CarolinaCutie, here you go… é é …you can keep one and give the other to a friend.
I tend to agree with you. I’ve often said that secrecy purely for the sake of secrecy, or mystery purely for the sake of mystery, is vain and pointless. I do think it’s important to maintain our secrecy. Though non-greeks resent us for it, the experience of this secret bond is indeed one of the things that hold us tightly together. But we shouldn’t wield that secrecy or try to lord it over people, as I have seen a lot of particularly arrogant (or insecure, probably) GLO members do. That just pisses people off. That’s the breeding ground for a lot of the idiot secret-seeking trolls we deal with around here on a regular basis.
There are more graceful ways to deal with secrecy and explain ritual. The wedding analogy is one example. A Catholic mass would be another. I always say something simple like “GLO members share a detailed ritual that they keep secret, but they are expected to exemplify the teachings of those rituals in their everyday lives”. That’s why one of my favorite open mottoes is Alpha Sigma Phi’s: The cause is hidden, but the results are well known.
But you have to admit – we DO do some weird stuff in outfits not unlike KKK robes!
To answer your question, I don’t share specific ritual info with anyone except other researchers who I know to be trustworthy and who already have a great deal of ritual info of their own. This is really a very small handful of people, in case GLOdefender had you thinking it’s a mass conspiracy involving thousands. There are perhaps 10 serious researchers “out there”. Maybe another 10 who sort of dabble in it from time to time, though not seriously.
But I do talk a lot about ritual in general with people. A lot of people want to know if their ritual is similar to XYZ because they were founded by a member of XYZ, or they were founded on the same campus, etc. And I can easily answer their questions by saying, for example, the structure of the ceremony is similar, or the motto is similar, etc. Basically the same stuff you see me discussing on this and other public forums. For example, I can answer GeekyPenguin’s question by saying that, yes, in many cases a given greek letter means the same thing when used in several different groups’ names or mottoes. Same for symbols. And some are more common than others.
My rule of thumb with the “generally interested” is never to reveal any detail beyond what I would reveal of my own ritual. That seems to walk the fine line effectively.
GeekyPenguin, I’ll respectfully decline to answer your question since I don’t want to educate the general public on how to acquire rituals. You can contact me privately if you like (though I probably still won’t tell you
).
wptw