Secret Societies in Biblical Speculative Fiction
Across the ages, humanity has been both fascinated and frightened by secrecy—by whispered oaths, hidden gatherings, and unseen forces that move beneath the surface of belief. In almost every era, stories of secret societies have emerged: groups that guard forbidden knowledge, defy divine authority, or manipulate truth for their own ends. But what if those shadows stretch all the way back to the beginning—to the first families of the earth, when faith was still being written into the soil?
That question became the spark behind one of the central threads in my novel Cain. While the Genesis story offers a simple contrast—obedient Abel and rebellious Cain—the apocryphal writings and early traditions hint at something deeper, more organized, and far more dangerous: a gathering of men and women who longed for freedom from divine law, who whispered of a “New God” that demanded no sacrifice and promised no judgment. These early rebels, guided by envy and weariness of obedience, might well have been the first secret society—the seed of all later brotherhoods of secrecy, power, and defiance.
In Cain, these meetings take place beneath the veil of night, in the wilderness beyond Adam’s village. They are not merely political but spiritual: the earliest congregation of rebellion, cloaked in devotion and deceit. Here, Cain—torn between his father’s law and his own desire—finds kindred souls who echo his questions. Why must we obey a God who no longer speaks? Why must love and freedom bear the weight of guilt?
Speculative fiction allows us to explore these questions without blasphemy—to imagine the spaces where divine silence and human curiosity intersect. In the apocryphal imagination, even angels, called the Watchers, walk among men, observing their choices, sometimes guiding them, sometimes tempting themselves. Within that context, a secret gathering of mortals seeking forbidden knowledge feels not only possible but inevitable.
What makes these societies so compelling in biblical speculative fiction is not their rebellion alone, but their motives. Each hidden order, each oath of secrecy, reflects something deeply human: the yearning to know what is withheld, to possess power beyond reach, to create one’s own destiny outside divine order. The moment Cain joins such a group, his fate—and humanity’s—shifts forever. His rebellion becomes the blueprint for every secret brotherhood to come, from Babel’s builders to the priests of false gods, from ancient cults to modern conspiracies.
Writing Cain allowed me to explore how the first act of secrecy became the first fracture in faith. Once the truth was hidden, power changed hands. Once words were whispered instead of spoken in the light, the relationship between God and man was altered. The story becomes not merely one of murder, but of the birth of deception—the dawn of a world where faith would forever contend with secrecy.
That, to me, is the power of biblical speculative fiction: it dares to enter the silences of scripture, to fill them with human breath, fear, and desire. In the shadowed corners of Genesis, behind every sacred command, there lingers a question—what if someone defied it, not out of evil, but out of longing to be free?
These are the stories that shaped Cain, and they are the stories that continue to shape us. For even now, every secret, every hidden motive, every rebellion against truth echoes that first society—the one born under a dark sky, where a man named Cain listened to the wrong voice and changed the world forever.
Shelia Cosper is a writer of historical and biblical fiction exploring the hidden intersections of faith, rebellion, and redemption. With over 25 years of writing experience and a lifelong passion for ancient texts, she brings lost histories to life through the lens of story—where divine mystery meets human longing.
