Secrecy : silence, power, and religion / Hugh B. Urban.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Urban, Hugh B., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Secrecy--Religious aspects.

Secrecy.

Secret societies--Religious aspects.

Secret societies.

Physical Description:

259 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2021.

Summary:

"Urban focuses on six modalities of religious secrecy, each illustrated by one primary example. He starts with nineteenth-century Scottish Rite Freemasonry, then moves to the Theosophical Society of the late nineteenth century; the sexual magic of a Russian-born Parisian mystic, Maria de Naglowska, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the Five Percenters, a radical offshoot of the Nation of Islam that formed in the 1960s; and white supremacist movements in modern America, especially the Brüder Schweigen or "Silent Brotherhood" of the 1980s. The final example is the Church of Scientology, allowing Urban to examine the role of secrecy as a dynamic historical process that adapts over time. A bracing read, Secrecy is the culmination of decades of Urban's reflections, and provides an indispensable account of a vexed, ever-present subject"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: The Vestment of Power

ch. 1 The Adornment of Silence

Secrecy and Symbolic Power in American Freemasonry

ch. 2 The Secret Doctrine

The Advertisement of the Secret in the Theosophical Society and the Esoteric Section

ch. 3 The Seduction of the Secret

Eros and Magic in Twentieth-Century Europe

ch. 4 Secrecy and Social Resistance

The Five-Percenters and the Arts of Subversive Bricolage

ch. 5 The Terror of Secrecy

Racism, Masculinity, and Violence in the Late Brtider Schweigen

ch. 6 The Third Wall of Fire

Scientology and the Study of Religious Secrecy in the Twenty-First Century

The Science of the Hidden: Secrecy and the Critical Study of Religion in an Age of Surveillance.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780226746500

022674650X

9780226746647

022674664X

OCLC:

1143624122

Publisher Number:

99986230657