I learned of one just today – The Sons of Lee Marvin. To be eligible for membership, you must look like you might be one of Lee Marvin’s sons. To whom, I dunno, maybe that’s one of their secrets.
What other secret societies are there? The criteria are: there must be at least some evidence that it actually exists; there must be some living people who claim to be members; and those people must claim not to be able reveal details about the nature on the organization because they’re “secret”.
Freemasons? That’s the big one, isn’t it?
Sorry, that’s classified. Need to know only.
I dunno. I’ve heard of them. I don’t know how secretive they are.
Stonecutters?
If I told you I’d have to kill you.
I think we know just about everything there is to know about them.
I’ve always wanted to join a group like Fred Flintstone’s (“Water Buffalos”?). I want to be able to tell the wife “I’m off to my lodge meeting. Can’t tell you where or what we’ll be doing or when I’ll be back!”
Btw, our fraternity didn’t have an initiation, or a hell week, or anything (buncha potheads, late 60s/early 70s). But we made a big deal out of having a [reverb] Secret Handshake [/reverb].
In fact, you didn’t get to learn the [reverb] Secret Handshake [/reverb] right away. The wait was excruciating. Finally, you and your ‘brothers’ all walk out of town one lonely winter midnight, and on a derelict railroad track in a potentially haunted forest, you are brought into the forbidden knowledge … that the [reverb] Secret Handshake [/reverb] is just like an [reverb] Ordinary Handshake [/reverb].
I’m a member of a group called Fight Club. But unfortunately the first rule is…
“They’re not a secret society - they’re a society with a secret.”
There’s “Skull and Bones” at Yale.
MI6 - The Secret Intelligence Service.
Motto: Proudly keeping Britain’s intelligence a secret since 1909.
If they are really secret then anyone who is in one won’t talk about it.
So it’s quite possible that many of us are members of one.
Piker. My fraternity not only had the secret handshake, we also had the secret code phrase so that you could tell whether someone was really a member, or an impostor trying to pose as a member for some nefarious but ill-defined purpose!
Bracketed by the “Porcellian Club” at Harvard.
Teddy Roosevelt made it in; Franklin didn’t. FDR later said that he considered it the worst thing that ever happened to him.
Porcellian is the subject of one of John O’Hara’s best short-short stories, “Graven Image” (1943). I’m sure it’s online someplace.
The Swedish Toy Car and Liquor Society is pretty darn obscure.
I went to a small private college that did not have Greek letter organizations (these had been banned during Prohibition and never reinstated) but instead a bunch of “secret societies”. I use the scare quotes because everyone knew about them. Most, maybe all of them ostensibly had some sort of purpose or theme, but in practice they were basically just drinking clubs.
And a dozen or so more at Yale. And many at other schools. Collegiate secret societies in North America - Wikipedia
The secretness varies.