Adam Weishaupt Founder of the Ordo Illuminati
ILLUMINATI NEW WORLD ORDER
Bavariensis ; http://home.swipnet.se/~w-40977/coolpeople/weishaupt.html
Adam Weishaupt was born in 1748 of Jewish parents but grew up in the
Catholic faith. When his father, George Weishaupt, died in 1754, young Adam
was turned over to be raised by the Jesuits by his godfather, Baron
Ickstatt, who was curator of the university of Ingolstadt in Bavaria. He
converted to protestantism when studying law at Ingolstadt. He had also
studied classic religion and theology and the Eleusian and Mithrian
mysteries, and also the works of Pythagoras. We don´t know much about his
childhood or his early life, and even his name itself is somewhat of a
mystery.
Adam means "the first man", "Weis" means "to know" and "haupt" means
"leader", which makes Adam Weishaupts name mean "the first man to lead those
who know". He graduated from the Universty of Ingolstadt in 1768, and was
made a tutor and catechist. In 1772 he was made a professor of Law. He was
initiated as a Freemason in 1774 in either Hannover or Munich, but found
that no one in his order truly understood the occult significance of the
cermonies. He decided to found his own organisation, which he did on the
first of May 1776. This organisation was first known as "The Order of
Perfectibilists" but became famous as the "Ordo Illuminati Bavarensis", or
the Illuminati for short. Only five people were present at the first meeting
of the order, but it grew rapidly and only a few years later it had
chapterhouses all over Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Hungaria and
Switzerland. Weishaupt and his co-conspirators, notably Baron Knigge and a
lawyer named Zwack, had soon established a network of agents around Europe
that infiltrated courts and other places of power and rapported back useful
gossip and information to Weishaupt. The Illuminatis true goals were
shrouded in mystery. Because of Weishaupt´s strong anti-clerical and
anti-royalistic views, some have assumed that the Illuminati were some sort
of proto-communistic organisation dedicated to bringing about a proletarian
revoulution. Others have seen them as anarchists, or descendants of the
Cathars, or the Knights Templar and the Assassains of Hassan En Sabbah, the
"Old Man on the Mountain", with whom the Knights Templar were rumored to be
in contact with. Yet others have seen them as Satanic agents dedicated to
nothing less than the domination of the planet and the bringing about of the
Kingdom of Satan on Earth. It is true that Weishaupt´s plans certainly was
hostile to the Church of Rome and the monarchies of Europe, and that he
seemed to harbor what would today be called "socialistic" leanings, but
Weishaupt wasn´t an atheist or agnostic. There is little doubt that
Weishaupt was a deeply religious man in his own way. Weishaupt said in a
speech held shortly before the French revolution;
"Salvation does not lie where strong thrones are defended by swords, where
the smoke of censers ascend to heaven or where thousands of strong men pace
the rich fields of harvest. The revolution which is about to break will be
sterile if it is not complete."
This statement has often been taken as to mean that Weishapt was in fact a
sort of communist, and in a sense perhaps he was. One could think the above
qoute a statement by Troytski. However, as the Illuminati´s true goals has
always been disputed it is difficult to find out what exactly was the
political, if such a dirty word may be used, or ideological raison d´etre of
the order. Of course, the easiest way to be able to make an educated guess
is to study the actions of the order, as we will here. In the year 1784 the
Illuminati attempted a coup against the Hapsburgs, but the plot was revealed
by police-spies that had infiltrated the order on orders from the king. This
led to the total ban of all secret societies in Bavaria, and membership was
punishable by death. This edict was signed in June 1784. Weishaupt was
forced to flee to a neighboring province in February 1785 and in March
another edict was passed, this one specifically outlawing the Illuminati.
The Illluminati was forced to go underground in Bavaria and had to move its
revolutionary efforts elsewhere. Disaster again struck for the order when in
July 1785 lightning struck an Illuminati courier, a man named Lanz, and
killed him and the horse he was riding. It is said that both Lanz and the
horse was charred to coal, but the saddlebags were almost intact. In them
was found extensive documents that outlined the Illuminati´s plans for world
domination and revolution, and also named several high ranking Illuminati
members, among them Zwack and Weishaupt. Zwack was arrested and his home
raided in October 1786. Weishaupts activites after 1790 are disputed,
several different versions of his life after 1790 exists. In Robert Anton
Wilson and Robert Shea´s famous trilogy Illuminatus! , for instance, it is
suggested that Weishaupt traveled to America and assumed the role of George
Washington. Others claim that Weishaupt died in obscurity in 1830. I have
chosen to continue to try and trace the alleged influence of the Illuminati
in the following years as it is possible, however unlikely it may seem to
those who take a conventional view of history, that Weishaupt was directing
things from behind the scenes. The French revolution of 1789 has been widely
attributed to the machinations of the Illuminati, and it´s role has been
described as everything from "negligible" to "sole cause". Both statements
are an exaggeration, but it cannot be denied that several persons who were
intensively involved in the revolution was active members, among others the
Comte de Mirabeau, famous author, orator, Freemason and arch-enemy of the
Marquis de Sade. Mirabeau is reported to have said in a speech at the
international Freemanson convention in Wilhelmsbad in 1782 that he was a
member of an organisation that was influenced by the Knights Templar, and
that their goal was to destroy the Church and the monarchy so that the
"Religion of Love" could be established in France. Of course, the Illuminati
was not the only secret revolutionary conspiracy around. There were plenty
of others in these turbulent years just before the revolution. For instance,
the Marquis de Luchet, who were opposed to the Illuminati but supportive of
the revolution, said in a speech;
"There exists a conspiracy in favour of depotism, against liberty, of
incapacity against talent, of vice against virtue, of ignorance against
enlightenment. This society aims to govern the world."
These inner conflicts among those who supported the revolution was also seen
in other secret societies in France during this period. By the year 1788
almost every lodge of Freemasons in Europe, as well as all courts, been
infiltrated by the agents of the Illuminati. Despite this many of the
established lodges in France remained loyal to the king, and only a few took
part in the revolution. It is interesting to note that the very first time
anyone saw revolutionaries wearing the Phryigan cap, supposed symbol of the
Illuminati and the Phrygian mysteries, was at the forced interrruption of a
theathrical performance of Le Suborneur by the Marquis de Sade on monday the
5th of March 1792. Oddly enough, no-one (except for a brief passage in
Wilgus´ Illuminoids) has to my knowledge suggested that the infamous Marquis
was a member of the Illuminati. Sometimes it seems that every famous person
throughout history has been pointed out as a member. It is like Ambrose
Bierce wrote about the Freemasons in his The Devil´s Dictionary;
"An order with secret rites, grotesque cermonies and fantastic costumes,
which orginating in the regin of Charles II, among working artisans of
London, has beeen joined sucessivly by the dead of past centuries in
unbroken retrogression until now it embraces all the generations of man on
the hither side of Adam and is drumming up distinguished recruits among the
pre-Creational inhabitants of Chaos and the Formless Void. The order was
founded at different times by Charlemagne, Julius Caesar, Cyrus, Solomon,
Zoroaster, Confucius, Tothmes and Buddha. Its emblems and symbols have been
found in the Catacombs of Paris and Rome, on the stones of the Parthenon and
the Chinese Great Wall, among the temples of Karnak and Palmyra and in the
Egyptian Pyramids -always by a Freemason."
The history of the Illuminati, or it´s supposed history as traced by various
people, is much like Bierces´ satirical comment.
Ludvig XVI, the French king, wasn´t unaware of the revolutionary activities
and general displeasure among the populance. In June 1789 he tried to
introduce some social reforms that he hoped would calm the populance. The
king´s greatest mistake was when he demanded that the monarchy would be
preserved and that the nobles were to retain the right of veto in all future
reforms. This led to minor rebellions that spread and finally culminated in
the taking of the Bastille. Mirabeau said in a speech shortly thereafter;
"The idolatry of the monarchy has has recived a death blow from the sons and
daughters of the Order of the Templars."
This statement suggests that the Illuminati had ties to both the Cathars and
the Knights Templar. Under the later period of the revolution the influence
of the Illuminati becomes marked. The red Phrygian caps are used as symbol
of the revolutionaries, the symbol of the Illuminati, the eye in the
triangle, is present on many revolutionary documents printed in these days.
Two years after Ludvig XVI failed escape attempt, on the 21st of January
1793, he was executed, and it is said that when the kings head fell an old
man cried from the crowd; "De Molay, thou art avenged!" De Molay was the
leader of the Knights Templar who was burned at the stake for witchcraft in
March 1314 by the machinations of Philip the Fair and Pope Clement V. It
should perhaps be mentioned that before his execution De Molay was held
prisoner in the Bastille, the first "victim" of the Revolution. After the
French revolution the Illuminati faced new difficulties, partly because of
the confused political and social situation in France, and partly because
the rest of the royal houses of Europe panicked when they realised what had
happened in France and banned all secret societies. Persecutions of
Freemasons and Rosecrucians began, and in 1792 an ex-grandmaster of a
Knights Templar inspired organisation was lynched in Versailles by an angry
mob. Suspicion of all secret societies was widespread, and increased when
Robinson´s Proofs of a Conspiracy was released in 1798. This volume
contained an outline of the orders supposed survival after it´s supression
as the German Union, and how it had engineered the Revolution. The book
caused widespread fear in Europe and New England, and was one of the main
reasons for the ban against secret societies in most of Europe. After the
rise of Napoleon Bonaparte the days of the Illuminati in France were
numbered. Most of the existing Lodges of Freemasons and other secret
societies were infiltrated by the agents of Napoleon, who made sure to
remove all possible subversive organisations in order to consolidate his
power. Most conventional historians will argue that the Illuminati, if it
survived at all after the events of 1785-86, now was utterly crushed.
Historians of the more unconventional kind have argued that the Illuminati
continues to thrive and influence the world even today.