The Illuminati

Fact or Fiction?

In spite of what many people seem to think, the Illuminati doesn’t secretly run the world. It never has and it never will. In fact, the Order hasn’t even existed for 235 years, as of the time of this writing. Well, at least not the real Illuminati that is. Those who now claim to be part of the group are either misinformed or lying. Regardless of what someone like Jay-Z might suggest, the modern organizations that call themselves “Illuminati” have no real connection to the historic Order. More to the point, they never really amassed any political power. Those kinds of outlandish claims are all just the result of fear-mongering propagandists and conspiracy theorists, dating as far back as the year 1800.

The question is, who were the real Illuminati and what happened to them? Well, as it turns out, the answer to this is surprisingly well-documented. You see, it all started in Bavaria in 1776 with a little-known law professor named Adam Weishaupt. He was a secular philosopher who desperately wanted to teach people about rationalism, religious freedom, and universal human rights. He was brilliantly tapping into the zeitgeist and wanted nothing more than to chase after those sensibilities with gusto. However, the Catholic church had a powerful stranglehold on public affairs which prevented him from spreading those progressive notions. So, Weishaupt decided to establish a secret society that would allow him to shine a light on the shortcomings of the establishment.

The original name for the Order was the “Covenant of Perfectibility”. It began in May of 1776 when Weishaupt and four of his students became the first “Perfectibilists”. They were then instructed to use aliases within the secret society in order to protect their identities. As such, Adam Weishaupt became “Spartacus”, named after the famed leader of the Roman slave revolt. Following suit, Massenhausen, Bauhof, Merz, and Sutor became “Ajax”, “Agathon”, “Tiberius”, and “Erasmus Roterodamus”, respectively. Then, in April of 1778, the group finally became known as the Order of Illuminati, which is the plural form of the Latin word Illuminatus, meaning “Enlightened”.

In line with all of this, Weishaupt wished to keep the existence of the Order secret from the Rosicrucians who had a considerable foothold in German Freemasonry at that time…