The Illuminati - infamous secret society

Do they really create revolutions and run the world?

Greetings Gold and Silver Level Templar Knights! The Illuminati have been accused of being behind revolutions and big social movements. True or false?

Is there an international conspiracy responsible for every revolutionary upheaval and political movement we have seen over the last three hundred years or more? Does this conspiracy strive for a one-world government and total domination? This is the goal attributed to an entity termed 'The Illuminati' - or enlightened ones. But just exactly what is this secret society termed the Illuminati? Does it exist? Who are its members? When did anybody first write about it?

It must be said that if the Illuminati is aiming for global domination - it's not been very successful. Or has it? You see - that's the thing about this secret society. It can be anything and everything. Responsible for just about any political, religious, or cultural phenomenon you care to mention. But are we all being a bit paranoid? Is it too simplistic to look for conspiracies to explain aspects of our world that have evolved over the centuries with many hands involved?

Also - one must ask before diving into the subject - are we in danger of demonising groups of people as puppet masters? This kind of conspiracy theory has all too often led to the door of anti-semitism. Talk of a secret society running the world - whether Illuminati, Freemasons, or Bilderbergs - can all too easily get intertwined with prejudice against Jewish people. This kind of lame, bigoted thinking is not for civilised folk like us.

So - who are the Illuminati?

The Illuminati - a Bavarian secret society?

The German professor Johann Adam Weishaupt (1748-1830) is credited with founding the Illuminati in the year 1776 - a year with plenty of resonance for Americans. From the outset, the Illuminati was intended to be a network of unconnected cells reporting to a superior but having no contact with each other. This kind of organisational structure has been adopted by terrorist organisations to minimise risk if a member is caught and interrogated. It places a limit on how much information they can divulge.

The late Pat Robertson (1930-2023) - conservative tele-evangelist and media moghul - wrote in a book titled The New World Order that the Illuminati was working for Lucifer to bring humanity under the evil one's heel. They were behind the French Revolution and authored the Communist Manifesto (actually written by Karl Marx in 1848). Robertson's views on the Illuminati were not original - despite his book being a runaway bestseller back in the 1990s.

The idea of a secret society being behind the overthrow of King Louis XVI and his queen Marie Antoinette in 1789 was popularised by an anti-Masonic Jesuit priest Augustin Barruel (1741-1820) at the time of the revolution. He had a bizarre theory that modern-day Knights Templar had infiltrated the Freemasons - along with the Illuminati - to overthrow the French monarchy and cause chaos. Much of what Robertson wrote recycled Barruel.

Fidel Castro - Illuminati?

Weishaupt's secret society was disbanded by the Bavarian authorities in 1785 but in the 1970s, the American right-wing organisation - The John Birch Society - claimed that the following people were modern-day Illuminati operating in plain sight:

• Fidel Castro - communist leader of Cuba

• Mao Tse-tung - first communist leader of China

• Nikita Kruschev - leader of the Soviet Union after Stalin

• Marshal Tito - communist ruler of Yugoslavia

• Charles de Gaulle - conservative president of France

• President Richard Nixon - US president who resigned after Watergate

• Henry Cabot Lodge - early 20th century Republican senator

• Edward "Ted" Kennedy - brother of the assassinated US president JFK

• David and Nelson Rockefeller

• Otis Chandler - publisher of the Los Angeles Times

This list of names was a mix of all those the John Birch Society regarded as its enemies - from communists to establishment Republicans. The Birchers saw Illuminati activity everywhere. For example, any dialogue between somebody like Nixon - a Republican US president - and Mao Tse-tung - a communist leader - was clear evidence that the Illuminati were working across supposed ideological divides to create their world order.

The All-Seeing Eye of the Illuminati

The original Illuminati were gentlemen inspired by the eighteenth century Enlightenment where science and reason was to triumph over the medieval superstition of the church and belief in an all-powerful God directing human affairs. They saw themselves standing in the shadow of previous movements like the Luciferians, Rosicrucians, and Levellers.

The cell network established by Weishaupt monitored the loyalty of members constantly with, as one commentator has put it, the Illuminati "secret police" killing any member who was about to divulge secrets to the authorities. This surveillance operation was known as the "Insinuating Brethren" and had as its insignia, the all-seeing eye.

Weishaupt hoped to bring most of the Freemasonry movement in Germany into the Illuminati. He was assisted in that endeavour by a German aristocrat: Adolph Freiherr Knigge (1752-1796). But Knigge disliked Weishaupt's dictatorial tendencies as he believed the Illuminati should be a tool for advancing human rights, freedom, and good manners. Knigge was a stickler for etiquette and even wrote a book on the subject.

Within a few years, it was claimed by the likes of Barruel that the Illuminati had stage managed the French Revolution - even organising the Siege of the Bastille and releasing its political prisoners. In the aftermath of the American Revolution, President George Washington clashed bitterly with the French ambassador to the newly formed United States: Edmond-Charles Genêt (1763-1834). France had supported the American fight for independence from Britain and thought they could now count on Washington to back their wars against Britain and Spain.

Genêt even went round American cities recruiting volunteers, commandeering British ships, and gathering resources. But the United States had decided to remain neutral and not side with either Britain or France. According to some conspiracy theorists, Genêt was an Illuminati trouble maker caught out by George Washington who successfully slapped him down - with help from Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton.

John Robinson, Jedidiah Morse and the Illuminati

In 1798, the Scottish physicist John Robinson wrote a book with a very long title: Proofs of a Conspiracy against all the Religions and Governments of Europe, carried on in the secret meetings of Freemasons, Illuminati and Reading Societies. When he began writing, Robinson's intended target was Freemasonry but as he says in the conclusion, having chanced upon the Illuminati and its activities, he "regretted the time" he had "thrown away" studying "Free Masonry". Because he had no doubt it was behind the French revolution and the unifying of Germany. The Illuminati were everywhere!

"Nothing would give me more sincere pleasure than to see the whole proved to be a mistake - to be convinced that there is no such plot, and that we run no risk of the contagion."

Robinson's claims were popularised in the United States by Jedidiah Morse (1761-1826), a well known writer and preacher whose son, Samuel Morse, would invent Morse Code. His rants against an alleged Illuminati conspiracy in the United States foreshadowed the anti-Communist witch hunts of Senator Joe McCarthy in the 1950s. Morse's concern was that the new American republic was being guided by people who had no belief in god. Contrary to what some conservatives and evangelicals believe now - back in the 1790s, there was widespread suspicion among the religious that some of the Founding Fathers had little religious belief at all. They were Deist rationalists who regarded miracles with deep scepticism.

This was his description of the Illuminati - which some might have found rather appealing:

"Their principles are avowedly atheistical. They abjure Christianity- justify suicide- declare death an eternal sleep- advocate sensual pleasures agreeable to the Epicurean philosophy- call patriotism and loyalty narrow minded prejudices, incompatible with universal benevolence- declaim against the baneful influence of accumulated property, and in favor of liberty and equality, as the unalienable rights of man- decry marriage, and advocate a promiscuous intercourse between the sexes- and hold it proper to employ for good purpose, the means which the wicked employ for bad purposes."

In the next two centuries, the Illuminati were blamed for pan-Slavism; Irish republicanism; German imperialism; the revolt of the Paris Commune; the Fabian socialists; and the Bolsheviks. Today, the Council on Foreign Relations is an Illuminati front along with the Trilateral Commission and other global bodies.