Researching Grandfather's Secrets

For the Journal of American Culture special issue

Researching Grandfather's Secrets: Rummaging in the Odd Fellow and Masonic Attics

Paul Rich
University of the Americas-Puebla and Hoover Institution, Stanford University

If the old rallying cry of liberty, equality, fraternity was applied to categorizing centuries in Latin America, possibly the nineteenth century was the time of liberty, with the numerous revolutions that freed the continent from Spain and Portugual, and the twentieth century was marked by a sometimes quixotic and ill-fated search for equality under the flawed leadership of populist dictators and dictatorial populists. Then will the twenty-first century be the era of fraternity with the resurged importantance of voluntary organizations, now held to be a necessity for democratization?

After many decades of neglect, Non-Governmental Organizations or NGOs south of the Rio Grande are enjoying considerable attention. They are as extraordinarily various if not quite as numerous as their North American counterparts, ranging from farmers' cooperatives to literary academies. As in other parts of the world, some are (at least to the outsider) mysterious and occultic in their activities and inhospitable to study.

The history of secret (1) and ritualistic (2) organizations has never received the attention in international and cultural studies that the subject deserves. (3) America has been a great inventer and exporter of such associations and a considerable influence on those such as Freemasonry that had a prior existence elsewhere. Members of the American Culture Association and Popular Culture Association may find that these organizations, despite the negative attitude they sometimes display towards investigators, have archives which can complement their primary research interests. Moreover, many societies that became ubiquitious in the United States spread to other parts of the Western Hemisphere, including Mexico, and the comparisons of how they have fared in different countries are extremely insightful.

Secrecy and ritual are two characteristics of some voluntary associations that deserve emphasis and the study of which enables scholars and students to better understand volunteerism. Often the popularity of these associations has depended more on a love of ritual and secrecy than anything else. Considering how widespread such groups are, involving all kinds of people and in many countries (4), social scientists should give more attention to this aspect of popular and international culture. (5) The fact is that secret ritualistic societies themselves fall into several categories, and so research involving them requires thought about the different categories to which they belong.

However, despite the manifest differences between the branches of this fascinating family, - and the probable unwillingness of a member of Phi Beta Kappa to be included in a study of Rotarians and Odd Fellows, - their history enjoys commonalites which have been neglected. Problems they present for scholars and students have similarities. (6)

Because the subject is somewhat esoteric, this introduction to its complexities may be useful. A reason why these topics have not been explored in Mexico, for example, is that they require a perspective of the development of secret and ritualistic societies around the world. The same problem exists in every North and South American country, as a general knowledge of secret societies in hard to come by.

At first glance, the variety of organizations that employ ritual and secrecy seems so immense that generalizations would be inappropriate. College sororities, affable lodges such as the Elks and Moose, religions with private ceremonies such as Black Islam which had part of their beginnings in Freemasonry, sinister organizations such as the Orange Order: - social history is replete with organizations whose members are enjoined to be tight-lipped about aspects of the initiations and about the modes of recognition.

Ritual is often what sets these groups apart, (7) making them distinct from a large number of other associations that may have a few ceremonies such as passing along the chair's gavel or investing new members with lapel pins, but which are chiefly issue-oriented. Thus those doing research in this field will benefit from comparisons based on criteria already mentioned of secrecy and ritual, attributes which often go together - although in a number of case the secrecy is no longer as strong as it once was. (8)

It is hard sometimes to demarcate between a ritualistic and issue-oriented movement. While the Grange, for example, is certainly an agricultural lobby, it has always had a strong ritualistic aspect. Nor is it easy to decide the significance of ritual to a movement. Rotary or the Lions would fall decidedly on the service side and seem more interested in lunch than passwords, but there are members as enraptured by the Rotary Wheel and by Lion Tail-Twister lore as anyone ever was by the Masonic square and compass. This is one reason why on occasion churches have forbidden members to join. The suggestion in fact has been made that service clubs displaced the lodges, socially and ritualistically, replacing solemn rites with more sprightly 'token finings, rousing songs and edifying talks', and that while 'lodges embraced all men as brothers, service clubs only admitted businessmen and professionals'. (9)

Considering the degree or amount of ritual and secrecy in an organization is useful in categorizing NGOs. So too is charting changes over the years, changes which often point up longterm trends in attitudes towards race, the growth of feminism, and internationalization. In the latter case, the struggle to expand 'overseas', often after lengthy incubation in the United States, is a fairly typical theme in organizational histories. (The Knights of Columbus are a good example.) Many movements started as resolutely American and then became international in membership, ceremonies and program. Other groups have struggled to become international but failed. Exploring why a specific group either became or did not become international makes an excellent project, as does analysis of the role of ritual and secrecy in its success or failure. Why, for example, did the Masons become more worldwide than the Odd Fellows.

By way of illustration, one subset of organizations which illustrates organizational change with respect to ritual, secrecy, gender, internationalization and other issues is a category of societies which academics often join but seldom study, the fraternities or 'Greeks'. These include the Greek honor or recognition societies, including those for internationalists and educators such as Pi Lamda Theta, Delta Phi Epsilon, and Phi Beta Delta. (10) All of them, and there are now hundreds, can trace their origins to Phi Beta Kappa and hence to eighteenth-century Freemasonry, - as of course do the Greeks social fraternities that are so characteristic of another portion of academia. Phi Beta Kappa originally was a ritualistic society par excellence:. (11)

Fraternities like Phi Beta Kappa which have done so much to foster intellectual activity on campuses, stand in peculiar contrast to their cousins, the social fraternities. (12) Social fraternities generally have kept their secret rituals, which are often suggestive of Masonry. (13) Their metamorphosis from intellectual clubs into social ones is sometimes blamed on their acquisition of the fraternity chapter house. (14) Their rituals, which at one time stressed the lamp of learning, also changed in ordeals featuring :

Coffins and hooded robes, burning crosses and stakes, swords and armor, cauldrons and grails, lions and dragons, terrifying oaths and incantations, the regalia of crusaders, cavaliers, feudal knights, holy pilgrims and sainted martyrs, stage machinery and special effects ... (15)

During the nineteenth century many organizations had more than a pro forma interest in ritualism, as witnessed by the proliferation of additional initiations or degrees. (16) Phi Beta Kappa on the other hand was forced to jettison rather than embellish its elaborate ritualistic traditions because of difficulties in the early 1800s. (17) The society's members found themselves being lumped with the Freemasons and the Illuminati as infidels. (18) Some chapters reacted by closing down, but at Harvard the brethren carried on and eventually the society caught its breath, re-estalbished chapters, and achieved the nationwide fame it still enjoys. The growth and internationalization of the honor or recognition Greek societies and their relationship to professional, vocational and learned societies is another story waiting to be adequately told, especially in regards to their expansion into other countries such as Mexico after World War II.

The foregoing is possibly helpful as a background when students and scholars begin to focus on the international influence of groups with a legacy of ritualism and secrecy. The international side is even more neglected in the printed record than the domestic, although many of these movements boast about the fact that brothers and sisters can be found in every land. (19) They do not present an open door to inquisitive non-members. (20) The Freemasons are an excellent example of this. They are especially important throughout the Americas and in Mexico, and an understanding of their history is necessary to any serious research into secret and ritualistic organizations in general.

Yet few public or university libraries take seriously the collecting of material on the Masons, so the serious researcher must get permission to use Masonic archives and libraries. A number date from the nineteenth century and have large holdings. An idea of what they might contain is indicated by the holdings list published by the Library of the Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry in Washington, which dates back to 1888 and even at that early date had more than eight thousand volumes. There are sections for Masonry in more than seventy countries, and categories include philosophy and symbolism, church and state, paraphernalia, glassware, benevolent and educational institutions, hospitals, cemeteries, architecture, poetry and drama, humor and satire, and women in Masonry. (21)

The accessibility of collections like the one mentioned in Washington or the ones in Mexican cities varies enormously. Occasionally, the professor or student with a project will be given every courtesy although not a member. In other cases, members themselves do not get a cordial welcome. (22) The first hurtle, that of getting access to the material, on occasion may be an insurmountable one. This is especially a possibility in Mexico if details of who belonged or belongs are sought. Yet, while prosopographical studies of members of private societies can be extremely difficult, (23) they are one of the most intriguing areas of research. (24) For example, it would be extremely interesting to know to what Greek honorary and social fraternities and sororities, and to what secret orders the members of the Popular Culture Association belong, and why!

Another challenge is in understanding the special language and usages of organization with their own argot such as the Masons. The more ritualistic the society, the more arcane and frequently deliberately confusing will be the terminology found in archives. As an example, a considerable problem for the researcher are the dating systems used by different Masonic bodies. (25) Like certain religious groups, Masonic bodies use different, non-Gregorian calendars. (26)

There are more pitfalls: on occasion the researcher will face documents that have been rendered into cipher or have had critical words removed. (27) He or she will also encounter vast amounts of allegory and metaphor, so that without an advance immersion in the rituals the text will be unintelligible. The symbolism employed requires the researcher to be thoroughly prepared before confronting archives. Still another difficulty in the case of these controversial groups is that both members and non-members have been guilty of fabrications and falsifications to advance their claims. (28)

Ironically, the enemies of these societies are often willing to accept outlandish claims of their longstanding influence. Pat Robertson of the 700 Club and CBN fame is one of the more recent recruits to the conspiracy theories which make the study of such societies so difficult: his book The New World Order is replete with references to Illuminati, Rosicrucians, and Masons. So emotive is the subject that the literature is often little more than propaganda and sometimes deliberately misleading. (29) Mexico and the other Latin American countries suffer from this even more than does the United States.

Having called attention to the difficulties of research, which are compounded overseas, the surprising variety and amount of materials which are encompassed by this field still should be stressed. A British observer comments that, "There appears to be an entire industry devoted to Masonic literature which ranging from the 'official' journals of the more or less orthodox Craft to a plethora of 'fringe' publications which take in the widest variety of themes and organizations and which seem to have only the vaguest of associations of Masonry as we know it." (30)

This is an area where most of the materials have yet to be exploited and where local research can have international aspects - and where material culture is particularly important. When, for example, do Hispanic names begin to appear in an American lodge's records? This is a barometer of social acceptance. An individual lodge or a state or regional archive may possess photograph albums with portraits of its members, (31) or snapshots of quite extraordinary excursions: sometimes steamers were rented and the brethren visited compatriots in the Caribbean or Europe. Depending on the packrat mentality of individual secretaries, there can be treasure troves of menus, sheet music, visiting cards, membership applications, correspondence with sister affiliates in other countries, and of course minutes by the ton. Since many chapters and lodges had an ethnic or vocational aspect, the possibilities for projects with an international and economic aspect are more numerous than would first appear to be the case.

While Masonry is a prominent example of the potential for scholarship that this field offers, other organizations offer equally interesting research possibilties. (32) Every city and town has its own unique mix: the Sons of Norway do not have the same geographical distribution as the Knights of Pythias. Studies of international relationships within and between such movements are waiting to be done, as well as research into the way in which they served specific nationality and religious groups. (33) They also have served as facilitators of multi-culturalism, helping integrate the community around a pluralistic ideal, while at other times they have been extremely divisive.

Ritual and secrecy are not the only aspects to the study of voluntary groups, but help to identify one distinct category. Alert to the ritualistic and covert aspects of associational life, and aware of the possible international implications of even the most domestic appearing associations, researchers in both North and South America will find this an exciting and undeveloped field.

NOTES

(1) Members of what appear to be secret societies, including those in Masonic organizations, often assert that matters are not secret but 'discrete'. Allen E. Roberts, Freemasonry in American History, Macoy Publishing, Richmond (Virginia), 1985, 1. "Secrecy", Royal Arch Mason, Vol.18 No.4, Winter 1994, 118.