Secret

The machinations of secret underground clubs and societies is of all ages. Even today, in our seemingly transparant world, there are behind-the-curtain oprganisations that decide what your world looks like.
And you might not always like or appreciate - or even understand - what they are doing. The chief goal of these organisations always seem to boil down to power and how to apply it. And they usually are very sucsesfull at that. This is Thomas Keightley's history of three secret societies of the Middle Ages: the Assassins, the Templars and the Fehmgerichte. The Assassins was a shadowy group based in a remote stateless area, practicing a radical variant of Islam, and promising their followers a reward in the hereafter if they died in battle. This club has obvious modern parallels. Of interest also will be Keightley's treatment of the Templars, an organization of crusaders who at their height controlled huge wealth and influence from the British Isles to the Holy Land. They where the 1%-ers of their time. And the short section on the medieval German Fehm-gerichte is fascinating. This organization of secret tribunals in a lawless time had a reputation for hard and fast justice, much like the vigilantes of the American wild west. If you want to know what is happening at the moment, you should study what happened in the past. Reading this book will give you a better understanding of the REAL powers at work in the middle ages, and with that, in modern society. Notoir Books is a publisher of books on topics of esoteric interests, eccentric memoirs, overlooked history and distinctive voices. You can visit us at notoirbooks.com for more.