Parent organizationSkull and Bones, The Order, Order 322 or The Brotherhood of Death is an at in. The oldest senior class society at the university, Skull and Bones has become a cultural institution known for its powerful alumni and various conspiracy theories. It is one of the 'Big Three' societies at Yale, the other two being and.The society's organization, the, owns the organization's real estate and oversees the membership. The society is known informally as 'Bones', and members are known as 'Bonesmen', 'Members of The Order' or 'Initiated to The Order'. Contents.History Skull and Bones was founded in 1832 after a dispute among Yale debating societies, and the over that season's awards. And co-founded 'the Order of the Skull and Bones'.
The Skulls is a 2000 American thriller film directed by Rob Cohen and starring Joshua Jackson, Paul Walker and Leslie Bibb. Its plot is based upon some of the conspiracy theories surrounding Yale University's Skull and Bones student society. The film was critically panned, but successful enough to spawn two direct-to-video sequels, The Skulls II and The Skulls III, released in 2002 and 2004, respectively.
The first senior members included Russell, Taft, and 12 other members. Alternative names for Skull and Bones are The Order, Order 322 and The Brotherhood of Death.The society's assets are managed by its alumni organization, the, incorporated in 1856 and named after the Bones' co-founder. The association was founded by Russell and, a Skull and Bones member.The first extended description of Skull and Bones, published in 1871 by Lyman Bagg in his book Four Years at Yale, noted that 'the mystery now attending its existence forms the one great enigma which college gossip never tires of discussing'. Brooks Mather Kelley attributed the interest in Yale senior societies to the fact that underclassmen members of then, and junior class societies returned to campus the following years and could share information about society rituals, while graduating seniors were, with their knowledge of such, at least a step removed from campus life.Skull and Bones selects new members among every spring as part of Yale University's 'Tap Day', and has done so since 1879. Since the society's inclusion of women in the early 1990s, Skull and Bones selects fifteen men and women of the junior class to join the society. Skull and Bones 'taps' those that it views as campus leaders and other notable figures for its membership.Facilities Tomb The Skull and Bones Hall is otherwise known as the 'Tomb'.
The tomb before the addition of a second wingThe building was built in three phases: the first wing was built in 1856, the second in 1903, and Davis-designed towers were added to the rear garden in 1912. The front and side facades are of in an. The 1912 tower additions created a small enclosed courtyard in the rear of the building, designed by and Edgerton Swartwout of, New York. Evarts Tracy was an 1890 Bonesman, and his paternal grandmother, Martha Sherman Evarts, and maternal grandmother, Mary Evarts, were the sisters of, an 1837 Bonesman.
A 2009 view of the tomb from across High StreetThe architect was possibly. Architectural historian Patrick Pinnell includes an in-depth discussion of the dispute over the identity of the original architect in his 1999 Yale campus history. Pinnell speculates that the re-use of the Davis towers in 1911 suggests Davis's role in the original building and, conversely, Austin was responsible for the architecturally similar gates, built in 1845.
Pinnell also discusses the Tomb's esthetic place in relation to its neighbors, including the. In the late 1990s, New Hampshire landscape architects Saucier and Flynn designed the fence that surrounds a portion of the complex. Deer Island The society owns and manages, an island retreat on the ( )., author of a book on Yale secret societies, wrote:The forty-acre retreat is intended to give Bonesmen an opportunity to 'get together and rekindle old friendships.' A century ago the island sported tennis courts and its softball fields were surrounded by rhubarb plants and gooseberry bushes. Waited on the lake. Stewards catered elegant meals.
But although each new Skull and Bones member still visits Deer Island, the place leaves something to be desired. 'Now it is just a bunch of burned-out stone buildings,' a patriarch sighs. 'It's basically ruins.' Another Bonesman says that to call the island 'rustic' would be to glorify it. 'It's a dump, but it's beautiful.' Yearbook listing of Skull and Bones membership for 1920. The 1920 delegation included co-founders of magazine, and.Skull and Bones's membership developed a reputation in association with the '.
Regarding the qualifications for membership, wrote in the 1968 Yale yearbook:If the society had a good year, this is what the 'ideal' group will consist of: a football captain; a Chairman of the; a conspicuous; a; a swimming captain; a notorious drunk with a 94 average; a film-maker; a political columnist; a religious group leader; a Chairman of the Lit; a foreigner; a ladies' man with two motorcycles; an ex-service man; a negro, if there are enough to go around; a guy nobody else in the group had heard of, ever. —, quoted by, 'Like other Yale senior societies, Skull and Bones membership was almost exclusively limited to white males for much of its history. While Yale itself had exclusionary policies directed at particular ethnic and religious groups, the senior societies were even more exclusionary. While some Catholics were able to join such groups, Jews were more often not.
Some of these excluded groups eventually entered Skull and Bones by means of sports, through the society's practice of tapping standout athletes. Star football players tapped for Skull and Bones included the first Jewish player (, class of 1938) and African-American player (, class of 1950, who turned down the invitation for the ).Yale became in 1969, prompting some other secret societies such as to transition to co-ed membership, yet Skull and Bones remained fully male until 1992. The Bones class of 1971's attempt to tap women for membership was opposed by Bones alumni, who dubbed them the 'bad club' and quashed their attempt.
'The issue', as it came to be called by Bonesmen, was debated for decades. The class of 1991 tapped seven female members for membership in the next year's class, causing conflict with the alumni association. The trust changed the locks on the Tomb and the Bonesmen instead met in the building. A mail-in vote by members decided 368–320 to permit women in the society, but a group of alumni led by obtained a to block the move, arguing that a formal change in bylaws was needed. Other alumni, such as and, spoke out in favor of admitting women.
The dispute was highlighted on an editorial page of. A second alumni vote, in October 1991, agreed to accept the Class of 1992, and the lawsuit was dropped.Judith Ann Schiff, Chief Research Archivist at the, has written: 'The names of its members weren't kept secret—that was an innovation of the 1970s—but its meetings and practices were.' While resourceful researchers could assemble member data from these original sources, in 1985, an anonymous source leaked rosters to. This membership information was kept privately for over 15 years, as Sutton feared that the photocopied pages could somehow identify the member who leaked it.
He wrote a book on the group, America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull and Bones. The information was finally reformatted as an appendix in the book Fleshing out Skull and Bones, a compilation edited by Kris Millegan and published in 2003.Among prominent alumni are former president and Chief Justice (a founder's son); former presidents and father and son and;, president of the System, and a from;, Founder & CEO,;, the first chancellor of; Supreme Court Justices and;, 'mother of the ';, (1940–1945);, (1951–1953);,; and, founder and publisher of, and magazines. , former and former U.S. Senator;, founder of;, Chairman of Barack Obama's;, co-founder of Morgan Stanley; and, founder of, are all reported to be members.In the, both the Democratic and Republican nominees were alumni. Wrote in his, 'In my senior year I joined Skull and Bones, a secret society; so secret, I can't say anything more.' When asked what it meant that he and Bush were both Bonesmen, former presidential candidate said, 'Not much, because it's a secret.' Lore The number '322' appears in Skull and Bones' insignia and is widely reported to be significant as the year of Greek orator ' death.
A letter between early society members in Yale's archives suggests that 322 is a reference to the year 322 BC and that members measure dates from this year instead of from the. In 322 BC, the ended with the death of and Athenians were made to dissolve their government and establish a plutocratic system in its stead, whereby only those possessing 2,000 drachmas or more could remain citizens. Documents in the Tomb have purportedly been found dated to 'Anno-Demostheni'. Members measure time of day according to a clock 5 minutes out of sync with normal time, the latter is called 'barbarian time'.One legend is that the numbers in the society's emblem ('322') represent 'founded in '32, 2nd corps', referring to a first in an unknown German university.Members are assigned nicknames (e.g., 'Long Devil', the tallest member, and 'Boaz', a varsity football captain, or 'Sherrife' prince of future). Many of the chosen names are drawn from literature (e.g., ', ') religion, and myth. The banker passed on his nickname, ', to the political adviser. Was ', was ', was ', and was '.
Crooking. See also:Skull and Bones has a reputation for stealing keepsakes from other Yale societies or from campus buildings; society members reportedly call the practice 'crooking' and strive to outdo each other's 'crooks'.The society has been accused of possessing the stolen skulls of,. Rumors about the club The group Skull and Bones is featured in books and movies which claim that the society plays a role in a.
Writers such as suggest that Skull and Bones is a branch of the, having been founded by alumni following the order's suppression in their native land by with the support of– or that Skull and Bones itself controls the. References in fiction. Skull and Bones has been satirized from time to time in the comic strips by, Yale graduate and member. There are overt references, especially in 1980 and December 1988, with reference to, and again when the society first admitted women. (2000) and (2002) films are based on the conspiracy theories surrounding Skull and Bones. A third film, (2004), is based on the first woman to be 'tapped' to join the society.
In 's of 's novel, Nick Carraway calls Tom Buchanan Boaz. Tom in turn calls Nick Shakespeare. Nick has said earlier that he met Tom at Yale. It is thereby implied that they were in Skull and Bones together. In the novel, Yale is not explicitly mentioned (rather, they were in New Haven together) and it is only stated that they were in the same senior society. In (2006) the protagonist becomes a member of Skull and Bones while studying at Yale. In episode ', Mr.
Burns visits the Skull and Bones society to meet with about. In the episode “” (season 8) after doing a with a dog, Mr.
Burns says: “I believe this dog was in Skull and Bones”. In Season 1, Episode 33 of the 1966, 'Fine Finny Fiends' there is a gathering at during which one guest points out a portrait of ’s great-grandfather wearing a Yale sweater. He asks if it is true that Bruce’s ancestor was tapped for Skull and Bones, to which replies that he was not tapped for it, but “he FOUNDED Skull and Bones!”. In 's 2019 novel (MacMillan), Skull and Bones plays a significant role in the plot surrounding main protagonist Alex Stern, a member of the fictional Lethe House (the ninth ancient secret society at Yale). In the novel, Bonesmen divine the future by reading the entrails of live humans in mystical rituals, one of which sets off a chain of events involving ghosts and demons on Yale's campus. Several characters are associated with Skulls and Bones in a book 'The Rosabal Line' by an Indian author Ashwin Sanghi.
These characters try to find the truth about Jesus's marriage and bloodline.Media controversies Those initiated into The Order have caused controversies and ruckus when asked about their initiation into The Order. Refused to answer questions when asked about his initiation into The Order and the organization of a meeting of initiates to The Order in the year 1991 inside the. When was asked about his initiation into The Order, the person asking the question was, leading to an.In the 2004 Presidential campaign, on asked both President Bush and John Kerry about their membership in Skull and Bones to which the President replied; 'It's so secret we can't talk about it' and Kerry replied 'You trying to get rid of me here?' See also.References.
Peter Jacobs (October 8, 2015). Business Insider. Retrieved April 10, 2020.
Stevens, Albert C. Cyclopedia of Fraternities: A Compilation of Existing Authentic Information and the Results of Original Investigation as to the Origin, Derivation, Founders, Development, Aims, Emblems, Character, and Personnel of More Than Six Hundred Secret Societies in the United States. Treat and Company.
P. 338. ^ (PDF). The New York Times. September 13, 1903. Retrieved November 5, 2011. Niarchos, Nicolas; Zapana, Victor (December 5, 2008).
Retrieved November 5, 2017. ^ Richards, David (May 2015). Retrieved November 5, 2017. Blakely, Rhys (March 2, 2013).
Retrieved June 22, 2019. Schiff, Judith Ann. Yale Alumni Magazine (September/October 2004). Archived from on April 4, 2005. Retrieved November 5, 2011.
Bagg, Lyman Hotchkiss (1871). New Haven, C.C. Chatfield & Co. Yale: A History, Brooks Mather Kelley, (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, Ltd.), 1974. ^ Yale University 1999 Princeton Architectural Press,.
Archived from on September 18, 2007. Leung, Rebecca (June 13, 2004). Retrieved March 9, 2011. ^ Oren, Dan A.
New Haven: Yale University Press. Pp.
^ Karabel, Jerome (2005). Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Pp. Robbins, pp. 152–159. ^ Andrew Cedotal, Yale Daily News, April 18, 2006.
September 6, 1991. Retrieved February 28, 2009. Semple, Robert B., Jr. (April 18, 1991).
Retrieved February 28, 2009. ^ Hevesi, Dennis (October 26, 1991). Retrieved February 28, 2009. April 4, 2005, at the.
Barron, James (July 25, 1991). Retrieved February 28, 2009. Aaron Bray (October 12, 2007). Yale Daily News. Archived from on October 3, 2012.
Bush, George W. William Morrow and Co. Oldenburg, Don (April 4, 2004). The Washington Post.
Retrieved November 5, 2011. ^ Robbins, Alexandra (May 2000). Retrieved November 5, 2017.
Yale Manuscripts & Archives Digital Images Database. March 23, 1860. Retrieved November 5, 2017. Stevens, Albert C.
Cyclopedia of Fraternities: A Compilation of Existing Authentic Information and the Results of Original Investigation as to the Origin, Derivation, Founders, Development, Aims, Emblems, Character, and Personnel of More Than Six Hundred Secret Societies in the United States. Treat and Company. P. 340. ^ Robbins, Alexandra. Secrets of the Tomb: Skull and Bones, the Ivy League, and the Hidden Paths of Power. Back Bay Books, 2003. Photograph albums of the Skull and Bones Society.
Yale University Library Manuscripts and Archives. 1882. Lassila;Branch (2006). Yale Alumni Magazine: 20–22. Greenburg, Zach O. (January 23, 2004).
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Stephey, MJ (February 23, 2009). Time. Dempsey, Rachel (January 18, 2007).
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Sterling Publishing, 2009, New York and London. Pp. 212–232 ('University Secret Societies and Dueling Corps'). Robbins, Alexandra. Secrets of the Tomb: Skull and Bones, the Ivy League, and the Hidden Paths of Power. Back Bay Books, 2003. Sutton, Antony C.
America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones. Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2003. Sutton, Antony et al., Fleshing Out Skull & Bones Investigations Into America's Most Powerful Secret Society TrineDay LLC, 2003 hardcover softcoverExternal links Wikimedia Commons has media related to.Wikinews has related news:.
Skull and Bones
Its members assure outsiders that Skull and Bones is simply a college fraternity that taps fifteen rich boys each year to undergo an initiation that’s nothing but “mumbo-jumbo.” Conspiracists are certain that the occult-based secret society worships the absolute power of the state and the New World Order.
When William Huntington Russell returned to Yale from his studies in Germany in 1832, his head was filled with the philosophy of reason as taught by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel at the University of Berlin. In Hegel’s worldview, the state is Absolute Reason and individuals must give their total obedience to it. The state has supreme rights over individuals, and individuals must recognize that their supreme duty is to the state. Neither Hitler’s fascism nor Lenin’s communism would quarrel with the precepts of Hegelianism. Russell also returned to Yale with the notion of establishing a chapter of a corps in Germany. He called it the “Order of Scull and Bones,” later changed to Skull and Bones.
The society, which Russell formed with Alphonso Taft (class of 1833), exists only at Yale, and only fifteen juniors are selected by senior members to be initiated into the next year’s membership. Each fortunate initiate is gifted with $15,000 and a grandfather clock. Skull and Bones is not your typical beer-swilling, goof-off fraternity. The initiates’ vows have to do with support of one another in the achievement of worldly and highly material success after graduation. William Russell (1833) rose to the military rank of general and became a state legislator in Connecticut. Alphonso Taft was appointed U.S. attorney general, then secretary of war, ambassador to Austria, and ambassador to Russia. His son, William Howard Taft (1887) was elected to the U.S. presidency in 1909 and later became chief justice of the Supreme Court, the only person to have achieved both positions.
The “Tomb” was constructed in 1856. It is the same vine-covered, windowless brown-stone hall where Skull and Bones still holds its mysterious occult rites. Almost from the very beginning, a mystique grew up around Skull and Bones, as might be expected in a university community that suddenly has within its confines a “secret society.” Professors objected because of its secrecy in a nation that prizes its recognition of equality and its contempt of elitism. As early as 1873 a New Haven newspaper published an article that condemned the society as an “obnoxious, deadly evil” with an increasing “arrogance and self-fancied superiority.”
In the 2004 election, the U.S. had two “Bonesmen” squaring off as presidential opponents. Both George W. Bush and John Kerry are members of the secret society, and Bush had brought five fellow Bonesmen to join his administration, the most recent was William Donaldson (1953) to serve as the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Ron Rosenbaum, author and columnist for the New York Observer, probably spoke for the majority of Americans when he told CBS News (June 13, 2004) that he believed there to be “a deep and legitimate distrust in America for power and privilege that are cloaked in secrecy.” Rosenbaum argued that we are supposed to do things out in the open in America. Rosenbaum, a Yale classmate of George W. Bush, admitted to a thirty-year obsession with Skull and Bones. The columnist said that he actually lived near the “Tomb” and passed it all the time. When the initiation rites were being conducted, he said, he could hear “strange cries and whispers” coming from the sepulchral, windowless building.
Another Yale graduate, Alexandra Robbins, claims that in her book Secrets of the Tomb she managed to penetrate the avowed wall of silence that surrounds the society. In her opinion, the sounds that Rosenbaum heard were likely “mumbo-jumbo,” a silly ritual that means something only to the people who are in the society. “There is a devil, a Don Quixote, and a Pope who has one foot sheathed in a white monogrammed slipper resting on a stone skull,” Robbins told Morley Safer of CBS News. “The initiates are led into the room one at a time. And once an initiate is inside, the Bonesmen shriek at him.” After enduring the shrieking, the initiate is shoved to his knees in front of Quixote as the assembled Bonesmen fall silent. Quixote then lifts his sword and taps the initiate on his left shoulder and says, “By order of our order, I dub thee knight of Euloga.”
According to legend, Prescott Bush (George W. Bush’s grandfather) and some fellow Bonesmen robbed the grave of the great Apache chief Geronimo and took home his skull as a relic for the tomb. Accounts are mixed as to whether the skull was returned to the Apache nation.
The family names to be found on the roster of Skull and Bones truly represents the powerful, the wealthy, the elite—the aristocracy of the United States: Rockefeller, Goodyear, Harriman, Whitney, Lord, Taft, Jay, Bundy, Weyer-hauser, Pinchot, Sloane, Stimson, Phelps, Perkins, Pillsbury, Kellogg, Vanderbilt, Bush, Lovett, and so on. In his book America’s Secret Establishment, Anthony Sutton detailed some of the chains of influence and power that enables the Bonesmen to accomplish conspiratorial plots.
W. C. Whitney (1863) married Flora Payne of the Standard Oil dynasty and became secretary of the navy. Elihu Root, Whitney’s personal attorney, hired Henry Stimson (1888) directly out of law school. Root later became secretary of war, and Stimson was appointed to that position by William Howard Taft in 1911. Later Stimson was President Calvin Coolidge’s (1923–29) governor-general of the Philippine Islands, President Herbert Hoover’s (1929–33) secretary of state, and secretary of war during the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933–45) and Harry S. Truman (1945–53). Stimson’s personal assistant and point man for the Manhattan Project was Holister Bundy (‘09), whose two sons William (‘39) and McGeorge (‘40), both Bonesmen, went on to high ranks in the CIA, the Department of Defense, the State Department, and as special assistants to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. The Bundy brothers exercised considerable influence on the information flow during the Vietnam War, and William went on to be appointed editor of Foreign Affairs, the quarterly of the Council of Foreign Affairs. McGeorge became president of the Ford Foundation.
See how the “chain” of influence passed on from Bonesman to Bonesman works?
Let’s take another chain, the Harriman-Bush links. Averell Harriman (‘13), revered elder statesman of the Democratic Party, his brother Roland (‘17), Prescott Bush (‘17), and four other Bonesmen from the class of 1917 dominated two major investment bank firms, Guaranty Trust and Brown Brothers, both of which were heavily involved in financing Hitler’s regime and, at the same time, the advancement of Communism in Russia. Skull and Bones began with an admiration of the Hegelian ideal of sublimation of the individual to the state, and some Bonesmen continue that ideal, working to achieve a New World Order. Averell Harriman, as minister to Great Britain in charge of the Lend-Lease program for both Britain and the Soviet Union, shipped entire factories into Russia—and, according to some conspiracy researchers, was responsible for the transfer of nuclear secrets, plutonium, and U.S. currency printing plates to the USSR. In 1942 the U.S. government acting under the Trading with the Enemy Act, seized the property of Prescott Bush on the grounds that he was fronting for the Nazis. However, after World War II had ended, Prescott Bush became a U.S. senator from Connecticut and a favorite golfing partner of President Dwight Eisenhower, who, as commander in chief of the Allied forces, had directed the European invasion that defeated the Nazi regime. Prescott also claimed personal credit as one of the eastern money men behind Richard M. Nixon’s rise to political power and for persuading Ike to add Tricky Dick to the ticket as vice presidential candidate.
Is Skull and Bones simply a college fraternity drawing upon old traditions copied from a German student secret society, tapping fifteen rich boys each year to undergo an initiation that’s nothing but “mumbo-jumbo”? Or is there something sinister in the occult-based, sanitized Satanism that worships the absolute power of the state and the New World Order?