ISA Tornto - rich and De Los Reyes - Freemasons & Resear ch

Masonic and Other Secret Ritualistic Society Archival Sources - and Possibilities for International Studies

Paul Rich

Guillermo De Los Reyes

Professors of International Relations and History

University of the Americas - Puebla, Mexico

Our recent research includes secret and ritualistic societies and the alleged contribution they make to civil society. This poster-paper for ISA Toronto gives an indication of some of the areas we have been exploring. - By the way, did your grandfather belong to the Maons or did your aunt belong to the Eastern Star? Are you Phi Beta Kappa?

The history of secret and ritualistic organizations has never received the attention in international studies that the subject deserves. America has been a great inventer of such associations and a great influence on those such as Freemasonry that had a prior existence elsewhere. Members of ISA may find that these organizations have archives which can complement their primary research interests.

Secrecy and ritual are two characteristics of 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 they are, involving all kinds of people and in many countries, social scientists should give more attention to this aspect of popular and international culture. The fact is that secret ritualistic societies fall into sevral categories, and so research involving them requires some understanding of the different categories to which they belong.

Nevertheless, and 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. Although their influence has been and continues to be considerable, they are seldom considered collectively. Because the subject is somewhat esoteric, this introduction to its complexities may be useful. Certainly a reason why these topics have not been explored in Mexico is that they require a broad understanding of the development of secret and ritualistic societies around the world.

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: - 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.

We would argue that ritual is often what sets these groups apart, 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 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.

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 seem to be decidedly on the service side and 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 why presumably 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".

In our own research, considering the degree of ritual and secrecy in an organization has been useful. 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. 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 the reasons 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.

By way of illustration, one subset of organizations that we have recently been investigating 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. These are the Greek honor or recognition societies, including those for internationalists and educators such as Pi Lamda Theta, Delta Phi Epsilon, and Phi Beta Delta. 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:

John Heath himself [the fifteen-year old founder of Phi Beta Kappa] was not a Mason while a student at William and Mary, but Thomas Smith belonged to the Williamsburg lodge before joining Heath as one of the five Phi Beta Kappa founders. Smith served as the first clerk of the Phi Beta Kappa Society and became its president on May 3, 1777. Nine other members of the society joined the Masonic lodge during the next year.

There is little to Phi Beta Kappa's activities today which suggest its early ties with Freemasonry. Nor is it now a particularly social organization. Most honorary fraternities devoted to scholarship, which have done so much to foster intellectual activity on campuses, stand in peculiar contrast to their cousins, the social fraternities. Social fraternities generally have kept their secret rituals, which are often suggestive of Masonry. Their metamorphosis from intellectual clubs into social ones is sometimes blamed on their acquisition of the fraternity chapter house. Their rituals, which at one time stressed the lamp of learning, also changed:

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 - all these were elevated into the mythical means that transformed lowly pledges into bonded brothers. What light and truth may have failed to accomplish, sensation dared to attempt.

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. The society's members found themselves being lumped with the Freemasons and the Illuminati as infidels. Some chapters reacted by closing down, but at Harvard the brethren responded: "Animated by a consciousness of right, the noble mind rises superior to opposition. Should it be our fate then to be traduced, let us as individuals boldly profess our attachment to our society."

An indication of whether an organization has more than a pro forma interest in ritualism is the proliferation of additional initiations or degree. Phi Beta Kappa never acquired a complex degree system like that of Freemasonry, although such a suggestion was made on at least one occasion. A partisan of giving additional honors wrote, "Why do you suppose that there are 32nd degree Masons? Because the Masonic system is adapted to human nature. Then why not 64th degree Phi Beta Kappas? Why not a scheme of honors for intellectual attainments - so many points for a scholarly book, so many for a course of reading, a task of memory, the points to be awarded by democratically organized graduate chapters?"

That proposal came to naught, and there are no 64th degree Phi Betas Kappas. However, honor societies patterned on Phi Beta Kappa multiplied. Tau Beta Pi for engineering started in 1885, and Sigma Xi for scientists began in 1886. There were at least 100 by the time the tenth edition of Baird's Manual of Greek College Fraternities appeared in 1923. 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 after World War II.

All of the foregoing serves as a background when we focus on the international influence of groups with a legacy of ritualism and secrecy is even more neglected than their domestic effects, although they usually boost about the fact that brothers and sisters can be found in every land. One explanation as to why general histories give scant attention to societies where the secret and ritualistic aspects are vigorous is that they do not present an open door to inquisitive non-members. The Freemasons are an excellent example of this. The Masons are especially important because 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 classifications of the Library of the Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite in Washington, which dates back to 1888 and even then 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.

The accessibility of these collections 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. The first hurtle, that of getting access to the material, on occasion may be an insurmountable one. This is especially a possibility if details of who belonged or belongs are sought. Yet, while prosopographical studies of members of private societies can be extremely difficult, they are one of the most intriguing areas of research. 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 International Studies 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 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. Like certain religious groups, Masonic bodies use different non-Gregorian calendars.

There are more pitfalls: on occasion the researcher will face documents that have been rendered into cipher or have had critical words removed. 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. Another difficulty in the case of controversial groups is that both members and non-members have been guilty of fabrications and falsifications to advance their claims.

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.

Having called attention to the difficulties of research, which are compounded in the an overseas situation, the surprising variety and amount of materials which are encompassed by this field should be stressed. A British observer comments about the American Masonic situation 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."

This is an area where local research can have international aspects and where material culture is particularly important. Our experience has been that an individual lodge or a state or regional archive may possess photograph albums with portraits of its members, 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 aspect, the possibilities for student projects with an international flavor are numerous.

While Masonry is a prominent example of the potential for scholarship this field offers, other organizations offer equally interesting research possibilties. Every city and town has its own unique mix: the Sons of Norway do not have the same geographical distribution as the Knights of Columbus. 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. They have served as facilitators of multi-culturalism, helping integrate the community around a pluralistic ideal, and at other times have been extremely divisive.

Ritual and secrecy are not the only aspects to the study of voluntary groups, but for us this concern has placed emphasis on anthropological and sociological topics that might otherwise have been missing from our work. Alert to the ritualistic and covert aspects of associational life, and aware of the possible international implications of even the most domestic associations, researchers in Mexico will find this an exciting and relatively undeveloped field.