, the ends are secret. Moreover, admission to membership almost always involves the explicit obligation to preserve such secrecy, and penalties for its violation are likewise explicitly stated. The explicitness involved may sometimes apply only to the members of the society, for secrecy may be so complete that even the existence of some societies is not revealed to outsiders; revolutionary, heretical, and similarly subversive secret societies are cases in point. More frequent is partial secrecy, where the existence of the society is publicly acknowledged or even proclaimed, as was the case with the Ku Klux Klan in the United States after the American Civil War and again in the 1920s and throughout the civil rights era in the 1950s and ’60s. At least some of the ends are made generally known, some of the society’s ceremonies are performed openly, and public cooperation with other groups having fundamentally differing ends may occasionally be undertaken.

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