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| Mask from a Pre-Columbian Secret Society |
Secret societies have similar aims across cultures and centuries. They involve a desire for wealth, power, and carnal appetite and use those promises as recruiting tools. They use secret oaths, signs, and tokens so that they can recognize one another through subtle stratagem. They maintain a pseudo-sense of respectability in the larger society. They involve some sort of initiation as a new proselyte moves up the ranks to higher degrees. In this way, only the most elite members know much about the organization which the newer members know very little and cannot betray the group's secrets if they fall out of favor.
For years, archaeologists have known of such secret societies among the Aztec, but in the past few decades as other evidences have emerged, they have come to understand that these cults went back more than 1,000 years before the Aztecs. One such source was the discovery to the writings of Father Sahagan, a Spanish priest who came to Mexico with the conquistadors. He is one of the best sources of pre-Columbian history because he read and listened and recorded what he learned. Here is what Sorensen [1] said about Sahagan's writings regarding the secret society he called the nahualistas: "people like assassins, [2] daring and accustomed to kill, they carried on their persons pieces of jaguar skin, of the forehead and chest and the tip of the tail, the claws, the canines, and the lips to make them powerful, brave and fearsome."
Each member had his nahual, or guardian animal spirit that gave its power to the person. To get this power, the person had to be trained in black magic after a brutal initiation. Sometimes hallucinogenic drugs [3] were given to induce visions. When the nahual was thus obtained, it was believed that the person could become the animal. Practitioners were said to suck the blood of sleeping persons, cause illnesses, and eat corpses. Because the jaguar was the most powerful nahual, it was the most coveted and gave rise to the myth of "were-jaguar" similar to the werewolves of western European culture.
There was a "semi-priestly order" called the nahualteteuctin which name meant master magician or sacred companions in arms. These practices continued into Spanish colonial days although they stayed well-hidden from their Spanish conquerors. These nahualteteuctin fought not only the Spanish, but Christianity itself and often a priest would name himself Pontius Pilate or Judas Iscariot as a slap in the face of Christianity.
It is not difficult to see why the mere mention of the name of the Gadianton Robbers struck terror in the hearts of the Nephite people!
[1] An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon, John L. Sorensen; referenced and quoted from pp. 301-302.
[2] The assassins were a near-Eastern secret society from which we get our word assassin.
[3] The name assassins, was taken from that group's use of hashish to induce visions in it initiatives.
Text copyright December 2013, Gebara Education
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