Secret Societies, in some form or other, have existed in all ages of the world's history, not only amongst nations with well-organised systems of social and public life, but also amongst races that have never advanced beyond the elementary stages of social organisation. Religion and politics are the departments of human activity in which such societies have most prevailed; though they have also been formed for judiciary, scientific, civil, social, and even criminal purposes.
In the ancient world many of the more influential religions had their Mysteries (q.v.), the ceremonies connected with which were generally performed in secret, and only in the presence of those who had been duly initiated. These inner and more secret groups of priests and initiated worshippers existed in association with the worship of Mithras in Persia, of Orpheus and Dionysus in Greece, at Eleusis and elsewhere, of Osiris and Serapis in Egypt, and of the Great Mother (Cybele) in Phrygia. The main objects which these exclusive coteriæ had before them were of course various: in some cases the intention was to render the sacredness and binding force of religion all the stronger over the hearts and imaginations of men; in others to preserve the 'holy things' from the profanations and familiarities of the vulgar throng; in others to enrich the temple or shrine; and in yet others the ruling motive seems to have been solely the wish to keep in a few hands the power that invariably attaches itself to the priestly office. The followers of Pythagoras formed what was in many respects a secret religious society, though philosophy and political doctrine took a foremost place in their teachings. The Druids are often represented as practising secret rites, handed down through certain of the priests; but upon this matter the evidence is shadowy in the extreme. Amongst the Jews there proceeded from out of the Pharisees the puritanical Essenes (Chasidim), who for the purpose of living a holier life formed themselves into what were virtually religious clubs, characterised by many features common to exclusive religious societies. The Essenes were the forerunners of the Jewish Cabbalists (see CABBALA), who professed a secret system of theology and philosophy associated with mystic practices, and of the Christian Gnostics, who formed exclusive sects based on initiation and esoteric teaching (see Gnosticism). The lineal successors of these last were the various mediæval sects of Cathari (q.v.), most of whom invested their teaching and their worship with many features of mystery. In the Roman Catholic Church the office of the Inquisition deserves to be called a secret society, and so does the order of the Jesuits, especially in respect of its methods; though in both cases the secrecy was due to political rather than to strictly religious causes. The Knights Templars (q.v.) towards the close of their history as a distinct order seem in several cases to have lapsed into the practice of secret rites and belief in certain secret doctrines. The Druses hold a peculiar place as the inheritors of a national religion which is jealously exclusive both in doctrine and ritual.
The Rosicrucians (q.v.) and the Freemasons (q.v.) are perhaps the best known of the secret societies that have cultivated something like social aims. The former had their origin in the 17th century, and directed their attention to the discovery of such things as the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life, to the exorcism of spirits, and such-like pursuits. Speculative Freemasonry does not go further back than the 18th century; its professed objects are philanthropic and moral. There are associations similar in character to it in Tahiti and others of the Pacific Islands, and amongst the Foulah and the Negroes of Sierra Leone and the adjacent parts of Africa. The celebrated Vehmgerichte (q.v.) or secret courts of Westphalia arose in a time of great public confusion, and made it their business to maintain that order and respect for the law which it should have been the concern of the emperor and his associates to have secured and preserved. There existed in Sicily from the 12th to the 18th century an organisation (the Beati Paoli) very similar to the Vehmgerichte. On the other hand, there have been numerous associations of a secret kind formed for criminal purposes, and for mutual assistance against and in defiance of the laws of the land; the Assassins in Persia and Syria, the Thugs in India, the Camorra, the Mafia, and the Decisi (c. 1815) in Italy, the Chauffeurs in France (who arose during the religious wars and were not suppressed until the Revolution), and the Garduna in Spain (formed after the wars against the Moors; suppressed in 1822) may be instanced.
The Illuminati (q.v.), the authors of a movement that grew up in Germany in the end of the 18th century, united political and religious ends, and may be said, summarily, to have aimed at realising the ideals of the French Revolution. The following century was wonderfully prolific in political secret societies. Italy was literally honeycombed with them during the years she was struggling for her independence; the best known was that of the Carbonari (q.v.; see also MAZZINI). At the same time there were similar societies, with similar revolutionary or democratic or constitutional aims, in other countries of Europe, as the Burschenschaft and Landsmannschaft societies in Germany, the Associated Patriots in France, the Comuneros in Spain, the Hetairia in Greece, the Society of United Slavonians and the Decabrists in Russia, the Polish Templars, and the associations known as Young Germany, Young Italy, Young Poland, Young Switzerland. The German Tugendbund (q.v.) was hardly a secret society in the proper sense of the term. Nearly all the political revolutions that took place in France during the course of the 19th century were greatly fomented by secret societies, especially the revolution of 1848. Here too should be mentioned the Omladina, a movement having for its headquarters Servia and Belgrade, and for its objects the establishment of a republican pan-slavic confederation. The most momentous movements of a socio-political tendency that have sprung up on the Continent, and spread to some extent to England, are those of the Nihilists (q.v.), the Anarchists, and various sects of extreme Socialists (cf. INTERNATIONAL).
Ireland has been the breeding-ground of political societies directing their efforts against the English rule, or against one or the other of the two religious bodies in the island (Protestants and Roman Catholics), though motives arising out of agrarian distress have generally played an important part in the agitations these societies have set agoing. The White Boys, the Oak Boys, Right Boys, Peep o' Day Boys (see RIBBONISM), the United Irishmen, the Fenians, the Land League movement fostered by Mr Parnell (q.v.), are all well-known cases in point; see also ORANGEMENT.
There are perhaps no peoples in the world who favour secret societies more than the Chinese and the inhabitants of the United States. But whilst the objects of these associations in the former country are mostly political, in the latter they are predominantly social. The most powerful organisation of this nature in China—indeed its ramifications extend to all parts of the world where Chinamen are allowed to settle—is the Tien-ti Hwuy (Union of Heaven and Earth), which presents many features analogous to Freemasonry, such as secret signs, solemn initiation ceremonies, peculiar observances, and so forth; but its principal object seems to be the overthrow of the existing Manchu dynasty and the restoration of the last Chinese dynasty of the Ming. The White Lily is very wealthy and very strict in its rules, and its members are popularly accredited with the possession of magical powers. But about the real purposes of this, as of most other secret societies that exist amongst the Chinese, our information is exceedingly scanty. The Society of the Elder Brethren, which is, generally speaking, a combination of the most lawless elements of the population in the central provinces (Honan to Hunan), proclaims a fanatical hatred to all foreigners, including the Manchus. Secret societies of all kinds, and for nearly all conceivable purposes, are found in the United States, from the Vigilance Societies (q.v.), formed in the western states for the preservation of public order, to the Phi Beta Kappa and similar associations in the colleges and universities. The Danites, the Knights of Labour, the Ku-Klux Klan, the Molly Maguires (see these articles) may be instanced among notable organisations of native growth; the Mafia (q.v.) and some European societies have also extended their ramifications hither.
See C. W. Heckethorn, Secret Societies of all Ages (2 vols. 1874), where other books are quoted; T. Frost, Secret Societies of the European Revolution (1876); L. de la Hodde, Secret Societies of France (Philadelphia, 1856); F. H. Balfour, Waifs and Strays from the Far East (Lond. 1876), and a paper by him in the Journal of the Manchester Geographical Society (January 1892); and Harper's Magazine (September 1891).