THE ILLUMINATI part 1 - The Bavarian Illuminati

The Illuminati was a secret society formed by Adam Weishaupt, a Bavarian law professor who believed strongly in Enlightenment ideals and sought to promote those ideals among the elites. At the time when the group was formed, the clergy and the nobility controlled everything, including free thought. Weishaupt didn’t believe in the ideals and rules of religion and didn’t gel with the idea of freemasonry either. He formed the Illuminati with his students as members, and eventually, upperclassmen began to join as well. The goal of the Illuminati then became to bring these illuminated elites to power so that the group’s revolutionary ideals could take over the world. However, these ideals were also controversial at the time (Bavarian officials found a defense of suicide and atheism, and even planned to start a female sect of the Illuminati), and hence, this goal had to be accomplished discretely. The group did not trust anyone under 30 and used aliases to keep their identities secret. The historical Illuminati used symbols like the owl and the all-seeing eye (the triangle and eye that we all associate it with today), took part in highly ritualistic and esoteric ceremonies and initiated their members into a complex, 30-degree hierarchy including ranks derived from the name Minerva (Roman goddess of wisdom) and from the degrees of freemasonry. While these rituals were odd, their intent was to open the eyes of members to secular ideals like rational thought and self-rule. Their anti-clerical and anti-royal worldview made them quick enemies of the nobility and a decade after the group was formed, it was explicitly banned. Most believe that the Illuminati continued to meet in secret, and continue to do so even today. Some even claim that the freemasons, the Priory of Sion, and other secret societies are branches of the Illuminati itself. And so the question arises- did the Illuminati manage to take over the world?

Written by: Krithika Kannan