The Illuminati crop up everywhere these days. If you Google “Illuminati,” you’re faced with vast quantities of content with dubious reliability.
Today, the word means a hidden, secretive, evil bunch of men who are trying to either take control of the world’s resources, or invite Satan to use the modern media landscape to create havoc.
This article, however, is about the actual history of the actual Illuminati who were actually real. It turns out they were relatively enlightened men, as their name suggests.
The Illuminati began as a secret society called the Bavarian Illuminati during the enlightenment era on May 1st, 1776 in Ingolstadt, Germany. They formed to oppose superstition, religious and state control over the masses, and to promote gender equality.
This was very forward thinking for the mid 18th Century. They modelled their structure on the masons and vowed pledges of secrecy. The leader, Adam Weishaupt, or ‘Brother Spartacus,’ initially wanted to call them the “Perfectibilists.” Had that stuck, I wonder whether the name would be so well-known today.
The Bavarian Illuminati boasted as many as 2,000 members over their 10-year life span. Their set up was a complex nexus of spies and counter spies, all working in isolated cells, reporting back to people they didn’t know.
Weishaupt was a Mason and introduced his unpopular project of “illumination, enlightening the understanding by the sun of reason, which will dispel the clouds of superstition and of prejudice.”
He later developed his enlightenment theories further, believing that through education, humans could once again live alongside nature in a safe and communal atmosphere without the need for state or religion hammering us down. In some ways, he was a hippy anarchist or an anti-religious libertarian.
When Karl Theodor came in to power in Bavaria, he put a ban on all secret societies, partly due to pressure from the Roman Catholic Church.
Theodor was a fan of Enlightened Despotism, which means he liked freedom of speech and thought, but still wanted ultimate power. This was the death blow for the Illuminati and they fizzled out, having had all their secret documents stolen and published.
Some modern groups claim to have their roots in the order of the Illuminati in Bavaria, but there’s no hard proof, and they certainly don’t seem to wield any power. It’s a shame that such a bright-minded bunch of people had their name stolen and twisted.
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