Secret Societies | LIES | Extra History

[Music] hey there extra historians welcome to lies the part of the show where we tell you all the things we left out the stuff we got wrong and the secrets that we conceal I'm Rob I'm the head writer of extra history and this is our secret society series lies is made possible by our patrons thank you so much and thank you for choosing this series if you would like to be a patron and shape the future of our show you can go over to patreon join Discord and vote on topics and even suggest uh episode

topics we are also over on nebula first if you're interested in seeing our HIPAA of Alexandria series and we of course have merch I particularly like these little pins they are amazing even if you're not like a pin person I'm I'm not really a pin person I get crafty with them I've recently been using them for uh bookmarks as part of my madori Travelers notebook system of course it's Travelers notebook so it has himo right he's the best traveler of all recommended reading for this week is the real history of secret societies by Richard B

Spence It's a Great Courses course I would be a little careful about this one um one of the things that he likes to point out is how kind of the conspiracy milu around secret societies uh is a a major part of it but as a result of that I feel like he doesn't signpost like what is for sure fact and what is conjecture and what is conspiracy theory quite as well as you would normally expect in like a a history lecture Series so I found that a little a little difficult to work with um so

just you know your mileage may vary if you think that something in there sounds iffy I would check out another source uh the hidden history of the Boston Tea Party by Adam Jord also the Great Courses uh this was kind of interesting in in the example of a revolutionary secret society we didn't end up using uh it in the the show because one of the things that I looked at was that the Sons of Liberty might be a one that we covered I decided we'd wait on that one um but it does uh it is

quite interesting uh Yates The Man In The Masks by Richard Elman this is all your Yates Crowley drama I do want to say that the the Battle of blly road is not in here that was in an article written by uh Richard Elman in another publication but this has a lot of stuff about Yates and mysticism and the Golden Dawn and his leadership there and uh difficulties with Crowley and and the two hated each other um and if you want to hear all the stuff about like Crowley being sucked on by a vampire this is

this is where you find it um it's it's pretty Gonzo uh and then we just used a lot of academic articles on this I wanted to keep this series particularly academic uh just because I you know there's a lot of things that you will read or hear about these that I uh don't trust and there were a few times that I had to make choices um and tell maybe less of a good story but maybe more of an accurate story great example um supposedly the the one account has it that the the Bavarian government gets

the papers on the Illuminati because one of their careers is struck by lightning and I'm like I I don't know about that man um you will sometimes hear that in like podcasts about the Illuminati but I did not find that in the um academic sources we consulted uh so I just was a little I I wasn't sure about that that seemed pretty Fantastical to me um but let's just jump right in uh I am part of a secret societ or at least something that used to be a secret society and if you hang in for

I Puda Sid trip I will tell you which one and all about my initiation and the secrets that I was was given in inv all secret handshakes uh there uh like I said there were a few things I left out because I was being Ultra Vigilant um and uh one thing I do want to you know just just Mark for you is that the whole Battle of blly the road thing there are multiple accounts of how this happened I'm a little like 6040 on whether it happened um I think something like it happened but exactly

how big a deal of it uh it was is kind of Up For Debate um but I I couldn't not tell that story um and I feel like we made pretty clear that that accounts differ on it and you should have a little bit of skepticism uh about this I did want to mention we have other shows uh where secret societies come up there's a bunch in the sunat sen series uh the Sons of Liberty is mentioned in history of beer right um I'm working on our galdi series and there's some in there uh so

these are things that do affect history um a lot of the ones that we showed in this series might not be the most crucial something versus something like the revive China Society right in sunatan or or the black dragon Society the Triad societies they tend to proliferate during revolutionary periods uh so it's it's an interesting thing to just kind of like file in the back of your brain that you might see this again um also we said this in the first episode but it Bears repeating what makes a secret society secret is not the existence

of the society it's things like the membership the information uh that is being withheld that is the the quote unquote special knowledge which sometimes like the Illuminati is just stuff that people made up um a lot of people because of the nature of this series watched it out of order so they didn't get that explanation in episode one so this kind of regularly came up a few folks asked why we didn't do the Freemasons it's just too big a topic um I couldn't do it in one episode you have to go into you know the

legendary history of the organization versus like what is actually verified of when it might have started um you know supposedly it goes back you know to the building of you know the temples in Jerusalem and uh it's like know it really who doesn't you know like um but uh I did really consider doing a single episode on Freemasonry in the American Revolution I'm especially very interested in the idea of George Washington as a Freemason because he's also the Spy Master but he has this background in this organization that has these like spheres of membership and

you know information that is compartmentalized and uh and codes and things like that so I think that I would I think that's a really fertile area for a future episode but I wanted to be able to expand it to two episodes if I thought there was enough um Freemasonry is is very useful in revolutions because you already have these kind of like secret circles and uh networks that are not necessarily fully public knowledge so it's uh it's very cool and of course Freemasonry was practiced on on both sides of the Revolutionary conflict and you do

find people who are you know basically asking favors if they're prisoners of War um to their their Masonic Brothers on the other side Patron question from Gabriel pool what made the Freemasons so prone to takeover by the secret societies I think it's just because they were really successful you know it's it's the most well-known kind of secret society or fraternal organization that's around it was just very prominent in the 18th century it was pretty socially accepted I think also like its nature where there are you're inducted into kind of these these spheres of of knowing

more and more is prone to a bunch of powerful people within it just injecting their own stuff into it and saying like this is just the next level right um and of course Freemasonry uh again like we couldn't do in an episode because it breaks up there Scottish right Freemason Mar there's there's other there's other variations and it wasn't like in a solid stable place it was changing it was evolving um over time Patron comment by Michael Truscott I like the series a lot and has taught me something Colts may be mysterious but it ain't

that bad or scarier spooky as I thought yeah that's one of the fun things about this series is digging into something like the Illuminati and you're like oh God these are just a bunch of nerds like it's a bunch of college students you who being like doing College student stuff you know um and uh I I I always enjoy that I love the Golden Dawn one too because again it has this kind of like Sinister reputation then you start looking at you're like oh this is really goofy like these are some very serious interesting people

being very goofy um and I love that I love that in history YouTube question I love the setup for this series nailed The Vibes thank you Allie's art and Matt's narration were pivotal to the success of that framing device um and I'm glad to occasionally do something kind of kind of weird and different and kind of throw a curveball uh that'll be fun and not necessarily our usual thing um I really want like an ordo extra histor a mug or something like that first episode Cult of mithis Patron question from Hercules uh in episode one

you mentioned the cult of the Virgin Mary was unorthodox Divergent from Roman Catholicism uh and I'll deal with that part of the question first The Cult of the Virgin Mary isn't a deviation but normal part of Catholic Orthodox and similar forms of Christian worship that I mean that was my point though right so the the academic version of the word cult is a subset within a larger Orthodox belief system right so the The Cult of the Virgin isn't considered like heretical or outside it's like something that's a little a little different and a little more

specific but still within the Wider Circle of Catholicism right the same way that The Cult of mithis was within what was kind of I mean it's much looser definition than than uh Catholicism right um but like within Roman religion you do have this like Cult of mithis or you have the cult of Isis or whatever these are all accepted parts of Roman religion they're just a smaller subset um that is interested in something very specific um or is like a little little bit different but is still within the wider Community um and that is the

the academic version of the word cult which has just become adulterated to in popular culture to the point that it means like basically nothing um I mean it gets to the point where if you talk to certain um Christians mainstream Christians they'll say like oh you know that that that like a Buddhist Monastery is a cult and you're like that doesn't make any sense like wouldn't a Christian Monastery then be a cult like it similarly like controls your time involves meditation and it's just a hugely subjective term in the pop culture sense and uh again

to the point it's it's just something that you sling at someone else um nobody self-identifies as being in a cult which is why in in as Rel Scholars like they tend not to use it um and uh yeah it's one of those things that everyone thinks they know is what know what it means but when you actually start trying to nail down a definition it becomes really messy and weird the second part of this question is involving my characterization of the Catholic Church taking on some aspects of a secret society this is just something I

think is interesting that there yeah there are these grades of membership where you know more um based on uh how high you are in the church but like in the main I I feel like it's the the the concept of masses being in Latin the Bible being in Latin people not being able to read or uh or necessarily understand um what's happening in Mass um that it's all filtered through uh people higher up on the uh chain of chain of command basically I'm not saying the church is a secret society I'm saying it's interesting that

we have this kind of thing I also think it's probably likely that groups like the Freemasons intentionally modeled themselves on kind of the Catholic Church um I mean you especially look at something like I mean the Illuminati you one of the ranks as priest right or the hellfire club in 18th century London right which is I wanted to do a Hellfire Club episode but maybe that's maybe that's a future you know we we we have the editorial position uh at extra history that 18th century London is best London um I I I stand 18 Century

London so maybe in the future but um I so that's what I'm talking about um YouTube question I went to the London mithum at the Bloomberg building truly a must go yes I would love to go I've never been um I need I it's on my list now of something I will do the next time I'm in London episode two Illuminati Patron question from Michael TR Scott how did the Illuminati members create the symbol uh and anyway they made it it freaks me out so that the the pyramid with the eye the allseeing eye is

not an Illuminati symbol the Illuminati symbol is this one with the owl that we were showing which is you know reference to Athena the symbol the allseeing ey is a uh it's a Christian Enlightenment symbol and it's an abstract version of God right as as God being all powerful and allseeing it's used in Freemasonry that's kind of where it comes from but it's floating around to so it has no connection to the Illuminati it people just find it kind of spooky so they tack it on in the same way that uh the name Illuminati is

kind of sinister so it it became popular um it's part of like this coalescing of a myth of the Illuminati is that that like they're so powerful they have the symbol and it went on US money it's like well I mean there's a reason the great SE of the United States says in God we trust and then it has this representation of God right it just looks kind of weird uh to us Paton Western for from Corey how did Weiss hop react to the early Illuminati conspiracy theor must have been funny to have revolutions blamed

on your secret society some 5 years after it was destroyed yeah I mean he continued to write about luminism and luminist ideas and um and but what's what what's funny to me is how quickly mainstream all those ideas became just the idea of like secular government like that's the American Revolution you know like like I said Thomas Jefferson really really liked weop writing but he just like they just be very quickly became just something that a lot of people believed and were not controversial well we're controversial but like in the United States or places that

were that were adopting kind of democratic forms of government this is just like normal um and this was part of the uh part of normal discussions um so it's all the like Sinister stuff they like oh we will change society from behind the scenes um which you know kind of the point point of that was like we won't have a big bloody Revolution we'll just like fix things little by little by little right um so yeah it's it's it's a weird period Patron question by Joshua Kerner I hope you discuss how often fun conspiracy theories

end up being an anti-semitic Place particularly in context of how often Jews end up being the puppet master of Puppet Masters in conspiracy theories even or especially those involving organizations like the Illuminati yeah it's absolutely true and that became but that's a little bit more of a modern thing that became more this is not to say there weren't anti-semitic conspiracy theories before but um it became more prominent in Britain and the United States um when you start having the the tarist pograms and you have the flight of large amounts of Eastern European Jews to Britain

and the United States and that kind of thing um there there are conspiracy theories definitely in Eastern Europe um but uh you know before that it it was the Catholics especially in Britain in the United States like Britain has had a very strained relationship with Catholicism right you have Henry VII and breaking with the church and um you know these these Invasion attempts by uh Spain and then like multiple Wars with Catholic France and um as a result there is this this feeling that like there are like Jesuits like hiding in the Woodwork and quite

literally during the Elizabethan era this is true right like but um there is just this this ongoing sense this paranoia that like papist agents are trying are behind everything and behind every revolutionary and you know just like the modern conspiracy theories it's like ridiculous it's like it's the Jesuits who caused the you know French Revolution that is heavily anti-catholic um none of it makes sense because it's all just based on anxiety and whatever is the anxiety that that's being expressed at the time um uh and and those those those Catholic conspiracy theories were you know

existed well into the 20th century um so it is both but you know I I think it it has less to do with necessarily like the the group involved and more about like anxiety surrounding like what what is going on in society at that time uh YouTube question fun fact there is an active Freemon building in Orange County California yeah they're everywhere um there's one in Hong Kong that I walk by every once in a while and I just see the I you know I I see the uh the compass and I'm like oh yeah

that's the freem Amazon building nights to the Golden Circle YouTube uh comment Southern slavery expansionism is worthy of its own series uh both William Walkers and narcisco Lopez's filibustering and Nicaragua and Cuba respectively had the eventual goal of being annexed by the us as slave states all the Texas Revolution again it's it's important to remember that like this had worked with Texas essentially um it's obviously diff it's a different um context but the Practical effect is the same is like this very large slave state was added to the United States um Lopez asked both Jefferson

Davis and Robert Dee to lead expeditions to overthrow the Spanish government in Cuba they declined it but it didn't stop them from being from trying to do the same thing later on with their own government yeah um I mean also I just want to mention that it didn't happen with the intention of spreading slavery but like my by hope state of Hai was specifically overthrown by American citizens uh and um and a rogue Diplomat with the intention of handing it to the United States we talked about that in the path to Pearl Harbor Series so

even after the Civil War this is not something that stopped right um no mention of John wils Booth belonging to the Knights of the Golden Circle no because there's no actual evidence he was a member um this comes up a lot also Jesse James um there's no documentation of either being being Knights of the Golden Circle um Jesse James in particularly seems quite quite young like the this is before the Civil War and he's he's like a teenager during the Civil War it's not a um I think I think that is highly unlikely um Booth

was part of the no nothing party though I would love to do a series on Booth he's a fascinating character um and you know obviously a terrible person but like a just a really really interesting window on that period in Time episode four Golden Dawn I would like to be applauded personally for not using the line that Yates yeed him down the stairs that might appear on a mug at some point uh but it was a huge sacrifice on my part uh forgoing that that word play um as I mentioned before there are different versions

of the story I don't think Crowley was actually planning to stab anyone with the dagger a lot of times in in this type of symbolic magic um daggers are used for ritual purposes I think that was his intention I I think they would have called the police for sure and probably gotten him arrested if he was actually trying to stab someone with it um and just a lot of this anytime you read about Golden Dawn stuff it's very contradictory like the information you come across um it's partially just the nature of it like everyone telling

their own story and like all these people are storytellers we're talking about Yates we're talking about Crowley we're talking about Florence's far these are all people who are very very good storytellers that are would be good about spitting things one way or the other um and I I also want to say all this drama with McGregor is really simplified it it's really Bonkers uh I highly recommend that Yates biography or or even just um you know some of the articles that that are below they are they're pretty goofy finally the yaku patrion question from Jacob

white I'm not sure the yaku yaku are a secret society considering a civil war is what killed the yaku a war that brought even the US government into it this was the yam Ichi war of 1985 to 1989 well I'd go back what I said before about um secret societies having their uh deliberations and membership be secret not necessarily their existence um but also this is why we focus on the formation of the Yakuza because as I'll talk about later I think a lot of secret societies have become less secret over time and particularly in

the modern era just because of the the age we live in a lot of people were amazed at the idea of this big 18 in pipe being used to bludgeon someone that was the point people would have these big heavy metal pipes so that they could use them as a weapon but it wouldn't be confiscated as a weapon if you were walking around with it um I wanted to include that detail because it's one of those things of like if you know then you see that you go uhoh something bad's going to happen a lot

of people said that they understood ukabu for the first time in the video even though they've played it Yakuza I have not played those games I hear they're fantastic though someone said uh you said less than 12,000 mbers in the narration but the symbol is a greater than rather than a less than you've discovered a deeper level of secrecy by noticing this error I would like to see you after the video we had a great comment there were a bunch like this shortly after the henin earthquake that devastated the city of coob in the mid

90s I was V visiting Osaka and took up a part-time job during the summer at a labor dispatch office it was run by the Yakuza the boss was a typical ' 80s to 90s yakaza with the shade suit clamp pin badge shiny shoes and mercedesbenz um yeah um the Yakuza has used fronts like this to support earthquake relief efforts they uh did so during like the 2011 earthquake um kind of this is fairly well known um I would say though that this is not unusual for organized crime right uh you go to medine and Pablo

Escobar is very popular right he provided employment and money and infrastructure and like all this all this stuff um you look at um Italian you know Italian-American Mafia organizations and they would do a lot of like Community oriented stuff this is partially because they were originally like Community organizations right like kind of mutual Aid Society is in that like you know you're uh poor Italian or Jewish immigrants in New York and someone robs your store the police are probably not going to come and help you out that that well so there are organizations that step

in and fill that rule that might be criminal organizations but then there's also like this sort of Public Service aspect which while it might on the surface seem like oh we're doing good stuff for the community that's also buying you a certain amount of uh allies in the community right so if you have done earthquake relief if you are going and um dropping off money to you know a woman who whose husband has has died on the job um or something like that those people probably aren't going to rat you out to the police if

they see something that you're doing that is less than legal right so this is a feature not a bug it's very smart politics coming up on extra history HIPAA of Alexandria martyr for knowledge um this is going to I think surprise a lot of people if you if you think you know the story of HIPAA the um the the mathematician it's the late Roman Empire mathematician philosopher uh astronomer and astrologer uh who is torn apart by a crowd of monks there's a lot more to the story and even if you know that story there's a

lot more to the mythology that continues on into the 18th and 19th centuries then invasion of Canada Battle of Quebec this is going to be so neat so this is also like the uh origin story to a certain extent of Benedict Arnold and Aaron Burr um and we will follow that with a two-part on Benedict Arnold and treason so we're going to start with the invasion in Quebec for four episodes and then two episodes will do the rest of Benedict Arnold's life um I'm now uh writing uh garabaldi unifying Italy I wish I had known

more about garabaldi earlier he's a really interesting and exciting historical figure uh as well as as his wife Anita who's you know they're go off fighting Guerilla Wars in South America uh in in Brazil and Uruguay before they go back to Italy um and very much both of them being on the front lines and right now I'm I'm getting together topics for uh Magic the oulan spooky Vibes this is going to be our Halloween series and we're going to do a full Halloween Series this time and I'm looking at the the suggestions for that there

are some great ones Ian batuta Sid trip I am part of a secret society which one is it well there is an Honor Society in the US called f Kappa um I did well enough in college that I was invited to join uh by a a I think a history Professor they don't tell you who recommended you um um and this used to be a secret society back in Revolutionary War it started as a discussion group for things like democracy and secular government and all these Enlightenment things that were not safe to discuss um openly

and you know when the revolution happened and then this wasn't a big thing it just sort of became an Honor Society um so I yeah I I went uh I said yes um a friend of mine had joined and he he suggested I just say yes because it's a good thing to have on your resume I went through there was like kind of like an initiation a ceremony it was more like a you know it was more like a graduation kind of ceremony um and they give you this what's funny is it technically still has

aspects of secret society but they're like wink wink like this is for fun right like we were told oh there is a secret handshake and if you want to know it you can you know come over and I'll show you um and I did I learned the secret handshake and immediately forgot it because uh I can't do sequences that well like I can't do combination locks or like handshakes or algebra or uh anything like that so um then like there's this package of documents they give you and they're like don't show this to anyone um

and you know but it's kind of like um and uh I accidentally left it in uh my friend's dorm room after uh he was also also a member though so he he gave it back to me but what's funny about it is like there is like a secret society aspect for it but it's like for fun it is very specifically like a this isn't really a secret society but it's sort of fun for it to be a little bit of a secret society right um it's not something I think about all the time I've never

been to a meeting or anything like it made my grandmother very happy that I got into it and that was kind of the end of it but um I think that's how a lot of secret societies have gone like you can't really have a secret society in the age of the internet right if I want to Google like rituals for Freemasonry I'm going to get them right it's it's just not the same it's not not to say that there's no role for them but um I I just think that it's uh things are different now

and uh the secret societies that their secret are either you know the kind of revolutionary societies that are discussing things that we would find not uh not okay or um are kind of these more like fraternal organizations that are just for fun but they want to have this other layer to them or uh it's important like for example the the Shriners to to give money anonymously um so that's I think where things have been going harda secret society these days the days of cell phones all right thank you very much I'll see you next time

for HIPAA of Alexandria say did you hear the one about kuya Koy Joseph blame Izzy coin inner Dominic valenciana arite games Angelo valenciana and Amed zad Turk being legendary patrons yeah turns out they're the best