1. Generally, secret societies don’t proselytize, while religious cults do little else. To proselytize means to get out there and find potential members by using high-pressure tactics. In general, secret societies get the wannabe members knocking on their doors and not the reverse.

2. Secret societies usually set a bar high enough to keep out members they don’t want. Religious cults, on the contrary, use their tactics on anyone standing nearby. For example, Religious cults often use a technique called love bombing. This method usually happens in the period when the cult is still trying to get the potential convert to join. During this honeymoon period, everyone in the cult just loves you. They love the way you dress; they love your hair; they love your insightful comments; they love your bridgework. Meanwhile, in a completely opposite camp, a secret society is often spending this same honeymoon period testing potential members to see if they can make the grade.

3. Religious cults are very often built around the absolute faith of the members in one messianic figure, Historians call this psychological effect the “Cult of Personality,” and it works even in groups of millions, Religious cults often fade away or break apart into other cults when their leader dies, no matter how large they might’ve been. Sometimes they go rolling on, with a second-in-command who keeps things going in the name of their dead messiah. the personality simply takes all the members with him when he goes. As a rule (a rule with the occasional exception), noncultish secret societies may be founded by one man, Such societies are usually set up to be selfperpetuating and don’t die away with their founder.


4. The effect of membership on the relationship to a person’s family is different. Religious cults often try to cut a person off from old friends and eventually from family members, particularly if the cults disapprove. Many cults assign new members a sort of “keeper,” an older and more trusted member of the group who accompanies the new member just about everywhere including the toilet, and this means tense and weird situations like coming home with the new convert for family events like holidays. Until the new convert can be trusted to have become utterly brainwashed and deaf to all criticism, the cult likes to keep him as near to hand as possible.

5. Generally, secret societies do little to damage a person’s relationship with family and friends, although this rule isn’t hard and fast. For example, a man may become deeply involved with an organization like Freemasonry, leaving home two or even three nights a week for Masonic events that don’t include wives. Of course, Masons, seeing this potential for angry wives, long ago created many subsidiary organizations that get the wife and kids involved with the fraternity in order to ease any hurt feelings of being left out. But the dynamic is still there with many secret societies, and it can be far worse with some. For instance, if a man or woman is a member of the most clandestine offices within the CIA or NSA, they’re not even allowed to tell their family what they do for a living. This, too, can create a strained distance in family relationships, though generally nothing on the scale of the home wrecking that cults can achieve.