Search

Copyright of Revista de Filología Alemana is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The difference between esotericism and exoterism is unlike the difference between circles and rectangles. It is also not the difference between the size and relevance of a specific body of knowledge in circulation. It is rather the extent of the circulation, acceptance, understanding, and meaning of a particular body of knowledge, philosophy, or worldview, over the spiritual and socio-political life of diverse categories of people in society. The infancy of the academic study of esotericism, as well as its interdisciplinary nature, militate against the crystallization of a universally accepted definition of the term 'esotericism'. The various definitions of the term by researchers consistently relate to their research interests. In line with Faivre's concern with the forms of thought of esoteric movements (Faivre 1996), as well as the preoccupation that Versluis has with gnosis generation in esoteric movements (Versluis n.d), our study of Kereke ya Sephiri in Botswana and South Africa examines a) the cultural and religious contexts in which Frederick Modise, a gnostic in his own right, generated the underlying gnosis of his secret society, and b) the import of the content of this visionary mystical revelation in the spiritual and social lives of members of this secret society¹. The study of the Setswana term, Kereke ya Sephiri (church of a secret, referring to a Christian-based secret society), is a study of African esotericism in South Africa and Botswana. The principal academic interest in the study of esotericism lies in our quest to identify the fundamental tenets of the worldviews of the specific esoteric society, the eclectic nature of its philosophy, and how this philosophy relates to the orthodoxy of the day (Christianity in this instance). We do so by concentrating on the form of thinking, engendered by esoteric practices. Esoteric groups do not appear or exist within cultural voids. For this reason, by identifying the eclectic or syncretic nature of the fundamental philosophy (gnosis) of these groups, we trace the cultural influences involved in the emergence and consolidation of these worldviews and philosophies. This study shows that African esotericism is not always antithetic or subversive of dominant or institutionalized Christianity.

Copyright of Österreichische Zeitschrift für Soziologie is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The development of the Chinese revolutionary movement in the early twentieth century absorbed cultural resources from traditional secret societies and associations. The White Lotus, the Tiandihui, the Gelaohui, the Triad, and the various secret societies that had emerged in the Taiping and the Boxer rebellions were all incorporated into the discourse system of revolutionary history. The secret societies' slogans of "overthrow the Qing and restore the Ming" and "rob the rich to help the poor" merged with the revolutionaries' platform of "drive out the Manchus" and "relief for people's livelihood," and finally advanced the success of the Xinhai Revolution and was turned into a coherent historical narrative. After the founding of the Republic of China, Sun Yat-sen and Song Jiaoren carefully assessed the function of secret societies and distinguished them from modern political parties. On the other hand, leaders of the Communist Party, such as Mao Zedong, Qu Qiubai, Yun Daiying, and Chen Duxiu, emphasized the ideological transformation of secret societies and the suitable role they could play in the revolution, thus showing a dynamic strategy of allying with these organizations. The history of the relationship between the Chinese revolution and secret societies reflects the changing characteristics and logic of the underclass of Chinese society. 摘要: 20世纪前期中国革命运动的发展，吸收了传统秘密会党与江湖结社的文化资源。渊源自不同时期与地域的白莲教、天地会、哥老会、三合会、太平天国革命、义和团及帮会力量，被纳入国民革命史的叙述系统之内。秘密结社的反清复明、劫富济贫口号与革命党的驱除鞑虏、 救济民生纲领，最终合流并助力了辛亥革命的成功，建立起具有连贯性的历史书写。民国建立之后，孙中山、宋教仁等人审慎评估了民间会党的作用，区分了秘密会党与现代政党之间的关系。相比而言，中共领导人如毛泽东、瞿秋白、恽代英、陈独秀等人，更为看重对于秘密会社的思想改造与合理运用，呈现出动态的联合策略与组织形式。中国革命和秘密结社之间的关系史，侧面反映出下层社会变迁的底色与逻辑。 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author offers reflections on Acéphale, a secret society formed by Georges Bataille wherein the members engaged in some weird rites and that somebody as supposed to be sacrificed. He discusses an article by Bataille, "The Sacred Conspiracy," an argument on the absurdity of Acéphale, and the dissolution of the Acéphale group.

The conditions for the development of O.M. Kovalevsky’s humanistic worldview and participatory citizenship during the childhood and adolescence years were discussed. A general description of the socio-political situation in the Belarusian lands in the early 19th century and the life and traditions of home education in the family Uniate West Belarusian priests was given. The system of education at the gymnasium of the Grodno Governorate, the peculiarities of teaching at the Vilnius University, the history of creation, activity, and the defeat of the secret student fellowships were considered. The conclusion was made that O.M Kovalevsky – due to the specifics of the national, ethnic, and religious composition of the population – was brought up from the early age on the principles of Christian mercy, humanism, tolerance, and liberal attitude towards religion. The citizenship of the future of Mongolist was influenced by the Enlightenment atmosphere in the Belarusian lands during the first third of the 19th century and the early era of Romanticism. The childhood and youth of O.M Kovalevsky occurred when a new turn in the Belarusian history took place, resulting in the rise of self-awareness and national-liberation movement, emergence of unique personalities who influenced O.M Kovalevsky’s perception of the world.

In this paper, the authors argue that Franz Boas had a coherent theory of the secret society, which he did not systematically develop anywhere, but which can be reconstructed from several of his works. The authors are not dealing with the whole theory, but only with the postulate of the warfare origin of secret societies (which later became the foundation of the Männerbund theory). Namely, Boas believed that the secret societies of the North American Indians were originally warlike, but that by the beginning of the 20th century they either retained only the functions of initiation and education, or were transformed into therapeutic and dance societies. Although he claimed that the mythology of the Indians did not provide additional insights into the origins of secret societies, his dealings with the myth of the “culture heroˮ and the “tricksterˮ proved the contrary. The authors try to go a step further and find new contributions for the study of the origins of secret societies in North America in the myth of Wolf as the brother (father) of the “culture hero.ˮ

Copyright of Issues in Ethnology Anthropology is the property of Issues in Ethnology Anthropology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

How do normal people become able to torture others? In order to explain this puzzling social phenomenon, we have to take secrecy – the characteristic trait of modern torture – as the lynchpin of the analysis. Following Georg Simmel’s formal analysis of the “secret society”, the contribution reconstructs structural and cultural aspects of the secret society of torturers that generate social processes that allow its members to behave extremely violently, forcing individuals to turn into torturers. The contribution argues that the form of social behaviour that we call torture is socially shaped. It goes beyond social psychology to develop an explanation from the perspective of relational sociology.

An anthropologist and a linguist from Germany are trying to understand a ritual, taking place in a small village on the coast of Guinea, West Africa. They are told that two seemingly conflicting ceremonies take place during a four-day event commemorating a recently deceased woman: A Muslim celebration of the 40th day after death conducted by a local Imam and the Mkisaata ritual, performed by the members of a Nalu female secret society in honour of its deceased member. As the involved men explain the filmmakers their respective version of the events, the researchers get increasingly drawn into the ritual by the women of the secret society and become part of their performance. “Between Islam and the Sacred Forest“ tells a story about the womens' power to create their own space in a male dominated society. At the same time it deals with the possibilities and impossibilities of audio-visual ethnography.

This article aims to retrace the history of the Acéphale secret society and its role in the development of the work of Bataille, notably the unfinished project of the Atheological Summa (Somme athéologique). Based on sociological notions of the ‘secret society’ and ‘the society of men’, it updates the dual aspects of Acéphale: a diurnal or ‘political’ aspect constituted by the publication of the journal Acéphale, and afterwards by the public activity of the College of Sociology; and a nocturnal or religious side, as evidenced by the activity of the secret society itself, an activity aiming to strengthen the communitarian link amongst the followers, and to open them up to what Caillois would call ‘a broader conspiracy’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inserted in a framework of latent instabilities marked by the opposition between "portuguese" and "brazilians", the political actors of Maranhão organized themselves through different ways to legitimize their demands for access to the imperial administration jobs and the provincial treasury. Beyond discussions in bars, in the squares and institutions created after the process of Independence in Maranhão (1823), the alleged operation of the secret society Columns of the Throne and the Altar caught the attention. Through an interesting denunciation, we will investigate the performance of various actors and the composition of their "parties" during the First Reign and their reverberations in the construction of the Brazil Empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As members of the secret Afrikaner organisation, the Broederbond, two of the apartheid-era rectors at the University of Fort Hare were responsible for leading an institution that was supposed to spearhead the modernisation of ethnically defined homelands and their transition to independent states, whilst disseminating apartheid values among the black students. Based on unsorted and unarchived documents located in the personal files of the apartheid-era rectors, which included secret correspondence and memoranda of clandestine meetings, this paper illustrates the attempted exercise of hegemony by the apartheid state through its linked network with the university administration during the period 1960 to 1990. This is achieved by demonstrating the interaction between the state, Broederbond rectors and the black students at Fort Hare, who were subjected to persuasion and coercion as dictated by the state's apartheid vision of a racially defined and separated society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the links between the socio-cultural power structures of the Poro and Bondo secret societies and their interactions with internationalist human rights discourse in postconflict Sierra Leone. It argues that these secret societies offer gendered and cultural spaces that serve as social and political mobilizing symbols. These societies further provide forums as well as a stage for counter-discourses about gender-based violence and human rights violations, particularly with regards to the campaign against female circumcision. The paper concludes that despite internal tensions and squabbles, the Bondo secret societiy has gained most of its present-day solidarity by broadly disseminating to both members and non-members the highly charged narrative that the society’s exposure leads to its destruction. The Bondo society has been able to maintain cohesion and defend its interests by appropriating and invoking traditional knowledge and ritual codes.

This paper challenges two ideas in understanding the naturalistic rock art of Karamoja, Uganda, namely: 1) that its authors were probably the Iworopom or Later Stone Age (LSA) hunter-gatherers; and 2) that it depicts warriors holding bows and shields. In the absence of any knowledge of the meaning and authors of the rock art amongst present communities some suggestions are drawn from an analysis of the images depicted. A new rock art site at Kanamuget provides the opportunity to draw on an ethnographically contextualised approach to propose a probable Sor (Tepeth) authorship for it and to suggest that its symbolism was associated with secret society spirit mediums. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Chinese Ritual, Theatre & Folklore / Mínsú Qǔyì is the property of Shih Ho-Cheng Folk Culture Foundation and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper explores the links between the socio-cultural power structures of the Poro and Bondo secret societies and their interactions with internationalist human rights discourse in postconflict Sierra Leone. It argues that these secret societies offer gendered and cultural spaces that serve as social and political mobilizing symbols. These societies further provide forums as well as a stage for counter-discourses about gender-based violence and human rights violations, particularly with regards to the campaign against female circumcision. The paper concludes that despite internal tensions and squabbles, the Bondo secret societiy has gained most of its present-day solidarity by broadly disseminating to both members and non-members the highly charged narrative that the society's exposure leads to its destruction. The Bondo society has been able to maintain cohesion and defend its interests by appropriating and invoking traditional knowledge and ritual codes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the 1680s, Big Vehicle Religion gradually developed on the Yunnan-Burma frontier. It was banned by the Qing government and became a sect of Chinese secret societies. The founders of this religion combined various Buddhist and Taoist elements together and claimed this to be the route to their salvation. They also trained many students to be monks. After the Sino-Burma wars these monks established a Five Buddha Districts system among the Lahu and some Wa villages in western Mekong River, until the system was destroyed by the Qing government in the 1880s. The monks became leaders of the Luohei/Lahu through millenarianism and many Han immigrants also became involved in the movements to become the Lahu or the Wa. The monks performed critical roles as social activists in Lahu cultural reconstruction. As a shaping power, their human agency was deeply integrated into secret societies and they formulated regional political centers as well as a network mechanism for the floating indigenous populations. Secret societies clearly shaped a historical framework for local politics and economic flux in the Yunnan-Burma frontier and became a cross-border mechanism for contemporary life after the border between Yunnan, Burma and Thailand was decided. However, it used to be a networking dynamic linked with silver and copper minefields, Sino-Burma wars, and anti-Qing millenarianism. Local people could also use this frontier space for their negotiations with different states before the coming of European colonialism.

Copyright of Revue de Synthèse is the property of Brill Academic Publishers and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions is the property of Editions EHESS and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper examines the "underground" Christians of the Edo period, looking principally at the experiences of Christians in community. It is argued that these experiences reflect a tension between the complementary realms of secrecy on the one hand and privacy on the other, concluding that at the start of the Edo period, the Christians who took their faith and practice underground exhibited the characteristics of a proscribed religion practiced in secret. However, with the relaxation of enforcement of the state's religious policies, and with the passage of two centuries and more, the underground Christians became something different, what came to be styled the Kakure Kirishitan, who subsequently in modern times acquired and finally retained to the very end the characteristics of a secret society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Cahiers d'Études Africaines is the property of Editions EHESS and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Societes is the property of De Boeck Universite and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The abakuá secret society is part of the Afro-Cuban religious world. Emerging in 1836 in the port of Regla across from Old Havana, the male secret society abakuá is an urban religious phenomenon strictly confined to the western part of the island of Cuba, namely the port cities of Matanzas, Cárdenas and Havana. Future Abakuá members are hand-picked according to the criteria in force among the working-class population of Havana: courage in the face of any trial, a sense of duty towards other members, irreproachable sexual practices and an exaggerated and fiercely proclaimed masculinity. Indeed, its organization and its system of recruitment based on individual merit are at odds with that of people practising Santería or Palo Monte because these other Afro-Cuban cults are an exchange between gods and humans (trance, sacrifice or divination) and have an influence on everyday life problems.In fact, being abakuá implies a hyper-masculine, machismo gender construction. This article offers an analysis of the abakuá commitment from the perspective of gender and its representation in a public sphere. Belonging to this secret organization is a source of prestige in deprived Havana neighbourhoods and among an entire fringe of the urban population referred to as ‘the surroundings’ (el ambiente). Power games between individuals based on machismo and honour are a way of dealing with individual strategies for moving in the public space of the ambiente. Machismo as a system of power is legitimised through mythological, ritual and social practices. The construction of masculinity in the abakuá secret society is based on a constant comparison with women and with homosexual men. Women are excluded from the ritual system but are very important socially because they are central to a heterosexual construction of masculinity based on sexuality and family. Obviously, homosexual men represent an antagonistic masculinity and a real danger to the whole group. In this sense, being an abakuá means being a real man who knows how to move and behave in the ambiente of Havana.