Across from City Hall stands the Masonic Temple, an enormous, medieval-style building. The Free Masons have gathered there since 1873. If the popular imagination were a tavern, like the ones where Philadelphians first gathered, Free Masonry would be downing Fish House Punch with the Illuminati and the Knights Templar–ancient orders with esoteric rituals and terrifying powers. In reality, while the Free Masons descend from medieval guilds, the first modern lodge was founded in 18th century England as a fraternal order–or, in other words, a social club. While the Free Masons adopted medieval-sounding ceremonies and titles, they have always served a modern purpose: fellowship and mutual benefits.

I’ve been thinking about clubs and secret societies for a while. When I first conceived of my novel, Saturnalia—about a woman navigating conspiracies in a near-future, dystopian Philadelphia—I knew I wanted to write about wealth, class, and hierarchy as much as I wanted to imagine occult rites and elite halls. Secret societies are an alluring topic, but also, I’ve learned, a hugely illuminating one (no pun intended). My novel uses fictional clubs and societies to imagine a future. A survey of Philadelphia clubs, fraternal organizations, and societies, though, comprise a history of our region. It’s a complex history, too. While fraternal orders use exclusivity as a brand, and mutual aid and political societies are often founded with narrow missions, these groups’ membership and activities reveal nuanced class, religious, ethnic, and political dynamics of early Philadelphia.