The other day I was talking to a friend of a friend who had just been tapped to join Casque & Gauntlet, Dartmouth's Senior Society for rock 'em sock 'em swank hipsters or some such thing.
"Your parents must be really proud," I said to the friend-once-removed.
"Sure, C & G's all that," came the reply. "But as far as Dartmouth magnitudes of cool go, nothing beats joining a Secret Society."
Needless to say I caught that intellectual wave with my cogitative surfboard. A Secret Society, something so enigmatic and alluring that how can I help but capitalize it? Its very nature, its esoteric dignity, merits nothing less.
Being asked to join a Secret Society is my secret dream. Perhaps I just like the word ... "secret." I like the idea of shadowy rooms in dank corners of unknown basements on streets where no one works or lives. Secret meetings convened at midnight -- a huddled mass of silent figures, brimmed hats bents forward, hands slipped smoothly in trenchcoat pockets, halted whispers exchanged. Every word is in code.
Yes, a Secret Society with a secret handshake; three fingers wrapped around a thumb or some such secret delight. Furtive winks across crowded rooms, phlegmatic, wise -- the signal is received and understood, the secret signal of a secret gesture for secret purposes of occluded mysterious sinister secrets.
What are the secret societies planning? What are their secret goals? What's going on behind those closed doors? The Sphinx, for example. Everyone knows that the Sphinx is an all-male Secret Society at Dartmouth, or at least, that's what they'd have us believe. I myself have been doing a little occult research on the subject.
In ancient Greek mythology the Sphinx asked a riddle concerning something "that has four legs when it is born, two legs when it lives, and three legs before it dies." Or something to that effect. Well, according to much of the research I've done, there is a passage in the Book of Revelation that was reinterpreted by the Rosicrucians after Francis Bacon was revealed to be a Freemason concerning a little known gathering of Jimmy Hoffa, Elvis Presley and Lee Harvey Oswald holding a seance to summon the ghost of Rasputin to assassinate David Koresh who is the final incarnation of the Egyptian God Osiris!
I guess you're not quite as secret as you thought you were, eh, Mr. Sphinx?
And then there's the Dragon. Well, come on, you don't need to be a Rhodes Scholar to see the symbolism of that one.
Any credible cryptologist will tell you that the way to break a written code is by scrambling the letters to reveal the true meanings of words. Let's see ... gonard ... gorand ... rangod ... dangor!
Dangor, as well all know, rhymes with Bangor, a prominent city in Maine -- well, I dare not give away too much. Very clever, Dragon, very clever. As if we wouldn't see through that one.
Still, it would not be prudent to give away in this public space exactly how much I know about the doings of the secret societies. One might find oneself ... snuffed out. Most of you probably don't know the story of Shecky Mantooth.
Shecky Mantooth was a '92 -- don't bother looking for his name or any information about him in any administrative record -- it won't be there. No, Shecky, got too close, knew too much, and was simply made to ... disappear.
Shecky's journal, known in occult circles as "The Shecky Papers," lives on, however. Last I heard Oliver Stone had got his hands on it and was going to turn it into a major motion picture. Good, says I. The truth must be told.
One can never be too cautious in this world of Secret Societies. For all you know I may be complicit in this elaborate nefarious scheme. In fact, maybe this entire column is just a smokescreen, a frivolous distraction to divert attention from the real machinations and negotiations of the secret societies. While I cloud your head with this senseless babble, money is changing hands, decisions are being made, fates of nations are being decided.
But of course, one cannot live in constant fear. With any luck our social positions will render us too insignificant to this cabal of power brokers to be bothered with. We can go about our business, watching them, waiting, seeking out the signs, breaking the code, perhaps even infiltrating their dark, dangerous, oh-so-secret world.
Novus ordo seclorum.
