The Illuminati soon attracted the unwelcome attention of the state’s autocratic ruler, the Elector Prince Karl-Theodor, who in 1784 banned all secret societies in an attempt to halt the tide of Jacobinism (republicanism). In the following year the 650-strong Illuminati were proscribed by name and Weishaupt quit Bavaria in a hurry. His hopes of rebuilding the Illuminati were dashed when a police raid on Zwack’s house seized hundreds of Illuminati documents and membership lists. Besides, the Illuminati’s main recruiting ground, the Freemasons, had wised up to Illuminati methods and had begun blocking infiltration. Weishaupt himself settled down to a quiet life as a university lecturer in Saxony.
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
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
There is a secret sign of America’s special role in the Illuminati’s plans: the Latin motto
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,
John Robison,
DOCUMENT: NESTA WEBSTER,
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 Reunis” 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 Reunis”. 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 Orleanistes, 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 role of the “Amis Reunis” was to collect together the subversives from all other lodges—Philalethes, 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 “Illumines” in the provinces. Here, then, at the lodge in the Rue de la Sordiere, 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 Reunis”. Hitherto only vaguely subversive, the Chevaliers Bienfaisants became the Chevaliers Malfaisants, the Amis Reunis became the Ennemis Reunis. 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 Reunis” 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 Philalethes quite disappeared and in the place of the former Cabalistic-magical extravagance [‘Schwarmerei’] 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.
If, then, it is said that the Revolution was prepared in the lodges of Freemasons—and many French Masons have boasted of the fact—let it always be added that it was “Illuminized Freemasonry” that made the Revolution, and that the Masons who acclaim it are illuminized Masons, inheritors of the same tradition introduced into the lodges of France in 1787 by the disciples of Weishaupt, “patriarch of the Jacobins”.
Many of the Freemasons of France in 1787 were thus not conscious allies of the Illuminati. According to