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There are many collegiate secret societies in North America.They vary greatly in their level of secrecy and the degree of independence from their universities. A collegiate secret society makes a significant effort to keep affairs, membership rolls, signs of recognition, initiation, or other aspects secret from the public.
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.
Skull and Bones (also known as The Order, Order 322 or The Brotherhood of Death) is an undergraduate senior secret student society at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. The oldest senior-class society at the university, Skull and Bones has become a cultural institution known for its powerful alumni and conspiracy theories.
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 ...
A spiritual initiation rite normally implies a shepherding process where those who are at a higher level guide the initiate through a process of greater exposure of knowledge. This may include the revelation of secrets, hence the term secret society for such organizations, usually reserved for those at the higher level of understanding.
The F.H.C. Society (nicknamed "the Flat Hat Club"), founded in 1750, is the first collegiate secret society recorded in North America; unlike the newer Phi Beta Kappa, the F.H.C. was a Latin-letter society, its name taken from the initial letters of a Latin motto (perhaps "Fraternitas, Humanitas, Cognitioque"). [12]
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.
As with most secret societies, little is known about the initiation rituals of The Dickey Club, and references to it are few and far between. What is known is that at one point there appear to have been two phases of initiation into The Dickey Club; a public phase, followed by a private ritual.