Top Ten Secret Organizations

The Illuminati is a name given to several groups, both real and fictitious. Historically, the name usually refers to the Bavarian Illuminati, an Enlightenment-era secret society founded on 1 May 1776. The society's goals were to oppose superstition, obscurantism, religious influence over public life, and abuses of state power. "The order of the day," they wrote in their general statutes, "is to put an end to the machinations of the purveyors of injustice, to control them without dominating them.

Before living in Paris amongst "The Lost Generation" of Hemingway, Pound and Fitzgerald, while honing a poetic voice that would yield three Pulitzer Prizes, MacLeish was a Yale Graduate and a member of Skull and Bones.

Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.) ('Order of the Temple of the East' or 'Order of Oriental Templars') is an international fraternal and religious organization founded at the beginning of the 20th century by Carl Kellner and Theodor Reuss.

Dame Frances Yates, the preeminent scholar on the subject, urges all “sensible people and sensible historians” to put away ideas of Rosicrucianism as a shadowy secret society, instead arguing its definition as a looser, more fluid body of philosophical and theological thought.

Answer: In The Da Vinci Code, the Priory of Sion is a secret society, founded A.D. 1099, claiming such members as Isaac Newton, Victor Hugo, and Leonardo Da Vinci. According to The Da Vinci Code, the primary purpose of the Priory of Sion is to maintain the truth that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and had children with her.

The Ku Klux Klan was one of a number of secret, oath-bound organizations using violence, which included the Southern Cross in New Orleans (1865) and the Knights of the White Camelia (1867) in Louisiana.

The Ancient and Mystical Order Rosæ Crucis (AMORC), also known as the Rosicrucian Order, is the largest Rosicrucian organization in the world. It has various lodges, chapters and other affiliated bodies throughout the globe, operating in 19 different languages.

The Carbonari (Italian for "charcoal makers") was an informal network of secret revolutionary societies active in Italy from about 1800 to 1831. The Italian Carbonari may have further influenced other revolutionary groups in France, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Russia, Brazil and Uruguay.

Propaganda Due (Italian pronunciation: [propaˈɡanda ˈduːe]; P2) was a Masonic lodge under the Grand Orient of Italy, founded in 1945 that, by the time its Masonic charter was withdrawn in 1976, had transformed into a clandestine, pseudo-Masonic, ultraright organization operating in contravention of Article 18 of the Constitution of Italy that banned secret associations.

The ODESSA is an American codename (from the German: Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen, meaning: Organization of Former SS Members) coined in 1946 for a possible Nazi underground escape plan at the end of World War II by a group of SS officers with the aim of facilitating secret escape routes.

The Hellfire Clubs has 85 ratings and 23 reviews. Tim said: Despite the somewhat abrupt start and ending to the narrative, this is a fairly solid, eviden... The Hellfire Clubs has 85 ratings and 23 reviews.

Bohemian Grove is a restricted 2,700-acre (1,100 ha) campground located at 20601 Bohemian Avenue, in Monte Rio, California, belonging to a private San Francisco–based gentlemen's club known as the Bohemian Club.

The ANAK Society is the oldest known secret society and honor society at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. Founded in 1908, ANAK's purpose is "to honor outstanding juniors and seniors who have shown both exemplary leadership and a true love for Georgia Tech".

Solar Lodge was a secret society in the United States that was established in 1965 and withdrew into initiatory inactivity in 1972. It was loosely based on ideas from Ordo Templi Orientis and used the curriculum of the A.'.

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn ... a secret society within the Isis-Urania, ... Hermetic Brotherhood of Light;

Hui (Chinese: 會) is a Chinese word, generally meaning 'conference', but which is sometimes used to refer to a secret society. It is often mutually interchangeable with terms like kongsi (Chinese: 公司; pinyin: Gōngsī), a term generally used to mean 'corporation', or a Chinese clan (Chinese: 會館; pinyin: Huìgǔan).

Aleph (Japanese: アレフ, Hepburn: Arefu), formerly Aum Shinrikyo (オウム真理教, Oumu Shinrikyō) is a Japanese doomsday cult founded by Shoko Asahara in 1984. It carried out the deadly Tokyo subway sarin attack in 1995 and was found to have been responsible for another smaller sarin attack the previous year.

The Utile Dulci was a learned and musical Academy and Secret Society in Stockholm in Sweden. It was founded in memory of Olof von Dalin in 1766, and held its last session in 1795.