Obviously, secret societies would lose their reason for existence if secrecy were ever entirely abandoned. Many fraternal organizations, for example, maintained the secrecy of their rituals into the 21st century, although, as in the case of college fraternities and sororities, these survived largely as formalities. Other academic societies—most notably, Yale University’s Skull and Bones and similar groups at other Ivy League schools—have traditionally guarded their secrets much more closely. In most instances, the core of the binding secrecy is to be found in the society’s ceremonies. The essential part of this is rarely if ever legitimately known to those who are not initiates, particularly where the really significant ends are concerned. In order to ensure full and exact knowledge of these ends on the part of initiates, a group’s rituals tend to emphasize painstakingly accurate repetition and close guardianship. They are often designed to provide a strong emotional appeal, impressing the members with the gravity of the ceremonial occasion and the authenticity of the knowledge thereby revealed. In many secret societies, the ceremony is cast in dramatic form and contains episodes taken from holy books, revered legends, and episodes thought to be of crucial historical importance. Often, members play parts in dramatic portrayals of the origin of the society, and in such a portrayal the candidate for initiation usually has a key role. For instance, the initiate may undergo a symbolic journey fraught with obstacles and temptations and at the end thereof receive the “truth” or esoteric wisdom viewed as the society’s characteristic possession. In this process physical objects such as keys, pillars, swords, books, globes, or staves may be endowed with symbolic meaning, so that their display on later occasions helps to reinstate, psychologically speaking, the awesomeness of the initiatory ceremony.