Jon Lewis: The Mammoth Book of Conspiracies

Ironically, just at the moment the Illuminati project failed, the paranoid myth that it was an omniscient, omnipotent secret society was born. In 1797, Augustin de Barruel published the first of his two volume Memoires pour server a l’histoire de Jacobinisme (“Memoirs serving as a history of Jacobinism”). An ex-Jesuit, de Barruel blamed the recent French Revolution on an inner sanctum of Masons—the Illuminati. A year later, Professor John Robison fingered the Illuminati in his Proofs of a Conspiracy Against All the Religions and Governments of Europe, Carried on in the Secret Meetings of Free-Masons, Illuminati and Reading Societies . In the febrile atmosphere of late eighteenth-century Europe, de Barruel and Robison’s claims caused a furore, and the Illuminati became the favourite bogeymen of conservatives on the continent.

That there was no hard evidence for the continued existence of the Illuminati troubled not one of these writers, just as it failed to trouble the British author Nesta Webster a century later. Webster’s colourful Secret Societies and Subversive Movements , published in 1924, detected the fingers of the Illuminati in the French Revolution (see Document, p.12) and the Russian Revolution just gone by. Webster’s book enjoyed only modest influence in her home country, but in America it became the conspiracy gospel of the Far Right. Today, the Illuminati are Public Enemy Number One for the John Birch Society, survivalists, the patriotic militias and Christian fundamentalists, who all claim to have detected the Illuminati’s real goal: a single, authoritarian, satanic global government—a New World Order. As an alert on the Christian Science University website in 2000 had it: “A diabolical and Satanic… scheme has been designed and is being prepared for global implementation by anti-Christ agents of an organization called ‘The Illuminati’.”

There is a secret sign of America’s special role in the Illuminati’s plans: the Latin motto Novus Ordo Seclorum (translated as “New World Order”) on the US dollar bill. Unfortunately for conspiracists, the actual translation of the Latin tag is “New Order of the Ages”, or, colloquially, “a fresh start”. The desperate mistranslation of Novus Ordo Seclorum is typical of the “evidence” Illuminati-watchers hold up as evidence of conspiracy. Free of the constraints of actual evidence, contemporary conspiracists speculate wildly. David Icke considers the Illuminati to be a front for shape-shifting Reptilian Humanoidsfrom planet Draco, while one major Illuminati conspiracy theory claims that the order was founded in Mesopotamia around 300,000 BC. That is, before the Neanderthals staggered around the Earth, dragging their knuckles on the ground. In the archetypal Illuminati conspiracy theory, however, the pyramid of power is, from the top down: Lucifer, or the All-Seeing Eye; the Rothschild Tribunal, being the inner circle of the Rothschild banking family; the Great Druid Council; below them, the Council of Thirty-Five, consisting of leading Freemasons; the Committee of 300, which is led by the black nobility, notably the British Royal Family.

That whirring sound you can hear? That is Adam Weishaupt, who believed that Illumination was about moral and intellectual perfection, spinning in his grave.

William Cooper, Behold a Pale Horse , 1991

John Robison, Proofs of a Conspiracy Against All the Religions and Governments of Europe , 1798

Illuminism in reality is less an Order than a principle, and a principle which can work better under cover of something else. Weishaupt himself had laid down the precept that the work of Illuminism could best be conducted “under other names and other occupations”, and henceforth we shall always find it carried on by this skilful system of camouflage.

The first cover adopted was the lodge of the “Amis Réunis” in Paris, with which, as we have already seen, the Illuminati had established relations. But now in 1787 a definite alliance was effected by the aforementioned Illuminati, Bode and Busche, who in response to an invitation from the secret committee of the lodge arrived in Paris in February of this year. Here they found the old Illuminatus Mirabeau—who with Talleyrand had been largely instrumental in summoning these German Brothers—and, according to Gustave Bord, two important members of the Stricte Observance, the Marquis de Chefdebien d’Armisson (“Eques a Capite Galeato”) and an Austrian, the Comte Leopold de Kollowrath-Krakowski (“Eques ab Aquila Fulgente”) who also belonged to Weishaupt’s Order of Illuminati in which he bore the pseudonym of Numenius.

It is important here to recognize the peculiar part played by the Lodge of the “Amis Réunis”. Whilst the “Loge des Neuf Soeurs” was largely composed of middle-class revolutionaries such as Brissot, Danton, Camille Desmoulins, and Champfort, and the “Loge de la Candeur” of aristocratic revolutionaries—Lafayette as well as the Orléanistes, the Marquis de Sillery, the Duc d’Aiguillon, the Marquis de Custine, and the Lameths—“the Loge du Contrat Social” was mainly composed of honest visionaries who entertained no revolutionary projects but, according to Barruel, were strongly Royalist. The rôle of the “Amis Réunis” was to collect together the subversives from all other lodges—Philalèthes, Rose-Croix, members of the “Loge des Neuf Soeurs” and of the “Loge de la Candeur” and of the most secret committees of the Grand Orient, as well as deputies from the “Illuminés” in the provinces. Here, then, at the lodge in the Rue de la Sordière, under the direction of Savalette de Langes, were to be found the disciples of Weishaupt, of Swedenborg, and of Saint-Martin, as well as the practical makers of revolution—the agitators and demagogues of 1789.

The influence of German Illuminism on all these heterogeneous elements was enormous. From this moment, says a further Bavarian report of the matter, a complete change took place in the Order of the “Amis Réunis”. Hitherto only vaguely subversive, the Chevaliers Bienfaisants became the Chevaliers Malfaisants, the Amis Réunis became the Ennemis Réunis. The arrival of the two Germans, Bode and Busche, gave the finishing touch to the conspiracy. “The avowed object of their journey was to obtain information about magnetism, which was just then making a great stir”, but in reality, “taken up with the gigantic plan of their Order”, their real aim was to make proselytes. It will be seen that the following passage exactly confirms the account given by Barruel:

As the Lodge of the “Amis Réunis” collected together everything that could be found out from all other masonic systems in the world, so the way was soon paved there for Illuminism. It was also not long before this lodge together with all those that depended on it was impregnated with Illuminism. The former system of all these was as if wiped out, so that from this time onwards the framework of the Philalèthes quite disappeared and in the place of the former Cabalistic-magical extravagance [‘Schwärmerei’] came in the philosophical-political.

It was therefore not Martinism, Cabalism, or Freemasonry that in themselves provided the real revolutionary force. Many non-illuminized Freemasons, as Barruel himself declares, remained loyal to the throne and altar, and as soon as the monarchy was seen to be in danger the Royalist Brothers of the “Contrat Social” boldly summoned the lodges to coalesce in defence of King and Constitution; even some of the upper Masons, who in the degree of Knight Kadosch had sworn hatred to the Pope and Bourbon monarchy, rallied likewise to the royal cause. “The French spirit triumphed over the masonic spirit in the greater number of the Brothers. Opinions as well as hearts were still for the King.” It needed the devastating doctrines of Weishaupt to undermine this spirit and to turn the “degrees of vengeance” from vain ceremonial into terrible fact.