{"product_id":"9781936239146","title":"Ritual America: Secret Brotherhoods and Their Influence on American Society: A Visual Guide","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"Adam Parfrey is one of the nation's most provocative publishers.\"— \u003ci\u003eSeattle Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Secret society historian Craig Heimbichner follows the Middle Path to wisdom. He works the graveyard shift in the secret lodge.\"—Joan d'Arc, \u003ci\u003eParanoia\u003c\/i\u003e magazine\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSecret societies—now a staple of bestseller novels—are pictured as sinister cults that use hooded albinos to menace truth-seekers. Some conspiracy books claim that fraternal orders are the work of serpentine aliens and interbred humans who wish to supplant earth of its energy, and later, its very existence.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOn the other side of the aisle, books by high-ranked Freemasons—skeptical in tone but no less partisan in approach—protect their organization's public image by denying the existence of its most contentious ideas.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003ci\u003eRitual America\u003c\/i\u003e reveals the biggest secret of them all: that the influence of fraternal brotherhoods on this country is vast, fundamental, and hidden in plain view. In the early twentieth century, as many as one-third of America belonged to a secret society. And though fezzes and tiny car parades are almost a thing of the past, the Gnostic beliefs of Masonic orders are now so much a part of the American mind that the surrounding pomp and circumstance has become faintly unnecessary.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe authors of \u003ci\u003eRitual America\u003c\/i\u003e contextualize hundreds of rare and many never-before printed images with entertaining and far-reaching commentary, making an esoteric subject provocative, exciting, and approachable.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003cb\u003eAdam Parfrey \u003c\/b\u003e is the author of \u003ci\u003eCult Rapture: Revelations of the Apocalyptic Mind\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eIt's a Man's World: Men's Adventure Magazines, the Postwar Pulps\u003c\/i\u003e . He is editor of the influential Apocalypse Culture series \u003ci\u003eLove, Sex, Fear Death: The Inside Story of the Process Church of the Final Judgment\u003c\/i\u003e .\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003cb\u003eCraig Heimbichner \u003c\/b\u003e has recently appeared on a National Geographic documentary about the Bohemian Grove, contributed to the Feral House compilation \u003ci\u003eSecret and Suppressed II\u003c\/i\u003e , and wrote about the famous occult order the O.T.O. in \u003ci\u003eBlood and Altar\u003c\/i\u003e .\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Feral House","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47040400359664,"sku":"9781936239146","price":27.62,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781936239146_p0.jpg?v=1763658885","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781936239146","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}