‘Garden parties’ feature far more than Ricky Nelson’s hit single narrating an embarrassing performance before a large crowd of fans, which included many of his peers. Defined as “a social event held outdoors on a lawn or in a garden,” a garden party rarely expands beyond intimate private gatherings, and can include fraternity and sorority parties limited to member brothers and sisters or, at the most elite levels, political economic summits, meetings esoteric in nature, soirées featuring Mensa members or the British socialist think-tank known as the Fabian Society. The most secretive however appear to be the annual Bilderberg Meetings, where between 120-150 political leaders and experts from the fields of industry, finance, academia and the media convene for informal discussions about megatrends and other major global issues and agendas. Such organizations owe their existence to the philosophes during the 18th Century’s Age of Enlightenment, whose most notorious organization, the Illuminati founded by the Bavarian scholar Adam Weiskampt on May 1, 1776, has spawned more than two centuries of conspiracy theories about extraordinarily wealthy puppet masters plotting to create a ‘new world order’ in their own image.
The true legacy of the Illuminati remains both transparent and opaque. Through spurious claims and unsubstantiated rhetoric by charlatans seeking profit from their patrons’ anxieties like Alex Jones, Jesse Ventura and Mark Dice, the legacy of Weishaupt includes accusations of collaborating on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, while through the Roman Catholic Church and the ‘Jewish bankers conspiracy’ as perpetuated by the apocryphal The Protocols of the Learned Elders of the Council of Zion, the Illuminati continually influences popular fiction through literature and films such as Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code and Angels & Demons, as well as Foucault’s Pendulum by Italian novelist Umberto Eco, while references to the Illuminati appear in several video games, such as the Assassin’s Creed franchise. Indeed, as National Geographic’s Isabel Hernández notes, “The 18th-century German thinker Adam Weishaupt would have been stunned if he had known his ideas would one day fuel global conspiracy theories… to discover that this outwardly respectable professor was a dangerous enemy of the state, whose secret society, the Illuminati, was seen to threaten the very fabric of society.” An orphan and descendant of Jewish converts to Christianity, Weishaupt’s scholarly uncle took care of his education by enrolling him in a Jesuit school, whereupon completing his studies he was appointed professor of natural and canon law at the University of Ingolstadt. On the surface, nothing about this brilliant scholar, husband and father appeared extraordinarily threatening before at the age of 36 in 1784, when the Bavarian state learned of his radical ideas.
Secret papers seized by the Bavarian authorities revealed fascinating details about the rituals of the Illuminati. For instance, a novice preparing to graduate into the higher level of minerval was required to present a detailed report on the titles of the books he owned, the identity of his enemies and weak points of his character. Upon initiation as a minerval, he promised to sacrifice all personal interests to those of the society. Thus the Bavarian Illuminati, which Weishaupt formally founded on May 1, 1776 in a forest outside Ingolstadt, had been constructed by himself in his own image to promote his restless, razor sharp intellect as an avid reader who consumed works of French philosophes of the Enlightenment such as Rousseau, Diderot and Montesquieu in his deeply conservative Catholic abode, Bavaria. He viewed the monarchy and the Roman Catholic Church as obstructive and tyrannical for repressing freedom of thought. As a result, he considered that the institution of politically-organized religion, having grown arcane and passé, no longer was befitting as a mold for governing a virtuous 18th Century society. Under these convictions, and because Weishaupt understand well that others shared his beliefs regarding the monarchy and the Church, he endeavored to discover a new vehicle to achieve ‘illumination’, a core system of values whose ideas and practices could eventually change how European monarchs ruled. Understanding that Freemasonry’s successes were attributed to its dissemination of ideas and philosophy from free thinkers, he considered joining a lodge. Over time however, Weishaupt, a committed deist, began absorbing books on such esoteric themes as the Mysteries of the Seven Sages of Memphis and the Jewish cult of mysticism, Kabbalah, to construct the foundation for founding a new secret society of his own. Here, Weishaupt’s Illuminati would be ideologically grounded in the Occult.
To read Weishaupt’s commentaries on religion, he was not so opposed to their conceptual premises but rather their practice and imposition under theocratic rule. He did however advocate political freedom “from all religious prejudices… by animating a great, a feasible, and speedy prospect of universal happiness.” To achieve this, it was necessary to construct “a state of liberty and moral equality, freed from the obstacles which subordination, rank, and riches, continually throw in our way.” Ironically then, only candidates with a strong reputation with well-established familial and social connections, and wealth, were to be accepted into the Illuminati, where they would progress up a hierarchical pyramid that originally included three levels (Novice, Minerval, Illuminated Minerval). ‘Minerval’ for example referred to Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom, to symbolize the Weishaupt’s agenda to diffuse “true knowledge, or illumination, about how society, and the state, might be reshaped.”
Over the following years, Weishaupt’s secret order grew considerably in size and diversity, possibly numbering 600 members by 1782. At this point, the conspiracy theories, both founded and not, emerge given the list featured the likes of Baron Adolph von Knigge and the Jewish banker who financed the society, Mayer Amschel Rothschild. Originally limited to Weishaupt’s students, membership would soon be extended to include noblemen, politicians, doctors, lawyers, jurists as well as intellectuals and leading writers such as the polymath and author of Faust and The Sorrows of Young Werther, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Within two years, the Illuminati would reach 2,000 to 3,000 members.
But massive egos, arrogance and corruption soon led to internal struggles that began to quickly fritter away at the Illuminati’s ability to maintain cohesion. Knigge, who played an integral leadership role, actually drew up ‘a blueprint’ for a ‘new world order’ ruled by ‘philosopher kings’ described by Greek philosopher Plato. Described as a ‘good-natured idealist with utopian aspirations’, Knigge, like with Karl Marx 75 years later, was attracted to the Illuminati believing it could serve as a vehicle for a vast Masonic reformation towards far higher goals based on secret knowledge. But what he discovered instead in the summer of 1780 was the Illuminati remained unstructured, unorganized, and fully conceived. Here, Weishaupt naturally embraced Knigge to mastermind the very foundation driving the Illuminati’s platform, given his knowledge of the arcane hierarchies of the day. Indeed, Knigge’s gifts enabled him to quickly transform the Illuminati from a ragtag cabal of intellectual elitists confined primarily in Catholic Bavaria into a formidable tour d’force by the time of his formal resignation in 1784, where he openly admitted to recruiting members “who use their influence in the service of the Order” to “guide all Freemasonry toward our exalted purpose and bring it under guidance.” Yet it was here that Knigge diverged from the Illuminati’s manifesto due to disdain over the society’s hypocritical abuse of resources to permeate the inner circles of politicians and nobility to “(meddle) in political matters and (procure) civil advantages.” Xavier von Zwack, seen bragging at the very beginning of Einige Originalschriften des Illuminatenordens, boasted openly about obstructing “monkish forces,” the Rosicrucians and his complete cleansing of the Jesuits from the University of Ingolstadt; surveilling and infiltrating the Cadet institute of the Duchess Dowager, while initiating the university’s professors in order for the Illuminati to apply “their thumb on all the pupils”; how the Illuminati had succeeded in installing one of their own as treasurer of the Ecclesiastical Council in order to raid and embezzle monies from the Church treasury to be made available at “its disposal”.
“Power tends to corrupt,” penned British conservative historian Lord Acton nearly a century later. “Absolute power tends to corrupt, absolutely.” Therefore the downfall and suppression of the Bavarian Illuminati can be directly traced to ‘this state-wide infiltration especially within the Bavarian domains’ from its humble beginnings. As Steven Luckert notes in his Ph.D thesis on the Crypto-Catholic and Illuminati “conspiracy theories” of the age, “As more evidence rolled in, it was clear that the Illuminati Order had infiltrated the state bureaucracy and the educational institutions… After all, as Ludwig Manner correctly surmised, the Illuminati seemed to be thwarting or were in a position to thwart the Elector’s absolutist ambitions. The bureaucracy, especially the censor commission, had been infiltrated and became a suspect institution.” And given “blind obedience demanded of Illuminati… It was a question of dual loyalties, and the more the Elector discovered about this secret society, the more suspicious he became.” Luckert’s dissertation at the University of New York in Binghamton titled Jesuits, Freemasons, Illuminati, and Jacobins: Conspiracy theories, secret societies, and politics in late eighteenth-century Germany further detail “The Illuminati’s infiltration of the country’s educational institutions… for schools, like Ingolstadt, trained the regime’s future officials, teachers, and clergy… The documents, interrogations, and denunciations all brought up the Order’s interest in youths.” But most importantly, former members testified that the Illuminati recruited university students, and Weishaupt in fact “clearly intended to use these young men as emissaries of the order. Moreover, those Illuminati involved in education used their positions to reward their students with stipends.” In tandem with the Illuminati’s strategy of infiltration was forming a totalitarian utopia by way of ‘Seelenspionage’ (“spying on the soul”) at the heart of the entire enterprise. The greatest threat to a world governed under the Illuminati was well understood by Weishaupt and company: “if the students’ heads had been filled with pernicious notions, then presumably this would bring dire consequences later.”
The infiltration of education and government eventually crushed the Illuminati due to mounting pressures both internally and external. The order’s further expansion by way of permeation into the upper echelons of Bavarian power halted upon Weishaupt and Knigge increasingly feuding over influence through the aims and procedures of the order that, in the end, forced Knigge to leave the society, while another ex-member, Joseph Utzschneider, would write of sensitive details — some true, some not — behind the secret society to the Grand Duchess of Bavaria alleging the Illuminati had been conspiring against Bavaria on behalf of Austria and favored poisoning its enemies. Having been warned by his wife, the Duke-Elector of Bavaria, Charles Theodore, issued an edict in June 1784 banning the creation of any kind of society not previously authorized by law.
After the French Revolution began on July 14, 1789, the dismantled Illuminati were accused of orchestrating a similar revolt against the Bavarian regime, with some even claiming Weishaupt had met with Jacobin French revolutionary leader Maximilien de Robespierre, and at the time, the former members of the Illuminati were of the impression this general prohibition would not directly affect them. But less than a year later in March 1785, the Bavarian sovereign passed a second edict, which expressly banned the order. In the course of carrying out arrests of members, Bavarian police found highly compromising documents during their raids which included a defense of suicide and atheism, a plan to create a female branch of the order, invisible ink recipes, and medical instructions for carrying out abortions. The evidence served as the basis for accusing the order of conspiring against religion and the state. By August 1787, the duke-elector issued a third edict confirming that the order was prohibited to exist under penalty of death. Additionally, Weishaupt was relieved of his position at the University of Ingolstadt before being exiled, settling in the Saxon city of Gotha where he taught philosophy at the University of Göttingen.
Because the Illuminati dismantled soon after their suppression in Bavaria, authoritative sources have concluded that any further mischief and plots such as in highly popular works of Augustin Barruel’s Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism and John Robison’s Proofs of a Conspiracy alleging that it had not only survived and expanded their operations into an ongoing international conspiracy and Satanic cult, but also collaborated with the Jacobins during the French Revolution and the Battle of Waterloo, were entirely fabricated and thus, spurious. Both books would inspire future genres on the topic such as Proofs of the Real Existence, and Dangerous Tendency, Of Illuminism in 1802 by Rev. Seth Payson of New Hampshire, and Jean-Joseph Mounier’s On the Influence Attributed to Philosophers, Free-Masons, and to the Illuminati on the Revolution of France. But most modern conspiracy theories involving the survival the Illuminati’s ‘survival’ propose that world events are still controlled and manipulated by a secret society with its namesake, with many such claims suggesting that current and former presidents of the United States headed the agenda for a ‘New World Order’. Others have pointed to the left-wing conspiracy perpetuated by the Hollywood film industry, a point which left-dominant mainstream media and entertainment industries strongly condemn. But while some claims have been debunked or remain unsubstantiated, others have been verified through hacked E-mails retrieved by the various global hackivist enclaves known as Anonymous and Julian Assange of Wikileaks regarding the Democratic National Committee’s collaboration with the media to aid Hillary Clinton’s election chances against then-candidate Donald Trump. Other details which include the U.S. military and Mrs. Clinton’s private E-mails from her time as secretary of state, top secret plans for constructing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (2015), communications involving the United Nations plus E-mails correspondences between government officials. In total, such matters only further obfuscate the old cliché that “The truth is stranger than fiction” in light of ‘fake news’ disseminated from the time of yellow journalists such as William Randolph Heart to today in the form of government propaganda by both the American government and from abroad. With the rise of independent journalism and the conservative blogosphere, much of the collaborative nature of the established mainstream media will require that truly ‘illuminated’ and intelligent people swallow a bitter red pill if the world is to be saved from a world where truth is best described as trite, rhetorical, clichéd and inane.
THE CONSERVATIVE HISTORICAL REVIEW 