Are there any SAE brothers or alumni on the board? Anyone every get an SAE brother drunk enough to confess??
For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about:
The fraternity Sigma Alpha Epsilon has a very well kept secret. Once one becomes a “brother”, he is told the secret meaning to Phi Alpha. None of their pledges or neophytes know the meaning. A true brother would never ever tell what it means.
But this is the SDMB. Collectively, we know everything. Therefore someone on this board knows the true meaning of Phi Alpha. The hard part, I guess, would be getting you to tell me. C’mon… you can tell me. None of your SAE bretheren will know who is behind your secret screen name.
I guess this is a long shot, but I figure if I was ever going to find out, I would find out here!
So, what is the secret meaning to one of the best kept secrets in the world, Phi Alpha?
My guess is that it really has no meaning. I think the big secret is that when you are finally sworn in as a brother they tell you, “Ok, the secret to Phi Alpha is it doesn’t mean shit! But dont tell anyone!”
Any takers?
I can’t tell you. I can tell you why John F. Kennedy was killed. I can tell you why the government keeps UFOs a secret. I can even reveal many of the events of the Apocalypse. But I can’t tell you the secret meaning of Phi Alpha. Just trust me, there’s a very good reason for it to be secret.
Bear_Nenno: The tradition of Greek Fraternal meanings is that the words (here, Phi Alpha) are the first letters of a phrase or separate words in original Greek. Meaning, that “Phi Alpha” may well be the first letters of a phrase that, in greek, the first word begins with phi, and the second alpha. Of course, the abundance of greek words that begin with either of these is so great that guessing the meaning is near impossible.
I could tell you all the secrets of Lambda Chi Alpha, but I never would.
Don’t tell the D-Chi’s, but we stole their flag, because one of them stole our SP paddle. Bastards! I hear they also stole a ritual book about 10 years ago, but it’s just a rumor. None of them will admit to it.
My brother is a PKA. If you look at their crest you’ll actually see that the real name of the fraternity is Phi Phi Kappa Alpha (the two Phi’s are combined to create a Pi). My brother said, like in most fraternities they stand for something that’s secret. I said “Easy, its Fraternis, Fidelis, something, something.” His jaw dropped and stammered a denial. I knew I had least that part correct. I’m a KDR and if anyone knows what they stand for, please let us know. Apparently no one remembers.
The so called secret of the Phi Alpha is
φαιδρότης ἀσάφεια - Faidrotes asafeia in plain.
Amazing how Greek still beautifully helps these silly secrets to persist. The words, which some translate as “brighter from obscurity”, are in truth an oximoron, two juxtaposed words: brightness (also, metaphorically, joy) and obscurity (also, metaphorically, uncertainty).
Most oracular responses are styled like this, so the enigma is a perfect fit in a pseudo-secret society. Deeper meaning falls to the explanation of whoever is in charge of initiation, and that, given the level of collegiate inanity, may prove abysmally dismaying.
As one supposes that it has been passed down by the Founders, who were at least fellows of some learning, it can be imagined that the purpose is to encourage the wise to look beyond the appearance of things, light-in-darkness and darkness-in-light and all the stuff that was very popular intellectually some 150 to 100 years ago (not that it ever died out, but it really flourished then).
Have fun finding references. An easy one is from Plato’s Republic, there where talking about doxa, the author places it in between knowledge and ignorance, "something darker than knowledge but brighter than ignorance” in the translation of Shorey.
I was (and, I suppose, still am) in Phi Mu Alpha. We had our various secret rituals and handshakes and so forth, as all these groups do. I’m pretty sure none of these “secrets” are of much objective significance, except that they serve to bond the group together in commonality of knowledge and purpose.
I could tell you what went on at our initiation but honestly, outside of the context of the fraternity and the pledge experience it’s pretty banal (although the music is nice).
What blows me away is that his jaw dropped.
It’s sad that college educated people today think they are special because they know a few simple words in the classic languages, and assume that nobody else could ever figure it out.
The fraternities were founded back in the days when Latin and Greek were standard subjects in high school and college, and everybody knew them. Even the Marine Corps slogan (Semper Fi) is Latin; and those guys don’t sweat through boot camp on Paris Island because it offers language lessons. Two hundred years ago, it was just assumed that even uneducated soldiers would understand a couple of Latin words, and speak them with pride (presumably after it was explained once.)
Every fraternity has its “secret” slogan, and to me, it’s pretty obvious that every single one of them consists of synonyms for , well, fraternity. Ya know: friendship, togetherness, loyalty, brotherhood,etc.
And that narrows it down to a couple dozen words. How hard can it be to guess them, when you know the first letter ?
Thank you very much. Not that I have all that time for internet forums, in fact. But this topic hit me. The entire concept of “best kept secret of the world” irks me. I was a member of a student society founded some 300 years before the country of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon was even discovered by the white man. Our stupid secrets were known to every historian. For goodness’ sake, the most serious Masonic rituals are known in details to historians. Because people talk. It is human, and it is good.
Kids (most of whom inclining to drunken behaviours and testosterone excesses) congratulating themselves on how well kept their silly fraternity secrets are, do irk me. I’m becoming a cranky old man.
But as pointed out, the secret rituals have meaning in context. Out of it, they are dross. So boasting about the secrecy is silly, and making a big deal of it is very, ah… juvenile. What were we talking of again?
