Illuminati

[2] During subsequent years, the group was generally vilified by conservative and religious critics who claimed that the Illuminati continued underground and were responsible for the French Revolution.

Central to some of the more widely known and elaborate conspiracy theories, the Illuminati are depicted as lurking in the shadows and pulling the strings and levers of power.

Weishaupt became deeply anti-clerical, resolving to spread the ideals of the Enlightenment (Aufklärung) through some sort of secret society of like-minded individuals.

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 (Erzurum).

Christians of good character were actively sought, with Jews and pagans specifically excluded, along with women, monks and members of other secret societies.

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.

[15] If Knigge had expected to learn the promised deep secrets of Freemasonry in the higher degrees of the Illuminati, he was surprisingly calm about Weishaupt's revelation.

In November 1781 the Areopagus advanced Knigge 50 florins to travel to Bavaria, which he did via Swabia and Franconia, meeting and enjoying the hospitality of other Illuminati on his journey.

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.

Weishaupt's emphasis on the recruitment of university students meant that senior positions in the order often had to be filled by young men with little practical experience.

The Royal York, unwilling to lose the revenue, offered to confer the "higher" secrets of Freemasonry on a representative that their Munich brethren would dispatch to Berlin.

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.

[18] Delayed from 15 October 1781, the last convention of the Strict Observance finally opened on 16 July 1782 in the spa town of Wilhelmsbad on the outskirts of (now part of) Hanau.

Ostensibly a discussion of the future of the order, the 35 delegates knew that the Strict Observance in its current form was doomed, and that the Convent of Wilhelmsbad would be a struggle over the pieces between the German mystics, under Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel and their host Prince Charles of Hesse-Kassel, and the Martinists, under Jean-Baptiste Willermoz.

The only dissenting voices to mystical higher grades were Johann Joachim Christoph Bode, who was horrified by Martinism, but whose proposed alternatives were as yet unformed, and Franz Dietrich von Ditfurth, a judge from Wetzlar and master of the Joseph of the Three Helmets lodge there, who was already a member of the Illuminati.

[18] At the convent, Ditfurth blocked the attempts of Willermoz and Hesse to introduce their own higher grades by insisting that full details of such degrees be revealed to the delegates.

The new "Scottish Grade" introduced with the Lyon ritual of Willermoz was not compulsory, each province and prefecture was free to decide what, if anything, happened after the three craft degrees.

Their intention was to use their new federation, with its emphasis on the fundamental degrees, to remove all allegiance to Strict Observance, allowing the "eclectic" system of the Illuminati to take its place.

[18] The circular announcing the new federation outlined the faults of German freemasonry, that unsuitable men with money were often admitted on the basis of their wealth, that the corruption of civil society had infected the lodges.

Reaction to state Catholicism led to gains in Austria and footholds were obtained in Warsaw, Pressburg (Bratislava), Tyrol, Milan and Switzerland.

[20] 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.

Kolowrat was already a high ranking Rosicrucian and the mystic Prince Charles of Hesse-Kassel had a very low opinion of the rationalist higher grades of the Illuminati.

[citation needed] In April 1783, Frederick the Great informed Charles of Hesse that the Berlin lodges had documents belonging to the Minervals or Illuminati which contained appalling material and asked if he had heard of them.

All Berlin masons were now warned against the order, which was now accused of Socinianism, and of using the liberal writings of Voltaire and others, alongside the tolerance of Freemasonry, to undermine all religion.

In spite of efforts by their superiors to curb loose talk, politically dangerous boasts of power and criticism of monarchy caused the "secret" order's existence to become common knowledge, along with the names of many important members.

[27][28] Barruel, a Jesuit exiled from France,[29] using some ideas plagiarized from John Robison, peddled a conspiracy theory that Jews, Freemasons and Illuminati want to demolish all monarchies plus the Vatican, in order to establish a World Republic.

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.

[39] Some of the historical events conspiracy theorists falsely claim were orchestrated by the Illuminati include the French Revolution, the 1800 United States presidential election,[40] and the assassination of John F.