THE ILLUMINATI

The Illuminati (plural of Latin illuminatus, "enlightened") is a name given to several groups, both real and fictitious. Historically the name refers to the Bavarian Illuminati, an Enlightenment-era secret society founded on May 1, 1776 to oppose superstition, prejudice, religious influence over public life, abuses of state power, and to support women's education and gender equality. The Illuminati were outlawed along with other secret societies by the Bavarian government leadership with the encouragement of the Roman Catholic Church, and permanently disbanded in 1785. In the several years following, the group was vilified by conservative and religious critics who claimed they had regrouped and were responsible for the French Revolution.

In subsequent use, "Illuminati" refers to various organizations claiming or purported to have unsubstantiated links to the original Bavarian Illuminati or similar secret societies, and often alleged to conspire to control world affairs by masterminding events and planting agents in government and corporations to establish a New World Order and gain further political power and influence. Central to some of the most widely known and elaborate conspiracy theories, the Illuminati have been depicted as lurking in the shadows and pulling the strings and levers of power in dozens of novels, movies, television shows, comics, video games, and music videos.

"As Weishaupt lived under the tyranny of a despot and priests, he knew that caution was necessary even in spreading information, and the principles of pure morality. This has given an air of mystery to his views, was the foundation of his banishment... If Weishaupt had written here, where no secrecy is necessary in our endeavors to render men wise and virtuous, he would not have thought of any secret machinery for that purpose." ~ Thomas Jefferson

Most of what is published about the Illuminati are lies and fabrications. But, it is through these lies and fabrications that the Illuminati lives on. Myth always is stronger than Reality...

Adam Weishaupt was born February 6, 1748 at Ingolstadt and educated by the Jesuits. His appointment as Professor of Natural and Canon Law at the University of Ingolstadt in 1775, a position previously held by one of the recently disbanded Jesuits,4 gave, it is said, great offence to the clergy. "Weishaupt, whose views were cosmopolitan, and who knew and condemned the bigotry and superstitions of the Priests, established an opposing party in the University...." Weishaupt was not then a freemason; he was initiated into a Lodge of Strict Observance, Lodge Theodore of Good Council (Theodor zum guten Rath), at Munich in 1777.

Most information regarding the rituals and objectives of the order is derived from papers and correspondence found in a search of Xavier Zwack’s residence in Landshut on October 11, 1786, and a search of Baron Bassus’s castle of Sondersdorf in Bavaria in 1787. These documents were published by the Bavarian government, under the title: Einige Originalschriften des Illuminaten Ordens, Munich, 1787. Perhaps the best English exposition on the Order is found in Chapter III of Vernon L. Stauffer’s New England and the Bavarian Illuminati, pp. 142-228.  Re: The European Illuminati

As an example of the mythology that surrounds the history of the Illuminati, note that Barruel claimed that Lanz, an Illuminati courier and apostate priest, was struck by lightning, thus revealing Weishaupt’s papers to the authorities, but this does not appear to be substantiated. This error was widely reprinted and enlarged on by subsequent anti-masons whose lack of research and disdain for historical accuracy has lead them to confuse Johann Jakob Lanz (d.1785), a non-Illuminati secular priest in Erding, and friend of Weishaupt, with Franz Georg Lang, a court advisor in Eichstätt who was active in the Illuminati under the name Tamerlan.

Barruel mistakenly translated "Weltpriester", or secular priest, as apostate priest and subsequent writers such as Webster and Miller have repeated this error. Eckert renamed Weishaupt’s friend as Lanze and had him struck by lightning while carrying dispatches in Silesia. Miller cited Eckert but renamed Lanz as Jacob Lang and placed the lightning strike in Ratisbon. This is a minor detail in the history but it demonstrates the lack of accuracy often displayed by detractors of the Illuminati.

Neither Robison nor Barruel deny that the professed goal of the Order was to teach people to be happy by making them good — to do this by enlightening the mind and freeing it from the dominion of superstition and prejudice. But they refused to accept this at face value. Where Weishaupt and Knigge promoted a freedom from church domination over philosophy and science, Robison and Barruel saw a call for the destruction of the church. Where Weishaupt and Knigge wanted a release from the excesses of state oppression, Robison and Barruel saw the destruction of the state. Where Weishaupt and Knigge wanted to educate women and treat them as intellectual equals, Robison and Barruel saw the destruction of the natural and proper order of society.

The rituals were of a rationalistic and not occult nature. Status as a freemason was not required for initiation into the Order of Illuminati since the fourth, fifth and sixth degrees of Weishaupt and Baron Adolphe-François-Frederic Knigge’s system practically duplicated the three degrees of symbolic Freemasonry. Although Knigge claimed to have a system of ten degrees, the last two appear never to have been fully worked up.

"The Order was at first very popular, and enrolled no less than two thousand names upon its registers.... Its Lodges were to be found in France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Hungary, and Italy. Knigge, who was one of its most prominent working members, and the author of several of its Degrees, was a religious man, and would never have united with it had its object been, as has been charged, to abolish Christianity. But it cannot be denied, that in the process of time abuses had crept into the Institution and that by the influence of unworthy men, the system became corrupted; yet the course accusations of Barruel and Robison are known to be exaggerated, and some of them altogether false.... The Edicts [on June 22, 1784, for its suppression] of the Elector of Bavaria [Duke Karl Theodor] were repeated in March and August, 1785 and the Order began to decline, so that by the end of the eighteenth century it had ceased to exist.... it exercised while in prosperity no favorable influence on the masonic institution, nor any unfavorable effect on it by its dissolution."

In 1785 Weishaupt was deprived of his chair and banished with pension from the country. He refused the pension and moved to Regensburg, subsequently finding asylum with Ernst II, Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg. Weishaupt was later appointed a professor at the University of Gottingen, remaining there until his death on 18 November 1830.

Henry Wilson Coil describes the order as a "short lived, meteoric and controversial society"11 while George Kenning refers to it as a "mischievous association". In his own defense, Weishaupt wrote:

"Whoever does not close his ear to the lamentations of the miserable, nor his heart to gentle pity; whoever is the friend and brother of the unfortunate; whoever has a heart capable of love and friendship; whoever is steadfast in adversity, unwearied in the carrying out of whatever has been once engaged in, undaunted in the overcoming of difficulties; whoever does not mock and despise the weak; whose soul is susceptible of conceiving great designs, desirous of rising superior to all base motives, and of distinguishing himself by deeds of benevolence; whoever shuns idleness; whoever considers no knowledge as unessential which he may have the opportunity of acquiring, regarding the knowledge of mankind as his chief study; whoever, when truth and virtue are in question, despising the approbation of the multitude, is sufficiently courageous to follow the dictates of his own heart, - such a one is a proper candidate." 

"The tenor of my life has been the opposite of everything that is vile; and no man can lay any such thing to my charge."

As regards any information derived from the celebrated anti-mason, John Robison: "In the (London) Monthly Magazine for January 1798 there appeared a letter from Böttiger, Provost of the College of Weimar, in reply to Robison’s work, charging that writer with making false statements, and declaring that since 1790 'every concern [sic] of the Illuminati has ceased.' Böttiger also offered to supply any person in Great Britain, alarmed at the erroneous statements contained in the book above mentioned, with correct information."

There, friends and avid readers, is the Truth about the Bavarian Illuminati. All the rest is bullshit, plain and simple. Generated by men who would enslave our minds through fear and ignorance.

Keep the Myth alive, if you will, but illuminate your path with the light of reality. Progress will come. That is just as certain as the New Dawn. No one can hold back the Future, no matter how much effort they expend....