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Nyau (also: Nyao meaning mask [1] or initiation) is a secret society of the Chewa, an ethnic group of the Bantu peoples from Central and Southern Africa. [2] The Nyau society consists of initiated members of the Chewa people, forming the cosmology or indigenous religion of the people.
Initiation is a rite of passage marking entrance or acceptance into a group or society. It could also be a formal admission to adulthood in a community or one of its formal components. In an extended sense, it can also signify a transformation in which the initiate is 'reborn' into a new role.
The exact qualifications for labeling a group a secret society are disputed, but definitions generally rely on the degree to which the organization insists on secrecy, and might involve the retention and transmission of secret knowledge, the denial of membership or knowledge of the group, the creation of personal bonds between members of the organization, and the use of secret rites or rituals ...
Secret societies can have ceremonial initiations, secret signs of recognition (gestures, handshakes, passwords), formal secrets (the 'true' name of the society, a motto, or society history). Traditional college fraternities or sororities, literary societies, honorary groups, and pre-professional fraternal can have similarly secret rituals but ...
Historically, the name usually refers to the Bavarian Illuminati, an Enlightenment-era secret society founded on 1 May 1776 in the Electorate of Bavaria. The society's stated 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 ...
When a stranger came to town, Clampers would inform him that to do business in the town it was essential to join the local secret society. The initiation rite was a parody of Freemasonic, Oddfellow and other orders, and took many forms, including rowing the initiate down a slanted ladder in a wheelbarrow, hoisting him into the air and leaving ...
Here are the presidents who have belonged to a secret society at some point: Christina Sterbenz contributed to a previous version of this story. See Also: What 11 highly successful people watch on TV.
A fraternal order is a voluntary membership group organised as an order, with an initiation ritual and traits alluding to religious, chivalric or pseudo-chivalric orders, guilds, or secret societies. Fraternal orders typically have secular purposes, serving as social clubs, cultural organizations and providing a form of social welfare through ...