Illuminati

Origins (1748–1830), founder of the Illuminati perched on a book was an emblem used by the Bavarian Illuminati in their "Minerval" degree. Adam Weishaupt (1748–1830) became professor of Canon Law and practical philosophy at the University of Ingolstadt in 1773. He was the only non-clerical professor at an institution run by Jesuits, whose order Pope Clement XIV had dissolved in 1773. The Jesuits of Ingolstadt, however, still retained the purse strings and some power at the university, which they continued to regard as their own. They made constant attempts to frustrate and discredit non-clerical staff, especially when course material contained anything they regarded as liberal or Protestant. Weishaupt became deeply anti-clerical, resolving to spread the ideals of the Enlightenment (Aufklärung) through some sort of secret society of like-minded individuals. Finding Freemasonry expensive, and not open to his ideas, he founded his own society which was to have a system of ranks or grades based on those in Freemasonry, but with his own agenda. On 1 May 1776, Weishaupt and four students formed the Perfectibilists, taking the Owl of Minerva as their symbol. The members were to use aliases within the society. Weishaupt became Spartacus. Law students Massenhausen, Bauhof, Merz and Sutor became respectively Ajax, Agathon, Tiberius and Erasmus Roterodamus. Weishaupt later expelled Sutor for indolence. In April 1778, the order became the Illuminatenorden, or Order of Illuminati, after Weishaupt had seriously contemplated the name Bee order. Massenhausen proved initially the most active in expanding the society. Significantly, while studying in Munich shortly after the formation of the order, he recruited , a former pupil of Weishaupt, at the beginning of Zwack's significant administrative career. (At the time, he was in charge of the Bavarian National Lottery.) Massenhausen's enthusiasm soon became a liability in the eyes of Weishaupt, often resulting in attempts to recruit unsuitable candidates. Later, his erratic love-life made him neglectful, and as Weishaupt passed control of the Munich group to Zwack, it became clear that Massenhausen had misappropriated subscriptions and intercepted correspondence between Weishaupt and Zwack. In 1778, Massenhausen graduated and took a post outside Bavaria, taking no further interest in the order. At this time, the order had a nominal membership of twelve. With the departure of Massenhausen, Zwack immediately applied himself to recruiting more mature and important recruits. Most prized by Weishaupt was Hertel, a childhood friend and a canon of the Munich Frauenkirche. By the end of summer 1778 the order had 27 members (still counting Massenhausen) in 5 commands; Munich (Athens), Ingolstadt (Eleusis), Ravensberg (Sparta), Freysingen (Thebes), and Eichstaedt. Transition Having, with difficulty, dissuaded some of his members from joining the Freemasons, Weishaupt decided to join the older order to acquire material to expand his own ritual. He was admitted to lodge "Prudence" of the Rite of Strict Observance early in February 1777. His progress through the three degrees of "blue lodge" masonry taught him nothing of the higher degrees he sought to exploit, but in the following year a priest called Abbé Marotti informed Zwack that these inner secrets rested on knowledge of the older religion and the primitive church. Zwack persuaded Weishaupt that their own order should enter into friendly relations with Freemasonry and obtain the dispensation to set up their own lodge. At this stage (December 1778), the addition of the first three degrees of Freemasonry was seen as a secondary project. With little difficulty, a warrant was obtained from the Grand Lodge of Prussia called the Royal York for Friendship, and the new lodge was called Theodore of the Good Council with the intention of flattering Charles Theodore, Elector of Bavaria. It was founded in Munich on 21 March 1779 and quickly packed with Illuminati. The first master, a man called Radl, was persuaded to return home to Baden and by July Weishaupt's order ran the lodge. Weishaupt set Knigge the task of recruiting before he could be admitted to the higher grades of the order. Knigge accepted, on the condition that he be allowed to choose his own recruiting grounds. Many other masons found Knigge's description of the new masonic order attractive and were enrolled in the Minerval grade of the Illuminati. Knigge appeared at this time to believe in the "Most Serene Superiors" which Weishaupt claimed to serve. His inability to articulate anything about the higher degrees of the order became increasingly embarrassing, but in delaying any help, Weishaupt gave him an extra task. Provided with material by Weishaupt, Knigge now produced pamphlets outlining the activities of the outlawed Jesuits, purporting to show how they continued to thrive and recruit, especially in Bavaria. Meanwhile, Knigge's inability to give his recruits any satisfactory response to questions regarding the higher grades was making his position untenable and he wrote to Weishaupt to this effect. In January 1781, faced with the prospect of losing Knigge and his masonic recruits, Weishaupt finally confessed that his superiors and the supposed antiquity of the order were fictions and the higher degrees had yet to be written. Internal problems The order had now developed profound internal divisions. In July 1780, the Eichstaedt command had formed an autonomous province and a rift was growing between Weishaupt and the Areopagus, who found him stubborn, dictatorial, and inconsistent. Knigge fitted readily into the role of peacemaker. Attempts at expansion Knigge's recruitment from German Freemasonry was far from random. He targeted the masters and wardens, the men who ran the lodges, and were often able to place the entire lodge at the disposal of the Illuminati. In Aachen, Baron de Witte, master of Constancy lodge, caused every member to join the order. In this way, the order expanded rapidly in central and southern Germany and obtained a foothold in Austria. Moving into the spring of 1782, the handful of students that had started the order had swelled to about 300 members, only 20 of the new recruits being students. In Munich, the first half of 1782 saw huge changes in the government of Lodge Theodore. In February, Weishaupt had offered to split the lodge, with the Illuminati going their own way and the chapter taking any remaining traditionalists into their own continuation of Theodore. At this point, the chapter unexpectedly capitulated and the Illuminati had complete control of lodge and chapter. In June, both lodge and chapter sent letters severing relations with Royal York, citing their own faithfulness in paying for their recognition and Royal York's failure to provide any instruction into the higher grades. Their neglect of Costanza, failure to defend him from malicious charges or prevent his expulsion from Prussia, were also cited. They had made no effort to provide Costanza with the promised secrets and the Munich masons now suspected that their brethren in Berlin relied on the mystical French higher grades which they sought to avoid. Lodge Theodore was now independent. Illuminati circles in the rest of Germany expanded. While some had only modest gains, the circle in Mainz almost doubled from 31 to 61 members. Reaction to state Catholicism led to gains in Austria and footholds were obtained in Warsaw, Pressburg (Bratislava), Tyrol, Milan and Switzerland. The importance of the order lay in its successful recruitment of the professional classes, churchmen, academics, doctors and lawyers, and its more recent acquisition of powerful benefactors. Karl August, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, Ernest II, Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg with his brother and later successor August, Karl Theodor Anton Maria von Dalberg governor of Erfurt, Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (already mentioned), his chief assistant in masonic matters, Johann Friedrich von Schwarz and Count Metternich of Koblenz were all enrolled. In Vienna, Count Brigido, governor of Galicia, Count Leopold Kolowrat, chancellor of Bohemia with his vice-Chancellor Baron Kressel, Count Pálffy von Erdöd, chancellor of Hungary, Count Banffy, governor and provincial Grand Master of Transylvania, Count Stadion, ambassador to London, and Baron von Swieten, minister of public education, also joined. She states that the Illuminati could be understood as yet another Freemasonic or Rosicrucian utopia. Alarmed, Charles Theodore and his government banned all secret societies including the Illuminati. ==Barruel and Robison==

Between 1797 and 1798, Augustin Barruel's Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism and John Robison's Proofs of a Conspiracy publicised the theory that the Illuminati had survived and represented an ongoing international conspiracy. This included the claim that it was behind the French Revolution. Both books proved to be very popular, spurring reprints and paraphrases by others. A prime example of this is Proofs of the Real Existence, and Dangerous Tendency, Of Illuminism by Reverend Seth Payson, published in 1802. Some of the response to this was critical, for example Jean-Joseph Mounier's On the Influence Attributed to Philosophers, Free-Masons, and to the Illuminati on the Revolution of France. Barruel, a Jesuit exiled from France, But Barruel did not accuse all Freemasons, and considered himself to be a Freemason. Barruel accused the Knight Templars that they secretly survived and they have infiltrated Freemasonry in order to destroy Christianity. Barruel's original idea was to depict Jews as engaged in a global conspiracy, a driving force of world history (till then the general consensus was that the Jews are too powerless to do that). Later, Barruel refrained from republishing his book "fearing that it would lead to a massacre of the Jews." The works of Robison and Barruel made their way to the United States and across New England. The Rev. Jedidiah Morse, an orthodox Congregational minister and geographer, was among those who delivered sermons against the Illuminati. In fact, one of the first accounts of the Illuminati to be printed in the United States was Morse's Fast Day sermon of 9 May 1798. Morse had been alerted to the publication in Europe of Robison's Proofs of a Conspiracy by a letter from the Rev. John Erskine of Edinburgh, and he read Proofs shortly after copies published in Europe arrived by ship in March that year. Other anti-Illuminati writers, such as Timothy Dwight, soon followed in their condemnation of the imagined group of conspirators. Printed sermons were followed by newspaper accounts and these figured in the partisan political discourse leading up to the 1800 U.S. presidential election. The subsequent panic also contributed to the development of gothic literature in the United States. At least two novels from the period make reference to the crisis: Ormond; or, The Secret Witness (1799) and Julia, and the Illuminated Baron (1800). Some scholars, moreover, have linked the panic over the alleged Illuminati conspiracy to fears about immigration from the Caribbean and about potential slave rebellions. Concern died down in the first decade of the 1800s, although it revived from time to time in the Anti-Masonic movement of the 1820s and 30s. ==Modern Illuminati==

Several recent and present-day fraternal orders claim to be descended from the original Bavarian Illuminati and openly use the name "Illuminati". Some of these groups use a variation on the name "The Illuminati Order" in the name of their own organisations, while others, such as Ordo Templi Orientis, have Epopt or Perfect Pontiff of the Illuminati as a grade within their organisation's degree structure. However, there is no evidence that these present-day groups have any real connection to the historic order. They have not amassed significant political power or influence and most, rather than trying to remain secret, promote unsubstantiated links to the Bavarian Illuminati as a means of attracting membership. Some modern researchers argue that while these contemporary groups lack historical continuity with the Bavarian Illuminati, they often borrow selectively from its documented structure and symbolism. ==Legacy==

The original Illuminati did not survive suppression in Bavaria. Their further mischief and plottings in the work of Barruel and Robison must be thus considered as the invention of the writers. Some of the historical events conspiracy theorists falsely claim were orchestrated by the Illuminati include the French Revolution, the 1800 United States presidential election, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy. ==See also==