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Conspiracy file · 1776–1785

Bavarian Illuminati

A secret society of Enlightenment radicals founded in Bavaria on May 1, 1776, by law professor Adam Weishaupt. It was banned within a decade, and it has been blamed for revolutions, wars and world government ever since.

Also known as The Illuminati · Illuminatenorden · Order of the Illuminati · The Perfectibilists

On the recordTimelineFrom the comicsIn Paranoid American comicsSources & further reading

Bavarian Illuminati, a panel from a Paranoid American comic
From Time Samplers #2

The story

On May 1, 1776, Adam Weishaupt, a professor of canon law at the University of Ingolstadt, founded a secret society with four students. First called the Perfectibilists, it became the Order of the Illuminati in 1778. Its aim was to spread reason and secular thinking and to check the power of the Church and the state over public life, by quietly placing enlightened members in positions of influence.

Recruiting through Masonic lodges, especially after Baron Adolph Knigge joined in 1780, the order grew to somewhere between 650 and 2,500 members, among them Goethe, Herder and the dukes of Gotha and Weimar. Then Elector Charles Theodore banned secret societies, in 1784 and again in 1785. The government seized the order's papers and published them in 1787, and the Illuminati were finished. Weishaupt fled to Gotha and died there in 1830.

The legend started almost at once. In 1797 the French Jesuit Augustin Barruel and the Scottish physicist John Robison each argued that the order had survived and engineered the French Revolution. The scare reached America in 1798, and George Washington wrote that he did not doubt Illuminati doctrines had spread here, though not through the Masonic lodges. Two centuries on, the name is shorthand for whoever secretly runs the world.

Memorandum for the recordSubject: Bavarian Illuminati

On the record

  1. Founded on May 1, 1776, in Bavaria by Adam Weishaupt, professor of canon law at Ingolstadt, and four of his students.
  2. The founding name was the Perfectibilists; the order took the name Illuminati in 1778. Its emblem was the Owl of Minerva.
  3. About 650 members can be verified by the end of 1784; Weishaupt later claimed 2,500.
  4. Members included Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Gottfried Herder and Duke Ernst II of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg.
  5. Elector Charles Theodore of Bavaria outlawed secret societies by edicts in 1784, 1785, 1787 and 1790; the edict of March 2, 1785 was the order's deathblow.
  6. The government seized the order's internal papers and published them in 1787.
  7. On October 24, 1798, George Washington wrote that he was satisfied the doctrines of the Illuminati had spread in the United States, but did not believe the Masonic lodges had spread them.

The theory

  • The order was never destroyed: it went underground and lives on inside Freemasonry and the elite (Barruel and Robison, 1797).
  • The Illuminati planned the French Revolution, and later revolutions, to tear down church and crown.
  • The eye in the pyramid on the dollar bill is their signature, and the 1776 under it marks their founding, not America's.
  • Through offshoots such as Yale's Skull and Bones, Illuminati ideas reached the American establishment (Antony C. Sutton and others).
  • Today's Illuminati pick presidents, run central banks and are building a New World Order.

Timeline

  1. 1748Adam Weishaupt is born in Ingolstadt
  2. 1776Weishaupt founds the Perfectibilists (May 1)
  3. 1778The order takes the name Illuminati
  4. 1780Baron Adolph Knigge joins and reorganizes the order
  5. 1784Bavaria bans secret societies; Knigge leaves
  6. 1785The edict of March 2 effectively ends the order
  7. 1787The seized papers are published
  8. 1797Barruel and Robison blame the Illuminati for the French Revolution
  9. 1798Jedidiah Morse's sermon; Washington's letters on the Illuminati
  10. 1830Weishaupt dies in Gotha
  11. 1832Skull and Bones is founded at Yale, later claimed as an offshoot
  12. 1975Shea and Wilson's Illuminatus! trilogy turns the order into pop culture

From the comics

Panels straight from the page. Click one to read it full size.

From Time Samplers #2: Disorder of Skull and Bones · Pages 5, 15

The Bavarian connection

Luna's protest marches under the all-seeing eye, and the issue's history lesson traces Skull and Bones back to Germany, where young William H. Russell supposedly met an offshoot of the Bavarian Illuminati. The German connection is a staple of conspiracy books; Russell's biographies don't mention it.

The Bavarian connection, 1 of 4
The Bavarian connection, 2 of 4 The Bavarian connection, 3 of 4
The Bavarian connection, 4 of 4
  1. The eye in the triangle comes from the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States, adopted by Congress in 1782 and on the dollar bill since 1935. It is the Eye of Providence, an old Christian symbol; no document links it to Weishaupt's order.
  2. The owl on the wall is the Owl of Minerva, emblem of the Illuminati's Minerval degree. Russell's German year comes from later conspiracy literature, notably Antony C. Sutton's America's Secret Establishment (1983).

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