Secrecy Secrecy Silence, Power, and Religion Hugh B. Urban The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2021 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637. Published 2021 Printed in the United States of America 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20  1 2 3 4 5 ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 74650- 0 (cloth) ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 74664- 7 (paper) ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 74678- 4 (e- book) DOI: https:// doi .org /10 .7208 /chicago /9780226746784 .001 .0001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Urban, Hugh B., author. Title: Secrecy : silence, power, and religion / Hugh B. Urban. Description: Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020027441 | ISBN 9780226746500 (cloth) | ISBN 9780226746647 (paperback) | ISBN 9780226746784 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Secrecy—Religious aspects. | Secret societies—Religious aspects. Classification: LCC BL65.S37 U73 2020 | DDC 299—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020027441 ♾ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48- 1992 (Permanence of Paper). Contents Preface: Secrecy, the Human Dress * vii Introduction 1 * The Vestment of Power Chapter 1 The Adornment of Silence 23 * Secrecy and Symbolic Power in American Freemasonry Chapter 2 The Secret Doctrine 51 * The Advertisement of the Secret in the Theosophical Society and the Esoteric Section Chapter 3 The Seduction of the Secret 79 * Eros and Magic in Twentieth- Century Europe Chapter 4 Secrecy and Social Resistance 103 * The Five- Percenters and the Arts of Subversive Bricolage Chapter 5 The Terror of Secrecy 137 * Racism, Masculinity, and Violence in the Late Brüder Schweigen Chapter 6 The Third Wall of Fire 165 * Scientology and the Study of Religious Secrecy in the Twenty- First Century Conclusions 187 * The Science of the Hidden: Secrecy and the Critical Study of Religion in an Age of Surveillance Acknowledgments * 207 Notes * 209 Index * 255 Preface Secrecy, the Human Dress Terror, the Human Form Divine And Secrecy, the Human Dress William Blake, “A Divine Image”1 Secrecy is a topic that has fascinated, preoccupied, and frustrated me throughout my academic career, since at least my early years as a gradu- ate student in the 1990s and continuing to the present day. Indeed, it is perhaps the only consistent theme that runs through my otherwise eclec- tic body of work, from my research on Hindu Tantra in northeast India to my study of the Church of Scientology in Cold War America, from my work on sexual magic in modern esotericism to my attempts to under- stand the dual obsessions with religion and concealment in American politics.2 While much of my research focuses on South Asian religions, I also firmly believe in the value of comparison as a methodological tool and write extensively about modern American and European traditions, which are the primary focus in this book. Following William Blake in the passage quoted above, I have long re- garded secrecy as a phenomenon that is an intimate part of human be- havior—as the “human dress”—and also one closely tied to human con- ceptions of the divine—though in ever- varied, historically specific, and sometimes violent or even terrifying forms. This book thus attempts to tie some of the many threads of secrecy that have preoccupied me for the last two decades. • Introduction • The Vestment of Power The sacred and the secret have been linked from earliest times. Both elicit feelings of . . . the “numinous consciousness” that combines the daunting and the fascinating, dread and allure. Both are defined as being set apart and seen as needing protection. Sisella Bok, Secrets1 Secrecy dominates this world, and first and foremost as the secret of domination. Guy Debord, Comments on the Society of the Spectacle2 In the early decades of the twenty-fi rst century, Guy Debord’s observa- tion about secrecy seems uncomfortably relevant and resonant. Debord published his Comments on the Society of the Spectacle in 1988 as a critical commentary on the strange dynamics of consumer culture, advertising, and politics during the latter days of the Cold War. From my perspective today—writing in the US amidst seemingly endless wars against terror- ism, a highly secretive executive branch, and an ever- expanding national security apparatus with the power to surveil ever more aspects of our private lives—the role of secrecy as the “power of domination” seems at once ubiquitous, inescapable, and oddly normalized.3 Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, many observers had optimistically hoped that questions of secrecy and surveillance would become less and less relevant to citizens of mod- ern democracies. Today, such optimism seems not only overly optimistic but grossly naïve. As Gilbert Herdt observes, the problem of secrecy has resurfaced in an even more intense way in our post– Cold War genera- tion, above all in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001, and other recent terrorist events. We are perhaps now entering a “new Cold War” era, with an even more intense concern with secrecy, surveillance, and