The Secret Societies Handbook

I've been interested in secret societies for as long as I can remember. Part of the appeal of them is the mumbo jumbo and weird symbols they use. I particularly remember those ads for The Rosicrucians in Fate a paranormal magazine I loved as a kid. The other reason secret societies interest me is because they offer pat answers to troubling world events. Economy in a tailspin? Blame it on the Bilderbergs! President making backstage deals that result in deaths of thousands? Blame it on the Order of the Skull and Bones!

To my delight, I stumbled across The Secret Societies Handbook by Michael Bradley, at the bookstore a few says ago and couldn't put it down. The author reveals the histories of 21 secret societies, including Assasins, Bilderbergs, Bohemian Club, Club of Rome, Council on Foreign Relations, Essex Junto, Freemasonry, Golden Dawn, Illuminati, Knights Templar, Ku Klux Klan, Mafia, Majestic-12, Aviary, Aquarium, Mesur, Opus Dei, Order of the Skull and Bones, Priory of Sion, Rosicrucians, Round Table, Triads, and Trilateral Commission.

Some of the societies I'd never heard of. Bradley is not a conspiracy nut. In his introduction he writes, "I approached my research for The Secret Society Handbook with the same intellectual smugness with which I read stories about alien abductions or sightings of Elvis Presley ... How wrong I was. I know believe that Western history needs to be completely rewritten to tell the hidden story behind our true economic and political global hierarchy. The more I researched, the more alarming my discoveries have been."

I have to agree. Parts of this book were scary, like the fact that every US Presidential administration is larded with dozens of members of the Council on Foreign Relations which, Bradley asserts, controls the CIA and the State Department.

At just 144 pages, you can finish this eye opener in an evening. You might not be able to sleep very well after reading it though. My head was spinning. Link