The Red Pyramid at Dashur has the second largest base of any pyramid in Egypt (only slightly smaller then the Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza); each side measures 220m (722 feet).
However, with it's sides sloping at 43°22', it is substantially shorter at 104 meters (343 feet). Nevertheless, it is the fourth highest pyramid ever built in Egypt, with almost 160 layers of stone.

Stripped from its limestone casing, this pyramid reveals the reddish sandstone used to build most of its core. This explains its modern-day name, the Red Pyramid.
Its Ancient Egyptian name was "The Shining One".

The severe structural problems encountered while building the Bent Pyramid South of Dashur, led Snofru (Sneferu) to build yet another pyramid, at a small distance to the North. Significantly, the Red Pyramid was the first successful, true, cased Pyramid built in Egypt, ushering in the era of the Giza style pyramids.

Built by Khufu's father, Snefru, what really makes this pyramid special today is the lack of crowds and circus atmosphere that plagues the Giza Plateau, along with the fact that it can currently be entered without limitation.

Tura limestone was used as casing stone to cover the pyramid. Though some casing still remains, most has been removed. However, about every twentieth casing stone discovered had inscriptions on the back sides. Some were inscribed with the cartouche of Snefru while others had inscriptions in red paint naming the various work crews, such as the "Green Gang" or the "Western Gang". Snefru's cartouche was an important discovery, particularly since there are no identifying inscriptions within the pyramid.

East of the pyramid is what remains of a mortuary temple, as well as the first capstone (Pyramidion) ever found belonging to an Old Kingdom Pyramid. It was recovered in fragments and reconstructed. The mortuary temple itself, though nothing much remains, is significant because Snefru pioneered the east west alignment of Egyptian temples to match the path of the sun.

The Red Pyramid History

The inscriptions found on the back of the casing stones gave us clues to how long the pyramid took to build and also revealed the sequence of work that took place.

An inscription found at the base of this pyramid has shown that work had started during the year of the 15th cattle count of Snofru's reign. Since the cattle counts were held at irregular intervals during this reign, this refers to somewhere between Snofru's 15th and 30th year. It is very likely that the pyramid construction was started at the time when structural problems encountered when building the Bent Pyramid forced the builders to temporarily abandon this project.

Interestingly, a second inscription found 30 courses of stones higher is dated 2 to 4 years later than the inscription found at the base. This gives an idea about the speed at which the Egyptians were able to build a monument like this pyramid.

Within four years, 30 percent of the pyramid had been completed, and the entire pyramid was finished in about seventeen years.

There is little doubt that Snofru was finally buried in this pyramid, although the fragments of human remains found inside the burial chamber are not certain to have been his.

Interestingly, during the reign of Pepi I of the 6th Dynasty, this pyramid along with its southern neighbor, the Bent Pyramid, was considered as one estate.

The Geometry of the Red Pyramid

The Red Pyramid was built with a slope of only 43°22'. Its base length is 220 meters, that is 32 meters more than the Bent Pyramid. Its height is the same as the Bent Pyramid.

Basic Dimensions:

* base length: 220 m
* slope: 43o 22'
* height: 104 m
* burial chamber: 4.18 x 8.55 m (height: 14.67 m)

The broader base and lower slope were intended to better spread the mass of this pyramid and thus avoid the structural problems that had temporarily halted works on the Bent Pyramid.

The internal structure of this pyramid is a further continuation of the pyramid at Meidum and the Bent Pyramid. Contrary to this latter monument, however, there is only one internal structure, making it a lot more simple.

The entrance is located 28 m high up in the Northern face of the pyramid.
A descending passage (at an angle of 27 degrees) leads down for 62.63 m to a short horizontal corridor 7.4m long. This is followed by two almost identical antechambers with corbelled roofs. Both antechambers measure 3.65 by 8.36 m and are 12.31 m high.

The burial chamber can only be reached via a short passage which opens high up in the wall of the second antechamber. The burial chamber measures 4.18 by 8.55 m. Its corbelled roof goes up to a height of 14.67 m. It is located well above ground level, in the core of the pyramid.

The chapel built against the Eastern face of the pyramid was finished hastily, probably after the death of Snofru. It is somewhat more elaborate than the eastern chapel of the Red Pyramid or the pyramid at Meidum in that it houses an inner sanctuary, flanked by two smaller chapels.

There is no trace of a causeway leading down to the Valley Temple, of which few remains were found at the end of the 19th century.

In fact, all three of the chambers in this pyramid have corbelled ceilings, with between eleven and fourteen layers. Even with some two million tones of stone above, this ceiling design is so strong that there are no cracks or structural problems even today.

A short passage on the south side of the first chamber leads to a second chamber. These first two chambers are at ground level, while a third chamber is higher, built within the masonry of the pyramid itself.

The second chamber is unusual in that it lies directly under the apex of the pyramid, or center point of the pyramid. It is one of the only pyramids in Egypt to have this design layout. The final chamber, with its entrance passageway about 25 feet above the floor of the second chamber, can be accessed by a staircase (of modern construction).

Egyptologists believe the final chamber was intended to be the actual burial chamber. The floor has been excavated in an unsuccessful attempt to find other passageways.

For the second year in a row Moscow has been the world's most expensive city. After calculating the cost of housing, transportation, food, clothing, household goods and entertainment Moscow is 34.4 percent more expensive than New York. The Russian capital is choked with luxury cars, upscale construction projects and a new financial self-esteem. If Lenin had ever been buried he'd be rolling in his grave now.

click on image to enlarge

But all of the economic progress is coming at what cost? Over the past two years escalating numbers of vehicles on the roads put a stifling strain on the environment. Today Moscow has nearly 3,000,000 cars. Gray-brown noxious haze of smog covers the streets filled with jam-packed traffic, which blows out tons of unhealthy exhaust fumes of carbon monoxide and other harmful chemicals. Additionally there are 12 huge heat power stations, 53 district heating stations and 3,000 industrial enterprises still operating within the city borders. As a result concentrations of harmful substances often exceed maximum allowable by 10-20 times.

The level of air pollution varies from one neighborhood of the city to another. This accounts for the variability of child health levels. In the most severely polluted areas the prevalence of childhood bronchial asthma is much higher, and the cases of disharmonious physical development among children are more frequent.

Several government programs were designed to combat air pollution with a target to bring Moscow back down to EU standards by 2010. But those are just optimistic plans considering the severe present conditions

O n Sunday, May 21, 2006 an adult male mallard was brought to the International Bird Rescue Research Center (IBRRC), with what appeared to be a broken wing. Since 1971, the IBRRC has been rescuing birds from the devastating effects of oil spills around the world. Marie Travers, assistant manager of the center, radiographed the mallard and was immediately shocked by what was revealed on the x-ray. A very clear image of what appeared to be the face, or head, of an extraterrestrial alien was in the bird’s stomach.

Blown up: Alien face?

Alien duck xray
– Help IBRRC and bid on this unusual x-ray image online via eBay.

The IBRRC staff discussed if an alien life form was either consumed by or trying to communicate with the people of Earth through the duck, because the center is located in an area of California known for its mysterious crop circles.
Karen Benzel, Public Affairs Director for IBRRC noted that the symmetry of the alien's face is perfect, with an intense grimace, as if it was in anguish after being eaten. “Since aliens are notoriously short, reports are they are usually no more then 3-feet tall, we initially thought the small proportions of the face meant the duck had consumed a juvenile extraterrestrial being,” Benzel quipped. “We immediately knew this was something we had never seen before in our 35 year history.”

Full x-ray – The radiograph measures 17" x 14" and is of a mallard duck.

But, is it the face or head of an alien? Regrettably, IBRRC reports the duck succumbed to its injuries and passed away quickly, quietly, and peacefully after the x-rays were taken, and not from the alien bursting through the duck’s chest in classic gory Hollywood style. Was it an alien channeling through the duck or an anomaly similar to the “Face on Mars,” discovered by the Viking Lander when it orbited the Red Planet in 1976? No one knows. What is known is the one-of-a-kind x-ray, which measures 17” x 14”, will be sold on eBay along with a certificate of authenticity. All of the proceeds will go towards funding IBRRC’s rehabilitation programs. The center is also selling t-shirts with the alien image.
Jay Holcomb, Director of IBRRC, states “IBRRC is a 501c3 non-profit and donations fund our wildlife rehabilitation programs. Our Alien in the Duck X-Ray will surely garner a significant amount of interest, just like the NunBun™, and the Madonna in the Cheese Toast, which sold on eBay for a staggering amount of money.” The auction ened on Sunday, June 4, 2006 at 3 p.m. PST.
Holcomb continues, “Proceeds from the sale of this one-of-a-kind x-ray will go towards funding our continuing efforts to rescue and rehabilitate oiled, orphaned and injured waterfowl and aquatic birds.”
A necropsy was done by UC Davis veterinarians and showed the stomach had some grain in it, but no alien.
Established in 1971, IBRRC is the world’s leading first responder bird rescue organization and has saved countless birds from the devastating effects of hundreds of oil spills, including the Exxon Valdez, Apex Houston and MV Treasure disasters.
The IBRRC manages two centers in California, one located in Cordelia/Fairfield next to Suisun Marsh along the San Francisco Bay and the other in San Pedro, near Los Angeles Harbor. IBRRC and the UC Davis Wildlife Health Center work cooperatively helping birds in need of special care.
For more information about IBRRC programs or to make a donation or to buy an Alien in the Duck t-shirt!

This is a list of the ten most famous ciphers and writing systems that are still unsolved.

1.Kryptos

Kryptos is a sculpture by American artist James Sanborn located on the grounds of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Langley, Virginia, in the United States. Since its dedication on November 3, 1990, there has been much speculation about the meaning of the encrypted messages it bears. It continues to provide a diversion for employees of the CIA and other cryptanalysts attempting to decrypt the messages. The ciphertext on one half of the main sculpture contains 869 characters in total, however Sanborn released information in April of 2006 stating that an intended letter on the main half of Kryptos was missing. This would bring the total number of characters to 870 on the main portion. The other half of the sculpture comprises a Vigenère encryption tableau, comprised of 869 characters, if spaces are counted.

2.Linear A

Linear A is one of two linear scripts used in ancient Crete (a third script is Cretan Hieroglyphs). They were discovered and named by Arthur Evans. Linear B was deciphered in 1952 by Michael Ventris and was used to write Mycenaean Greek. Linear A is far from being totally deciphered but it is partially understood and it may be read through Linear B values. Though the two scripts share many of the same symbols, using the syllables associated with Linear B in Linear A writings produces words that are unrelated to any known language.

3.The Phaistos Disk

The disc of Phaistos is the most important example of hieroglyphic inscription from Crete and was discovered in 1903 in a small room near the depositories of the “archive chamber”, in the north - east apartments of the palace, together with a Linear A tablet and pottery dated to the beginning of the Neo-palatial period (1700- 1600 B.C.). Both surfaces of this clay disc are covered with hieroglyphs arranged in a spiral zone, impressed on the clay when it was damp. The signs make up groups divided from each other by vertical lines, and each of these groups should represent a word. Forty five different types of signs have been distinguished, of which a few can be identified with the hieroglyphs in use in the Proto- palatial period.

4.Shugborough Hall Enscription

The Shepherd’s Monument at Shugborough Hall carries a relief (pictured above) that shows a woman watching three shepherds pointing to a tomb. On the tomb is depicted the Latin text “Et in arcadia ego” (”I am also in Arcadia” or “I am even in Arcadia”). The relief is based on a painting by the French artist Nicholas Poussin, known itself as Et in Arcadia ego, but the relief has a number of modifications — most noticeably that it is reversed horizontally. Another difference is a change in which letter of the tomb a shepherd is pointing at. In the painting the letter R in ARCADIA is being pointed to. The finger in the sculpture is broken, but was pointing to the N in IN. The sculpture also adds an extra sarcophagus to the scene, placed on top of the one with the Latin phrase. Below the image of the monument are the following letters:

D O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V. M

For adherents of the modern Grail-conspiracy legend, the inscription is alleged to hold a clue to the location of the Holy Grail.

5.Chinese Gold Bar Cipher

In 1933, seven gold bars were allegedly issued to a General Wang in Shanghai, China. These gold bars appear to represent metal certificates related to a bank deposit with a U.S. Bank. The gold bars themselves have pictures, Chinese writing, some form of script writing, and cryptograms in latin letters. Not surprisingly, there is a dispute concerning the validity of the claim for the deposit. It may help to resolve the dispute if someone can decipher the cryptograms on the bars. Nobody has yet put for the a theory as to their meaning. The Chinese writing has been translated, and discusses a transaction in excess of $300,000,000.

6.Beale Ciphers

In 1885, a small pamphlet was published in Virginia containing a story and three encrypted messages. According to the pamphlet, around 1820 a man named Beale buried two wagons-full of treasure at a secret location in Bedford County, Virginia. He then left a small locked box with a local innkeeper, and left town, never to be seen again. The pamphlet went on to state that the innkeeper, after having not heard from Beale for many years, opened the box and discovered encrypted messages. Never able to read them, he eventually passed them along to a young friend shortly before the innkeeper’s death in 1863. According to the pamphlet, the friend spent the next 20 years trying to decrypt the messages, solving only one which detailed the tons of gold, silver and jewels that were buried, along with a general location. The still unsolved messages supposedly give exact directions, and a list of who the treasure belongs to.

7.Voynich Manuscript

At least 400 years old, this is a 232-page illuminated manuscript entirely written in a secret script. It is filled with copious drawings of unidentified plants, herbal recipes of some sort, astrological diagrams, and many small human figures in strange plumbing-like contraptions. The script is unlike anything else in existence, but is written in a confident style, seemingly by someone who was very comfortable with it. In 2004 there were some compelling arguments which described a technique that would seemingly prove that the manuscript was a hoax, but to date, none of the described techniques have been able to replicate a single section of the Manuscript, so speculations continue.

8.The Dorabella Cipher

Probably Elgar’s most popular work is his ‘Enigma’ Variations which, apart from its undoubted musical merit, still tantalises the musical detectives with the hidden ’secrets’ which Elgar cleverly wove into the fabric of the score. But Elgar, who was fascinated by codes, ciphers, riddles and other forms of puzzles, has left us another mystery - the ‘Dorabella’ cipher (pictured above). One hundred and ten years ago - to be precise, on the 14 July 1897 - Elgar sent a letter to a young friend, Miss Dora Penny, the 22 year-old daughter of the Rev. Alfred Penny, Rector of St Peter’s, Wolverhampton. The unusual feature of the letter was that it was in a cipher which, a century later, still presents a challenge. There have been a couple of attempts at solving it but neither of these seem entirely satisfactory.

9.Chaocipher

John F. Byrne invented Chaocipher in 1918 and tried unsuccessfully for almost 40 years to interest the U.S. government in his cipher system. He offered a reward to anyone who could break his cipher but the reward was never claimed. In 1989, John Byrne, son of John F. Byrne, demonstrated Chaocipher to two Cryptologia editors to determine if it had any commercial value. After making some improvements and providing additional information they jointly issue a new challenge to would-be solvers. In his autobiography, Silent Years, John F. Byrne, a lifelong friend of James Joyce, devoted the last chapter to Chaocipher which he had invented in 1918. Byrne described his attempts starting in 1920 to interest the State, War, and Navy Departments in his indecipherable cipher and his frustration with the disinterest shown by William F. Friedman and other cryptanalytic experts after he had demonstrated his machine.

10.D’agapeyeff Cipher

75628 28591 62916 48164 91748 58464 74748 28483 81638 18174
74826 26475 83828 49175 74658 37575 75936 36565 81638 17585
75756 46282 92857 46382 75748 38165 81848 56485 64858 56382
72628 36281 81728 16463 75828 16483 63828 58163 63630 47481
91918 46385 84656 48565 62946 26285 91859 17491 72756 46575
71658 36264 74818 28462 82649 18193 65626 48484 91838 57491
81657 27483 83858 28364 62726 26562 83759 27263 82827 27283
82858 47582 81837 28462 82837 58164 75748 58162 92000

The D’Agapeyeff cipher is an as-yet unbroken cipher that appears in the first edition of Codes and Ciphers, an elementary book on cryptography published by the Russian-born English cartographer Alexander D’Agapeyeff in 1939. Offered as a “challenge cipher” at the end of the book, it was not included in later editions, and D’Agapeyeff is said to have admitted later to having forgotten how he had encrypted it. It has been argued that the failure of all attempts at decryption is due to D’Agapeyeff incorrectly encrypting the original text. However, it has been argued that the cipher may still be successfully attacked using computational methods such as genetic algorithms.

1. Israel makes palestinian schoolgirls sexually promiscuous by selling them aphrodisiac bubble-gum

"Palestinian authorities uncovered Israeli efforts to spread a special kind of gum that contains sexual hormone between Palestinians. The authorities requested laboratory tests on the gum which were conducted in Cairo. Those tests showed that the gum contains progesterone which is responsible for sexual arousal and also prevents pregnancies. Palestinian authorities confiscated 200 tonnes of gum in the city of al-Khalil alone. The Washington Post claimed in report that if it asked a chemistry professor in the Hebrew university to examine the gum. His tests were negative, however the paper also reported that the majority of Palestinians believe the conspiracy. It quoted one Palestinian saying that it was possible to send a space ship to Mars then it is possible to manufacture a 'sexual gum' it is after all a war." (report by Mohammad Dalbah mentioned by middle east analyst Daniel Pi on his book pes)

2. Alien Reptiles are dominating the World

According to BBC Reporter David Icke, reptilian humanoids are the force behind a worldwide conspiracy directed at manipulation and control of humanity. He contends that most of the world's leaders, from William Jefferson Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and George W. Bush to members of the British royal family, are in fact related to the 7-foot (2.1 m) tall, blood-drinking reptilians from the star system Alpha Draconis.

According to an interview with David Icke, Christine Fitzgerald, a confidante of the late Diana, Princess of Wales, claims that Diana told her that the Royal Family were reptilian aliens, and that they could shapeshift. David Icke and others have claimed that U.S. President George W. Bush and his family are part of this same bloodline.

Icke claims, based on his exploration of genealogical connections to European royalty, that many presidents of the United States have been and are reptilian humanoids. In his view, United States foreign policy after September 11 is the product of a reptilian conspiracy to enslave humanity, with George W. Bush as a servant of the reptilians. He also theorizes that the reptilians came to Earth from the constellation Draco.

3. Wingdings font has a secret message of approval to kill Jews

Wingdings is a font included in all versions of Microsoft Windows, with a history of controversy. In 1992, only days after the release of Windows 3.1, it was discovered that the character sequence "NYC" in Wingdings was rendered as a skull and crossbones symbol, Star of David, and thumbs up gesture. This could be interpreted as a message of approval of killing Jews, especially those from New York City. Microsoft strongly denied this was intentional, and insisted that the final arrangement of the glyphs in the font was largely random. (The character sequence "NYC" in the later-released Webdings font, in turn, is rendered as eye, heart, and city skyline, which could be interpreted as "I Love New York City". Microsoft has stated that this is intentional.)

An urban legend that spread after the September 11, 2001 attacks was that if the sequence "Q33NY" is typed in Wingdings, the Q becomes an aircraft, the threes become lined documents (which resemble skyscrapers), the N becomes a skull and crossbones, and the Y becomes the Star of David. The resulting graphics look like an aircraft preparing to impact the World Trade Center, with a message of death for those of Jewish faith. The "NY" stands for New York, and "Q33" allegedly was the designation of one of the aircraft. However, the theory that this has any valid non-accidental connection with the attacks falls apart under scrutiny: the terrorist attacks were not specifically directed at Jews, and none of the aircraft used on that day bore the designation of Q33. Another suggestion was that "Q33" was a reference to a bus route, typically alleged to be at the World Trade Center itself, or to one of the airports involved. In reality, bus route Q33 serves LaGuardia Airport, and none of the hijacked aircraft took off from or were heading there.

Various other combinations of Wingdings characters are alleged to have special significance by conspiracy theorists

4.Stephen King killed John Lennon

Steve Lightfoot's book "Lennon Murder Expose" suggest his theory with "strong" evidence from government codes in the bold print headlines of Time. His website's introduction reads: "Contrary to all reports about a lone drifter named Mark David Chapman who allegedly shot John Lennon in the back December 8, 1980 you'll find ample evidence in the back issues of Time, Newsweek, and US News and World Report magazines to suggest otherwise. Namely, that John Lennon was, not only politically assassinated, but that Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and, you'd better sit down, horror novelist Stephen King are the three people who can be proven guilty of the crime. King being the real murderer and Chapman but a look-alike, paid actor misleading you with an absolute hoax, the media in tow."

"The evidence, specifically, is government codes in the bold print headlines of Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report magazines that were printed shortly before, during, and after the night of December 8, 1980. Hints in the headlines that you won't find anywhere else that plug into John Lennon's assassination with up to 70% frequency at times. These government codes, which read like gallows humor; «Thinking About John Lennon...Johnny Comes Marching Home...Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang, Ouch, Ouch...The Job Richard Nixon Really Wanted...Blasting the Opposition...America Needs A Poet Laureate...Maybe...Heeding Those Subtle Signs...Magazine Maze...All the Presidents Magazines...». These codes include the killer's face and true identity printed three and two months before the crime replete with headlines describing the then yet to come crime scene: «One Great Big Zippo Lighter...Perils of Pyrokinesis». Pyrokinesis means fire and movement, and a man at night with a gun ablaze, crouched in a raincoat looks like a great big cigarette lighter. Subtle but dramatic codes."

5. The Early Middle Ages (614–911 AD) never occurred. Year 2007 is actually 1710

The Phantom time hypothesis is a theory developed by Heribert Illig (born 1947) in 1991, which suggests that the Early Middle Ages (more precisely, the period 614–911 AD) never occurred, meaning that all artifacts attributed to this period are from other times and that all historical figures from this period are outright fabrications. The vast majority of historians believe this theory to be wrong. The basis of Illig's claims is the paucity of archaeological evidence that can be reliably dated to this period; perceived inadequacies of radiometric and dendrochronological methods of dating this period, and the over-reliance of medieval historians on written sources. For Western Europe, Illig claims the presence of Romanesque architecture in the tenth century as evidence that less than half a millennium could have passed since the fall of the Roman Empire, and concludes that the entire Carolingian period, including the person of Charles the Great, is a forgery of medieval chroniclers, more precisely a conspiracy instigated by Otto III and Gerbert d'Aurillac.

The theory also stems from the belief that during the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in Europe (1582 AD), while compensating for a ten day discrepancy in the old Julian calendar, many dates were falsely (or ineptly) recalculated as the new system created a thirteen day discrepancy. The original mathematical blemish was attributed to the Julian year being 1.3 minutes too long (which is commonly agreed as factual).

6. Paul McCartney is dead. The current is just a lookalike

The supposed death of Paul McCartney, a member of the Beatles, was the subject of a rumour that began circulating in October 1969. Proponents of the theory, which is commonly referred to as the Paul is dead hoax, claim that McCartney died in a car crash in late 1966 and was replaced by a lookalike before the recording of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The supposed "clues" are given throughout the post-1966 Beatles material in the form of peculiar album covers, possible symbolism in strange lyrics, and backmasking. The rumour started when radio DJ Russ Gibb received a call from a listener who claimed that McCartney had died and the Beatles (namely John Lennon) had sprinkled clues throughout the Beatles' albums for fans to pick up on. The rumour quickly died down in 1970 after McCartney revealed himself to be alive on the cover of Newsweek magazine. However, some theorists still maintain that Paul is dead and the Paul McCartney who played with Wings and in the Super Bowl is the same lookalike who played with the Beatles after Revolver.

7. NASA Faked the Moon Landings

Apollo Moon Landing hoax accusations are claims that some or all elements of the Apollo Moon landings were faked by NASA and possibly members of other involved organizations. Some groups and individuals have advanced alternate historical narratives which tend, to varying degrees, to include the following common elements:

The Apollo Astronauts did not land on the Moon; NASA and possibly others intentionally deceived the public into believing the landing(s) did occur by manufacturing, destroying, or tampering with evidence, including photos, telemetry tapes, transmissions, and rock samples; NASA and possibly others continue to actively participate in the conspiracy to this day. Enthusiasts of this theory claim that: The astronauts could not have survived the trip because of exposure to radiation The photos were altered: the Crosshairs on some photos appear to be behind objects, rather than in front of them where they should be The quality of the photographs is implausibly high. There are no stars in any of the photos, and astronauts never report seeing any stars from the capsule windows. Identical backgrounds in photos that are listed as taken miles apart. The moon's surface during the daytime is so hot that camera film would have melted. No blast crater appeared from the landing The launch rocket produced no visible flame. The flag placed on the surface by the astronauts flapped despite there being no wind on the Moon. Many commentators have published detailed rebuttals to the hoax claims. According to a 1999 poll conducted by the The Gallup Organization, what Gallup termed an "overwhelming majority" of the US public, some 89 percent, did not believe the landing was faked, while 6 percent did and 5 percent were undecided.

You would think that the Vatican's Secret Archives would be some dumb conspiracy theory. I mean, it sounds ridiculous. The Vatican's Secret Archives. Let it roll off your tongue. Surely, we're into serious conspiracy weirdness here.

Except, of course, that there really is such a thing. And it's pretty much exactly what you think it is.

There are a lot of reasons for an organization like the Catholic Church to have Secret Archives. After all, they've been in the conspiracy business for millennia longer than Majestic-12. They've been in the disinformation business for about 18 times as long as Donald Rumsfeld has been alive. They were taking secret vows when the Masons were just a bunch of architects. And they have more to hide that Richard M. Nixon on his worst day.

The Catholic Church first officially started keeping a library around the fourth century. Formed at the height of the first great heresy craze, the contents of this library included a lot of attacks on heretical branches of Christianity and the documents and scriptures used by these heretical branches (which the Church fathers admitted to having read).

The entire contents of the pre-eighth century archives, presumably including all these fascinating heresies, mysteriously disappeared, according to the Vatican's official account of the library's history, "for reasons not entirely known."

The library was strictly closed to the public until around the 15th century, when the church decided to open its contents for the masses. OK, not all of the contents. Starting in the fourth century, the Catholic Church, in a position of political power for the first time, had been ruthlessly suppressing what it saw as heresy:

"Theodosius is said to be the first (Roman emperor) who pronounced heresy a capital crime; this law was passed in 382 against the Encratites, the Saccophori, the Hydroparastatae, and the Manichaeans. Heretical teachers were forbidden to propagate their doctrines publicly or privately; to hold public disputations; to ordain bishops, presbyters, or any other clergy; to hold religious meetings; to build conventicles or to avail themselves of money bequeathed to them for that purpose. Slaves were allowed to inform against their heretical masters and to purchase their freedom by coming over to the Church. The children of heretical parents were denied their patrimony and inheritance unless they returned to the Catholic Church. The books of heretics were ordered to be burned."

Well, most of the books. After all, you would have to be pretty stupid to destroy valuable intelligence on your most hated enemies (read the Catholic Encyclopedia's entry on heresy for a sense of the magnitude of enmity we're talking about here). Around the time the library first opened to the public, Pope Paul IV issued the "index of prohibited books." Reading, possessing or distributing these books had a spiritual penalty of excommunication (i.e., condemnation to hell without appeal), and in Catholic countries, they often had civil penalties as well (of varying severity, depending on the nature of the books).

Ironically, the pope issued an order later that same year mitigating the penalties regarding violations of the Index's non-reading list, but the order was conveniently "lost" until 1909. Whoops! Guess they should've invented the Dewey decimal system while they were opening the library. This minor paperwork snafu justified 400 years of suppression and censorship, and when the modification of the order was discovered, it was ignored in favor of 400 years precedent, until the church finally lightened the order (slightly) in 1966.

While all this sounds pretty revolting to the American mindset, the church officially condones censorship even today: "Censorship of books is a supervision of the press in order to prevent any abuse of it. In this sense, every lawful authority, whose duty it is to protect its subjects from the ravages of a pernicious press, has the right of exercising censorship of books."

Starting in the third century, the Church had expressly ordered the destruction of heretical books, but their contents were clearly referenced by the main heresy-hunters of the day, such as Irenaeus, a Father of the Church who wrote extensively about the fallacies of heresy. His texts explicitly admit he had read some of the source materials, as well as showing a great familiarity with the various beliefs of the many different heretic sects in existence at the time. The church's official history of the archives confirms it contained such materials as a resource for those designated to fight against heresy.

Thus, the existence of a secret archive became inevitable for an organization obsessed with information control. Whatever form this archive took, it indisputably dates back to the fourth century at the latest. According to the Vatican, the early secret archive contained mainly the names of believers and wealthy patrons of the church, but as noted above, it almost assuredly contained copies of heretical and banned works, information deemed too "dangerous" for the public.

As the centuries wore on, the list of banned and dangerous books grew and grew, thanks to repeated expansions of the enemies list and aggressive attempts to snuff out the list's members. The Inquisitions rounded up hundreds of books on topics ranging from Protestantism to Witchcraft and ritual magic, to the libraries of groups like the Knights Templar and the Cathars.

The latter groups might have had some particularly explosive additions for the library. Modern Conspiracy theorists have speculated that the Templars and the Cathars could have been protecting secrets like the possibility that Jesus Christ didn't die on the cross as advertised, and that there might be hard evidence to support that claim, not to mention descendents of the allegedly sexless messiah.

Pope Pius IV is credited with first officially designating the existence of something which would formally be called the "Secret Archive." The actual building was completed early in the 17th century and remained an ironclad fortress of forbidden information until the end of the 19th century, when it was purportedly opened to select scholars.

A heavily edited index of the Archives contents was published, and a large set of rules were developed regarding who got access to what. An even more secret archive known as the "Apostolic Penitentiary" exists, containing papal documents and canon law, and a lot of other stuff which is super-classified. Absolutely no one is allowed access.

As the 20th century dawned, the increasingly free flow of information around the world (and the decreasing political power of the Catholic Church) made it more and more difficult for the Vatican to effectively control what people were reading.

Archaeological discoveries of ancient Gnostic texts spilled the beans on the original heretics, and a vast surge of interest in all things magical and occult just made things worse. It's difficult to justify banning access to the rituals of witchcraft, just for instance, when every major bookseller in American carries three or four flavors of "Teen Witch Spell Kits."

Another predictable problem arose when the Vatican admitted the secret archives existed. People very naturally began guessing what might be in there, sometimes very accurately.

Among the more recent good guesses were the contents of the Third Secret of Fatima, an allegedly devastating prophecy of doom delivered by the Virgin Mary in a series of appearances to illiterate peasant children which was allegedly revealed by the Church in 2000. Under intense pressure, the Church released a series of 20th century documents from the secret archives relating to papal complicity in the rise of the Nazis in Germany.

In addition to Nazi collaboration, the archives are generally thought to contain rather a lot of information about the Catholic Church's wrongdoings, such as the current scandal on priestly pedophilia. In fact, the archives contain miles of allegations concerning the sexual kinks and other vices enjoyed by priests and bishops, dating back to at least the 14th century, and possibly even earlier.

Realizing the danger of such disclosures, the Vatican structured access to the archives to allow a minimum of accidental disclosures and a maximum of secrecy. The most obvious way to do this is also the most effective. It's strictly prohibited to go browsing the shelves in the Vatican's secret archives. It's unclear whether even the archive's librarians are allowed to do so.

Scholars wishing to review information in the archives have to arrive at the gate knowing exactly what documents they want, which is a pretty crappy way to encourage scholarship but a great way to make sure no one stumbles onto the Explicit Erotic Diaries of Jesus and Mary. Scholars also have to present their research requests in writing in advance, allowing the librarians ample time to decide between their three options in responding — 1) bring out the requested document, 2) claim the document doesn't exist, or 3) admit the document exists but refuse to give the scholar access.

So if you were hoping poke around the archives looking for evidence that Jesus was an extraterrestrial, just forget it. You have a better chance of getting a guided tour of Area 51 than getting a glimpse of the Sacred Alien Rectal Probing Device.

Lately it's been besmirched as a sigil of Satanism, but the pentagram is a versatile totem, and it's been around since long before anyone got around to inventing Satan.

The design is an equidistant five-pointed star drawn with a single continuous motion of the pen. Sometimes the design is enclosed in a circle. The symbol goes back to 4,000 B.C. at least, where it surfaced in the earliest form of writing, pictographic languages used in ancient Mesopotamia, whose alphabet consisted of little pictures that represented whole words.

No one knows what the pentagram meant to the Sumerians (despite what you might hear to the contrary), but most of the stone tablets of this period consist of really simple, pragmatic lists -- such as tax records, inventories and gene

The odds are quite good that the original meaning of the pentagram was something extremely boring, like "cow". It might have meant "person", since the shape famously corresponds to a head, two outstretched arms, and two legs, or it might have meant "hand", with its five points representing five fingers. But all this is sheer guesswork.

Whatever its original context, it didn't take long for the shape to absorb a more elevated status. Pythagoras, a Greek philosopher who basically invented formal geometry, believed that the world was made of math and that everything in life could be numerically quantified and represented.

His premise isn't too far from what a physicist would tell you today, but some of his direct conclusions were naive (in a manner appropriate to the time). Pythagoras was fascinated with the pentagram, as well as the six-pointed hexagram, and spent a lot of energy analyzing its properties, as well as its relation to other shapes.

Pythagoras made several observations about the pentagram, such as that there's a pentagon inside it, and that if you draw a pentagon from the points of the star, it's inverted compared to the inside one, and that you can draw a pentagram with one continuous stroke. In other words, Pythagoras had little interesting to say about the topic, but he considered the design important enough that his followers used it as their insignia. They believed it symbolized health or perfection.

Pentagrams were also used by Jewish mystical artists dating back to an unknown period of antiquity. The oldest documented examples were in synagogues with a few centuries of the start of the Christian era, but later legend has it that the pentagram was also associated with King Solomon, as part of his seal and as a symbol prominently featured in his Temple.

Pentagrams were frequently used in pagan, Jewish, Eastern and even Christian mystical contexts as a symbol of just about anything that came in fives. Frequently, it was taken as a symbol of the four alchemical elements -- earth, air, fire and water -- plus a fifth point that meant different things to different people, most often either divine power or the human soul.

Because humans all over the world have five fingers, the number five carries significance in virtually every culture, and the pentagram was a convenient carrier of that number. There are examples of the pentagram being used in Taoism and other Chinese systems as a symbol of the five elements used in Eastern cosmology -- wood, metal, earth, fire and water. In some early Christian traditions, including Gnosticism, the five points of the star represented the five wounds of Christ. Eventually other traditions used pentagram-derived stars as a representation of a star from the sky, likely an effort to artistically represent the twinkling effect caused by atmospheric distortion.

During the middle ages, however, the pentagram underwent an major transformation, which would permanently shape its image for centuries to come. Probably the most important document in pentagramology is the Seal of Solomon, perhaps the most influential of the many medieval grimoires that offered believers a chance to grab the brass ring of cosmic superpowers.

The Seal of Solomon inspired a lot of derivative magickal texts, which spread the pentagram far and wide. The status of the symbol took a giant leap forward when it was adopted by the occult-influenced Freemasonry movement, and related sects like the Eastern Star, the Golden Dawn, and the O.T.O. The Masons may have taken their cue from the Knights Templar, who are perhaps posthumously the sect most responsible for the pentagram's association with Satanic beliefs.

When the Templars were destroyed in the early 1300s, they were accused of many Satanic atrocities, including the worship of an unspecified object that resembled a cat or a head, known as Baphomet.

While some have theorized that the object in question may have been the Shroud of Turin folded to display the head of the Christ figure on the cloth, the popular conception of the Baphomet was later influenced by occultist Eliphas Levi, and subsequently by Aleister Crowley and some of his cronies.

Levi put forward a Baphomet design that featured an image of a goat's head inside an inverted pentagram, with the horns extending up into the points of the star. The goat symbolizes Satan, and the symbol was later adopted by Satanists of the Anton LaVey school. The symbol was then retroactively "discovered" to have an extensive occultist history by revisionist New Age and occult historians, who claimed it was an ancient symbol in virtually every magic tradition, including traditional and Wiccan witchcraft, pseudo-Egyptian occultist, etc., etc.

By the time this association had been firmly established, the pentagram or its filled-in variant had been institutionalized all over the world in a whole lot of different contexts -- including religions, secret societies and many others -- for instance, in the flag of the United States and the crescent and star symbol of Islam.

The retroactive -- and largely inaccurate -- association of the pentagram with all things devilish has provided ample fodder for those loonies whose lives are devoted to seeking to chart the dark influence of Satan all over the world.

The pentagram has also become a mainstay of the New World Order conspiracy craze, where it is seen as a link between the lords of the military-industrial complex and the Masonic-Illuminati-whatever plot to rule the world. As if they needed more encouragement.

Most of human history has been a series of efforts by some humans to control what other humans think. When this effort doesn't take the form of a dominant organized Religion, we call it "mind control" and officially designate it as "bad."

Cults and Secret Societies have used simple brainwashing techniques for as long as anyone can remember.

The word "assassin," for instance, is Arabic for "user of hashish." The original assassins were an 11th Century Islamic cult of killers called the Nizari, who were promised the glories of martydom (not unlike their modern equivalents). Their leader offered a preview of the paradise to come, visions allegedly delivered via large doses of hash. In India, highly secretive cults flourished for centuries in the names of some of the more violent deities such as Kali.

Hypnotism

In addition to practicing simple mind control techniques on their own, these robber and murderer cults also inspired others to adopt their techniques. The Knights Templar were founded to fight off just such bands of robbers and murderers, who had been targeting Christian pilgrims in the Holy Lands.

The Knights (and their brethren, the Freemasons) quickly discovered the power of cult techniques such as isolation, hypnagogic rituals, arcane initiations and oaths of secrecy, which they very successfully applied among their ranks. Despite being victimized by the skilled torturers of the Inquisition (themselves masters of "thought reform"), none of the loyal thousands of Knights ever spilled any of the group's deepest secrets.

In the 1700s, Franz Anton Mesmer was born, marking a turning point in the history of mind control. Mesmer developed a technique called "animal magnetism" as a medical technique for treating a number of illnesses (primarily psychosomatic) which were not well understood at the time. Animal magnetism was quickly dubbed "mesmerism" and later morphed into "hypnotism."

Mesmerism involved different techniques, including the placement or brandishment of literal magnets around the subjects, and the monotonous repetition of words and tones, which induced a trance-like state in its subjects.

In a hypnotic trance, the subject is prone to suggestibility. They tend to believe what they are told and their senses will malfunction to back up these suggestions. Mesmer primarily used the technique to cure various stress-related illnesses but it soon became clear that hypnotism could also be used to make people do things they wouldn't normally do.

Today, any respectable hypnotist will assure you that a person under hypnosis can't be induced to do anything they wouldn't normally be able to do. But then, it's not the respectable hypnotists that you have to worry about. Regardless of their protestations of harmlessness, the suggestibility of a hypnotized subject offers ample opportunity for the hypnotist to wreak havoc.

Aside from the possibility of just ordering the subject to become a killing machine, which is not a reliable technique, one can plant suggestions that allow the subject to justify all manner of wrongdoing (i.e., "Jim is planning to kill you. He will kill you unless you kill him first. You had better kill him in self-defense.").

Hypnotic techniques can also be used to plant "post-hypnotic" suggestions, in which a certain set of circumstances (such as the utterance of a "trigger phrase") cause the subject to act out a preprogrammed behavior. This is more popular as a Hollywood device than effective in the real world, but it can be done.

The main problem with hypnosis as a mind-control technique is that it's pretty difficult to hypnotize someone against their will. That's why insidious megalomaniacs returned to the techniques used by the first Assassins — drugs — while inventing new and exciting ways to manipulate the masses in an economical fashion.

Television and Subliminals

[ambiguous: ad2.jpg] Subliminal mind control also plays to the suggestibility of humankind (i.e., the presumption that we are not much more sophisticated than sheep). The technique, most famously used in advertising, involves embedding secret images into harmless-looking images in order to "sneak" a message directly into the viewers subconscious.

Subliminal advertising has existed for a long time in the form of subtle visual cues embedded in still pictures, but the technique first hit the big time in the 1950s, when marketer named James Vicary invented a method for inserting subliminal messages into films.

His technique would flash a simple text message for a single frame on a movie screen. While viewers were enjoying a nice movie, the words "Eat popcorn" or "Drink Coke" would flit by on the screen too quickly for the conscious mind to see. The results were anecdotally reported to be spectacular, with massive increases in theater concessions sales. The apparent success of the technique (which was never replicated in a controlled scientific setting) alarmed the hell out of most people and subliminal advertising was subsequently banned (although it still pops up in insidious ways, especially in liquor ads for some reason).

The use of subliminals in mind control of the "Big Brother-evil empire" variety has never been extensively documented (unlike the use of drugs, see below), but it stands to reason that if the technique is even marginally effective, someone is probably using it.

Subliminals and hypnotism have also been adopted by the "self-help" crowd, as a way to assist people in difficult tasks which they would prefer not to accomplish through self-discipline and hard work.

These include, most prominently, quitting smoking and losing weight. Retailers everywhere stock endless recordings of happy white-sound noises (such as ocean surf or New Age ambient music) which feature subliminal audio tracks running underneath, with messages such as "You don't want to smoke" or "You don't want to eat."

While scientific types are highly skeptical about the effectiveness of subliminals, science hardly matters to people who want to make a quick buck, or people who want to quit smoking without tears.

Behavioral Conditioning

The most effective form of mind control, often used in conjunction with drugs, involves behavioral conditioning. This is a pretty simple concept. You put someone in a controlled environment, then you punish them for "bad thoughts" and reward them for "good thoughts."

George Orwell presented one of the most thorough visions of a behaviorally controlled society in "1984," a nightmare vision of a world in which government uses heavy-handed techniques to keep people thinking the right kinds of thoughts at any given time. Sci-fi writer Philip K Dick also frequently delved into this territory, as did Patrick McGoohan's groundbreaking TV series, "The Prisoner."

In addition to such obvious techniques as torture and drugs, behavioral conditioning can be accomplished in more subtle ways, often reputedly employed by religious cults and top secret government prisons.

Known as "coercive persuasion," the technique involves breaking up an individual's usual routine, isolating them from contact with the outside world, Pavolovian rewards and punishment, and "non-violent" coercions such as sleep deprivation, humiliation and various kinds of noise disruptions.

Although religious cults took a lot of heat in the 1980s and 1990s for employing these techniques, that hasn't stopped the George W Bush Administration from openly and shamelessly using these methods against alleged terrorists such as Jose Padilla and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, despite prohibitions against such treatment of prisoners in the Geneva Conventions. The rationale offered by the administration for these actions pretty much boils down to "The end justifies the means."

But then, Bush is hardly the first U.S. president to oversee mind control projects. He's just the first to bother offering a rationale. Which brings us, inevitably, to the subject of...

Drugs!

Although Ben Franklin is rumored to have investigated hypnotism on behalf of the government back in the early days of the nation, the institutionalization of mind control techniques by top-secret government conspiracies didn't become a growth industry until the onset of the Cold War.

Inspired in part by Nazi successes with propaganda and torture techniques, the Central Intelligence Agency and the KGB undertook massive research ventures designed to break human beings down into malleable robots, which was considered a useful technique in both intelligence practices and domestic governance.

In the 1950s, the CIA began experimenting with mind-control as part of an infamous program known as MKULTRA. The most famous outgrowth of this program was the popularization of LSD as a recreational drug, which had rather the opposite effect on society than was being sought.

Under MKULTRA, the CIA conducted hundreds of experiments on unwitting people in the San Francisco area and elsewhere. In some of these tests, the Agency hired hookers to dose their johns with LSD so CIA scientists could study the effects.

The agency shredded most of its documentation on the MKULTRA plan before it became public. What little is known suggest that the government was trying to create "supersoldiers" and sleeper agents who would feel no pain and who would be under the absolute control of their superiors.

The Soviets were engaged in similar experiments, which formed the basis of the movie "The Manchurian Candidate," in which Frank Sinatra played a mind-controlled former prisoner of war sent on a mission of assassination against the U.S.

A side-effect of these proven experiements is a whole host of unproven conspiracy theories regarding mind control and political assassinations. Virtually every major political assassination in the 20th Century has been attached to a mind-control conspiracy of lesser or greater credibility, including John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.

The Robert Kennedy case is particularly interesting to mind control aficionados. RFK was killed by a "lone gunman" named Sirhan Sirhan. According to Sirhan's defense team, the assassin was extremely susceptible to hypnosis. When a defense psychologist hypnotized him, the first thing Sirhan allegedly said was, "I don't know any people." Sirhan appeared to be in an altered state of consciousness when he was arrested and claimed to have no memory of shooting RFK.

Regardless of all these claims, one thing is pretty clear: LSD is remarkably ineffective as a mind control agent. Barbiturates and narcotics are useful for encouraging trance states, but they also diffuse the subject's focus, making hypnotism per se problematic. Highly addictive drugs are often used as the "poor man's mind control," by hooking the subject on coke or heroin and then making them do tricks to get their fix. This technique (most commonly used to obtain blow jobs) is notoriously unreliable, since hardcore addicts tend to be pretty unstable.

Relatively new drugs such as Ritalin and Prozac have been the subject of much speculation among conspiracy theorists, since they have a remarkable success rate in transforming rebellious or difficult children (and adults) into compliant conformist consumers without the need for such tedious old-school techniques as "parenting" and "discipline."

Ritalin is a central nervous system stimulant designed to treat a "disease" called "attention deficit hyperactivity disorder." Now, you may be wondering why a stimulant is used to treat hyperactivity, but you're not a doctor, so give up any hope of understanding. You're just going to have to trust The Man. (Even doctors don't have a good answer to this question. The National Institute of Mental Heatlh says "The answer to this question is not well established," and adds "more research is needed." Implied but not overtly stated are the credos: "Trust The Man" and "We Just Pump Your Kids Full Of Drugs Until Something Seems To Work.")

The current "thinking" is that 5 percent of U.S. children are suffering from this "disease," for which the NIMH lists such symptoms as inattentiveness in school, the inability to sit still, the desire to run around and play, fidgeting in a classroom chair, impulsiveness and impatience, or making inappropriate comments. If you remember doing any of these things as a child, then you really missed out on the super drug-induced behavior modification that kids today enjoy so well.

Upwards of 8 million American children are estimated to be using Ritalin or a related drug type, and that appears to be a lowball estimate based on old data. Ritalin use has increased nearly 1,000 percent in 10 years.

If all that isn't "Big Brother" enough for you, consider this tidbit from NIMH: "Physicians and parents should be aware that schools are federally mandated to perform an appropriate evaluation if a child is suspected of having a disability that impairs academic functioning (specifically including ADHD)." So don't worry! If you can't keep your kid in line, The Man will do it for you!

Sci-Fi Techniques

With all this ugly reality out there, you wouldn't think there would be a great need for nutty conspiracy theories about cornball sci-fi mind control techniques being secretly employed against the masses. But you'd be wrong.

One of the favorite modern theories about secret mind control has to do with satellites beaming microwaves or other forms of virulent radiation into the brains of a mostly unsuspecting public (as in the HAARP Project, among others). The suspecting public appears to be largely composed of schizophrenics, who for some reason are particularly fond of this theory. Hell, maybe it's true, who knows? There is no publicly available scientific research to support the idea that microwaves can be used for mind control, but then there wouldn't be, now would there?

Magnetism has also been a favored sci-fi approach to mind control since the days of Mesmer's animal variety. There's a sort of, kind of, general plausibility to this thinking that stems from the electrical nature of the brain, but again, you'd be hard pressed to find a working theory to explain how one goes from the general idea to a working prototype.

The lack of credible research is no obstacle to the determined inventor, however, as evidenced by the dozens of patents on file for various gadgets and gizmos intended to transform the Average Joe into an Empowered-Mind-Dominating-Superfreak.

One such device is an "apparatus for and method of sensing brain waves at a position remote from a subject (... which) also can be used to produce a compensating signal which is transmitted back to the brain to effect a desired change in electrical activity therein." This 1976 patent apparently never made it to mass production (or if it did, all memory of such a device has been eradicated from our brains using the device itself).

Not all approaches to mechanical mind control are so subtle. Since electroshock therapy came on the scene in the 1940s, numerous methods have been introduced to "help" people with behavioral conditioning, usually via electrical shock. The most innocuous of these involves a wristband designed to shock smokers when they lift a cigarette to their lips. Among the most lethal-looking is a device that appears to involve electrically charged spikes driven into one's skull. Now, THAT'S a good time!

For centuries, humans have been trying to keep information from other humans. Paradoxically, many have come to the conclusion that the best way to keep a secret is to tell it to a bunch of other people and then swear them all to secrecy.

When this effort is unsuccessful, we call the result a "secret society." When the effort is successful, we don't call the result anything, because we plebians never hear about the effort to begin with.

In short, the society part is easy. The secret part is hard.

Nevertheless, secret societies have become deeply embedded in the zeitgeist. In some cases, their secrets are so poorly kept that a quick run through Google will yield nearly anything you could possibly want to know. In other cases, the society manages to keep some of its secrets secret, but the group itself becomes known to a greater or lesser extent.

There are many different ways to structure a secret society, but there are a few specific models which recur fairly often. In order to qualify as a secret society, a group generally has to be based around initiation rituals, degrees of authority and dramatic oaths of silence.

Most groups can arguably be included in more than one of the categories which follow, and probably all of them can be included under the final heading:

* Political
* Religious
* Fraternal
* Fictional
* Insane

Political

Many people look at the state of the world and come to the understandable conclusion that they must be missing something. After all, no rational person would make the decisions some world leaders make... unless, of course, they have a hidden agenda that we don't know about.

So whose agenda is it, anyway? Some favorite contenders include:

* Freemasonry
* Skull and Bones
* Trilateral Commission
* Bilderberg Group
* Council on Foreign Relations
* Muslim Brotherhood

Some of the aforementioned examples are pretty dicey, others are very well documented. Throughout history, small groups of intelligentsia have banded together for the sake of instigating political change.

The Carbonari in Italy, a derivative of the Masons, helped forment revolution in the 19th century. Edelweiss, a European group, advanced a pro-Nordic racial agenda and produced such illustrious members as Herman Groerning. Thule Gelleschaft, an occultish group of the day, reputedly inspired Hitler to adopt the swastika as the Nazi emblem.

A Russian group, Land and Liberty, used terrorism and assatination to lay the groundwork for revolution. Formally known as the Fists of Righteous Harmony, the Boxers began as a small Chinese nationalist society toward the end of the 19th century before swelling to incredible size, embarking on a reign of terror against foreigners and subsequently getting slaughtered by the U.S. Navy.

There's plenty of evidence to show that secret societies have formed to accomplish specific political goals, but those groups that don't get killed in the process tend to fade away after the immediate political crisis is resolved.

The idea that a secret society might be running the world can be appealing. It offers the possibility that every stupid, pointless thing done by world leaders might actually be smart and pointful, part of some sort of plan. However, it doesn't take much live experience to realize that individual people are generally stupid and pointless, and Occam's Razor tells us the simplest explanation is most often correct.

Nevertheless, people will talk. If all the above secret societies aren't enough to satisfy your paranoid tendencies, you can always look into "The Octopus" -- an uber-secret society which purportedly links all of the other secret societies in one vast conspiracy to control the world.

The Octopus was first tenatively identified by a freelance investigative reporter named Danny Casolaro, who believed it linked such conspiracies as Iran-Contra, BCCI,INSLAW to such government agencies as the CIA, FBI and the NSA.

Casolaro turned up dead due to an extremely suspicious "Suicide" in 1991. His story (or rather, a wildly imaginative telling of his story) has made him a martyr to the conspiracy crowd.

Some political secret societies eventually metamorphose into criminal organizations, such as the Mafia, the Japanese Yakuza and the Chinese Triads. You can also make a case that race-based hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan were also working from a political mindset, at least in their formative years.

Religious

Many secret societies have a religious or occult component, but some are very explicitly devoted to advancing one form of religion or another. Religious secret societies are very real, and they have often had a tremendous impact on history, which explains why you've probably heard of a few:

# Knights Templar
# al Qaeda
# Al Takfir Wal Hijra
# The Assassins
# Sufism
# Knights of Malta
# Ordo Templi Orientis
# Scientology
# Cathars
# The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

The Knights Templar were perhaps the ultimate Christian secret order, and to this day, no one is quite sure exactly what secrets they were keeping. Many Heterical beliefs have been forced underground during the history of the Christian church, which may account for the strong strain of Ghosticism hat runs through many secret societies. The Templars were rumored to have Gnostic tendencies, but it's difficult to prove that 1,000 years later.

In order to counter heretical groups, the Catolic Chruch has created its own secret orders from time to time, under auspices of the pope. The Templars originated as such an officially sanctioned group, but they fell out of favor when their wealth and power challenged the political status quo.

Envy and fear led to charges of witccraft and other wrongdoing, and the Church eventually exterminated the order... or did they? These days, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting some group that claims to be a continuation or an offshoot of the Templars.

The history of Islam is also riddled with secretive groups which have had an incalcuable effect on history, from the Assassins of the 11th Century to al Qaeda in the present day. One reason these groups are so effective is their embrace of violence, paired with a complete disregard for the personal safety of their members. The Assassins and the Templars were rumored to have shared trade secrets and engaged in other covert alliances.

The list of religious secret societies goes on and on. Buddichist got into the act, with organizations like the White Lotus Groups (of which the Boxers were technically a part), and variations sprouted among Hindus and Jews as well.

Africa has been rife with secret societies of all sorts, many of which are based in the rituals of scamanistic tribal religions. An outgrowth of African spiritual beliefs, Voudoun was intimately linked with Hatian secret societies, many of which are political in nature. An American variation on the theme, Santeria, is practically a secret society in itself.

You will be the hit of the cocktail party when you hold forth on the origins of the word "Mumbo Jumbo," which is a botched transliteration of the name of a Mandingo secret society. The account originated with the 18th century explorer of Africa Francis Moore, who wrote that the all-male society, bound by terrible oaths, existed primarily to adjudicate disputes between men and women... in favor of men. So how did Moore find out about this "secret" group?

About the year 1727, the king of Jagra having a very inquisitive woman to his wife, was so weak as to disclose to her this secret; and she being a gossip, revealed it to some other women of her acquaintance. This at last coming to the ears of some who were no friends to the king, they, dreading lest if the affair took vent, it should put a period to the subjection of their wives, took the coat, put a man into it, and going to the king's town, sent for him out, and taxed him with it: when he not denying it, they sent for his wife, and killed them both on the spot. Thus the poor king died for his complaisance to his wife, and she for her curiosity.

The first rule of Mumbo Jumbo is DON'T TALK ABOUT MUMBO JUMBO!

Fraternal

Some people are attracted to the bizarre rituals and self-important playtime of a secret organization without necessarily wanting the responsibility of ruling the world or protecting the arcane keys of occult power. For those who just want to play at global conspiracy, there are a number of options ranging from the ridiculous to the... well, also ridiculous.

* Elks
* Lions
* Moose
* Shriners
* Oddfellows
* College fraternities
* Beavers
* The Knights of Columbus

All of these groups are basically clubs for silly boys, to a greater or lesser extent.

They are based around "lodges," a word nicked from Masonic practice which means, in this context, a place you go to get drunk in the company of men. Most of these groups feature some sort of thinly veiled homoerotic bondage play as a form of initiation.

Generally, these groups are all male, all the time, though some have women's auxiliary groups and others have been forced by American law to open their doors to all comers. Most fraternal organizations require you to pay dues, which entitles you to use of the bar.

Fraternal clubs often perform charity work in a vain effort to justify their existence. They can also provide business networking opportunities for those who are insufficiently ambitious to hook up with the Masons, or even better, the Trilateral Commission.

Fictional

Most secret societies have a fictional history, concocted to make them look important. Some groups are more fictional than others, however.

* Illuminati
* Stonecutters
* The Invisibles

Many authors have discovered that once you create a secret society with a sufficiently intriguing premise, people will automatically assume it's based on something real. If the author tries to deny it later, well, that just means someone got to them.

The Illuminati are technically not fictional, but so many fictional things have been written about them that they might as well be. In addition to many earnest flights of fancy composed by the slightly deranged, the Illuminati got the most ink in the famous Illuminatus! trilogy written by Robert Anton Wilson. Illuminatus! was so successful that many of its yarns are now taken as gospel truth by such illustrious conspiratorial minds as David Icke.

H.P. Lovecraft created a fictional cult known as Cthulhu, which he shared with several other horror writers of the day. The cult was based around a series of shapeless, nameless, writhing monstrosities and an entirely mythical grimoire known as the Necronomicon. Lovecraft tried to explain that he had made the whole thing up, but people are frequently found to be stupid or insane, and you don't have to look very far to find some idiot trying to conjure up a Shoggoth.

There was an 18th century Italian secret society called The Invisibles, but the name was adopted by comic book auteur Grant Morrison for a 1994-2000 comic book series which set out with the goal of making The Invisibles real. If someone hands you a blank badge, you'll know Morrison's quest succeeded.

Other notable fictional secret societies include the Talamasca (a vampire-hunting group of scholars in Anne Rice's books), the Clandestine Watchers Council (a vampire-hunting group of scholars in Buffy the Vampire Slayer), the E-Branch (a vampire-hunting group of secret agents in Brian Lumley's Necroscope books), and the Millennium Group (an Apocaliptic organization inexplicably unconcerned with vampire hunting, and the brainchild of X-Files creator Chris Carter).

Insane

Between the paddling and the dreams of world domination, any given secret society is going to attract a certain element of the deranged. Some groups are way out there... even relative to other secret societies.

The Ku Klux Klanoriginated as a politcal white supremacy group in 1886. At the time, it was not that far out of the political mainsteam. Racism was rampant after the Civil War, and many people resented the North's exploitation of the South.

Nevertheless, the Klan was rooted in bizarre behavior. The original group dressed in white hoods and pretended to be ghosts in order to frighten freed slaves. Subsequent iterations were not much more sophisticated and today the Klan is populated with fringe personalities with too much time on their hands.

The Klan also had its sworn enemies, such as the memorably named Order of Anti-Poke-Noses, which formed to oppose "any organization that attends to everyone's business but their own." The bad guys outlived these intrepid crusaders, however.

Strange behavior hardly begins and ends with the Klan. A quick browse through the pages of The International Encyclopedia of Secret Societies and Fraternal Orders by Alan Axelrod yields up a smorgasbord of strangeness.

Fils d'Adam is an au courant French secret society devoted to the joys of similating necrophilia and performing actual bestiality on some extremely loosely contrived premise having to do with Original Sin.

The Abecadarians, also French, formed to battle the insidious evil of the printing press during the 15th century. The theory was that ignorance is divinely mandated and that everyone should strive to the pinnacle of ignorance of everything, including the letters of the alphabet -- thus their name comes from A-B-C-D... Clever, you might think, until you realize that anyone who knows the group's name now knows the first four letters of the alphabet and therefore can no longer be saved. (The doctrine was later supposedly adopted by the Illuminati.) (The real ones.)

The Society of Goats in 18th century Germany wore goat masks in order to frighten the local peasantry and accomplish various acts of crime. (And people think Batman is implausible.) Their initiation involved riding a wooden goat rigged up approximately in the manner of a mechanical bull. The goat itself may also have been a Baphomet-Style symbol of Satan. They were eventually exterminated by the local authorities, and bore no relation to the even stranger Order of Pink Goats, which arose in the 20th century.

The Hermanos Penitentes were originally a European order which enjoyed self-flagellation. They celebrated Good Friday each year by crysifuing one of the sect's members, though the lucky victim was removed from the cross before dying. Despite being the recipient of a papal censure, the group not only survived, but continues its tradition of crucifixion, much to the bemusement of the occasional newspaper feature writer who stumbles across the event.

The Concatenated Order of Hoo-Hoo... well, OK, the Hoo-Hoos were largely just kidding around. The members were lumberjacks and people whose jobs related in some vague manner related to lumber. Many of their titles and rituals were based on Lewiss Caroll's Jabberwocky. Amazingly, the organization continues to day under a different name, despite what Darwin's theories would suggest.