As Above, So Below
As Above, So Below

Author: Lynne Adele

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2015-11-15

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780292759503

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“There’s an inspiring and wacky solemnity in these organizations—high values reinforced through pageantry and performance in an ecumenical social setting—which deep down must also have been a whole lot of fun. Now it’s as if that foundational Other America, that underpinning of the America we know, has gradually eroded, and here we remain, living in a world that is a mere shell, a movie set, of the world that made our world manifest, that brought it into being, and all we have left are these perplexing masks, banners, and costumes to puzzle over.” —David Byrne, from the foreword Featuring more than two hundred outstanding objects gathered from private and public collections, As Above, So Below provides the first comprehensive survey of the rich vein of art created during the “golden age” of the American fraternal society. By the turn of the twentieth century, an estimated 70,000 local lodges affiliated with hundreds of distinct American fraternal societies claimed a combined five and a half million members. It has been estimated that at least 20 percent of the American adult male population belonged to one or more fraternal orders, including the two largest groups, the Freemasons and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. The esoteric knowledge, visual symbols, and moral teachings revealed to lodge brothers during secret rituals inspired an abundant and expressive body of objects that form an important facet of American folk art. Lynne Adele and Bruce Lee Webb introduce the reader to fraternal societies and explore the function and meaning of fraternal objects, including paintings and banners, costumes and ceremonial regalia, ritual objects, and an array of idiosyncratic objects that represent a grassroots response to fraternalism. Setting the art in historical context, the authors examine how fraternal societies contributed to American visual culture during this era of burgeoning fraternal activity. Simultaneously entertaining and respectful of the fraternal tradition, As Above, So Below opens lodge room doors and invites the reader to explore the compelling and often misunderstood works from the golden age of fraternity, once largely forgotten and now coveted by collectors.

Handbook of Secret Organizations
Handbook of Secret Organizations

Author: William Joseph Whalen

Publisher: Milwaukee : Bruce Publishing Company

Published: 1966

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13:

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Study of the history, tenets and rituals of over fifty organizations including Knights of Columbus, Freemasons, Ku Klux Klan, Cosa Nostra, etc.

Ritual America
Ritual America

Author: Craig Heimbichner

Publisher: Feral House

Published: 2012-03-06

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 1936239159

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"Adam Parfrey is one of the nation's most provocative publishers."—Seattle Weekly "Secret society historian Craig Heimbichner follows the Middle Path to wisdom. He works the graveyard shift in the secret lodge."—Joan d'Arc, Paranoia magazine Secret societies—now a staple of bestseller novels—are pictured as sinister cults that use hooded albinos to menace truth-seekers. Some conspiracy books claim that fraternal orders are the work of serpentine aliens and interbred humans who wish to supplant earth of its energy, and later, its very existence. On the other side of the aisle, books by high-ranked Freemasons—skeptical in tone but no less partisan in approach—protect their organization's public image by denying the existence of its most contentious ideas. Ritual America reveals the biggest secret of them all: that the influence of fraternal brotherhoods on this country is vast, fundamental, and hidden in plain view. In the early twentieth century, as many as one-third of America belonged to a secret society. And though fezzes and tiny car parades are almost a thing of the past, the Gnostic beliefs of Masonic orders are now so much a part of the American mind that the surrounding pomp and circumstance has become faintly unnecessary. The authors of Ritual America contextualize hundreds of rare and many never-before printed images with entertaining and far-reaching commentary, making an esoteric subject provocative, exciting, and approachable. Adam Parfrey is the author of Cult Rapture: Revelations of the Apocalyptic Mind and It's a Man's World: Men's Adventure Magazines, the Postwar Pulps. He is editor of the influential Apocalypse Culture series Love, Sex, Fear Death: The Inside Story of the Process Church of the Final Judgment. Craig Heimbichner has recently appeared on a National Geographic documentary about the Bohemian Grove, contributed to the Feral House compilation Secret and Suppressed II, and wrote about the famous occult order the O.T.O. in Blood and Altar.

What a Mighty Power We Can Be
What a Mighty Power We Can Be

Author: Theda Skocpol

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2018-06-26

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 0691190518

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From the nineteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries, millions of American men and women participated in fraternal associations--self-selecting brotherhoods and sisterhoods that provided aid to members, enacted group rituals, and engaged in community service. Even more than whites did, African Americans embraced this type of association; indeed, fraternal lodges rivaled churches as centers of black community life in cities, towns, and rural areas alike. Using an unprecedented variety of secondary and primary sources--including old documents, pictures, and ribbon-badges found in eBay auctions--this book tells the story of the most visible African American fraternal associations. The authors demonstrate how African American fraternal groups played key roles in the struggle for civil rights and racial integration. Between the 1890s and the 1930s, white legislatures passed laws to outlaw the use of important fraternal names and symbols by blacks. But blacks successfully fought back. Employing lawyers who in some cases went on to work for the NAACP, black fraternalists took their cases all the way to the Supreme Court, which eventually ruled in their favor. At the height of the modern Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, they marched on Washington and supported the lawsuits through lobbying and demonstrations that finally led to legal equality. This unique book reveals a little-known chapter in the story of civic democracy and racial equality in America.

Secret Ritual and Manhood in Victorian America
Secret Ritual and Manhood in Victorian America

Author: Mark Christopher Carnes

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 1989-01-01

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 9780300051469

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In this study of American 19th-century secret orders, the author argues that religious practices and gender roles became increasingly feminized in Victorian America and that secret societies, such as the Freemasons, offered men and boys an alternative, male counterculture.

Odd Fellows
Odd Fellows

Author: Louie Blake Saile Sarmiento

Publisher:

Published: 2019-04-26

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9781733851206

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The Odd Fellows was once the largest fraternal organization in the world. When new lands were still being explored and new nations were forming, as governmental policies were being formulated, and pioneers began to conquer new lands, the Odd Fellows were an important part of that evolution. In fact, Odd Fellowship contributed greatly in the development of many towns, cities, states, provinces and countries.Moving westward with their pioneer wagons, the early Odd Fellows built the largest buildings in new communities which soon became social centers where people met to relax and to exchange the latest news and ideas. Lodges also provided help to members during those times when governments provided little social and welfare assistance. On the other hand, lodge rituals taught the important lessons of civic responsibility and equality before laws existed to help maintain social order. Many of the early members were the pioneer leaders of several towns, cities, states, provinces and nations. Eventually, membership included Presidents, Prime Ministers, Senators, Congressmen, Governors, mayors and notable people in their respective fields. They were there to speak out on issues of international, national and local interest. They were forerunners in building homes for the aged and establishing the first orphanage homes. The Odd Fellows is also the predecessor of the Social Security System and National Health Insurance when it literally touched the lives of millions of people through its tenets "to visit the sick, relieve the distressed, bury the dead, and educate the orphan". The organization survived many wars and major world challenges. It existed during the time of the first railroad, the first automobile, the first movie, the first radio and television broadcasts, the first submarine, the first guided missile, the first miracle drug, the first airplane, the first space ship, the first computer, and the introduction of the internet. It served communities, long before the proliferation of other service clubs and modern charitable foundations. Odd Fellowship rose to its most glorious time when members were active in the growth of communities and nations.