William Bentley wrote: “That there are, and have been from time immemorial, secret societies in Germany, and in other parts of the world, [ . . . ] there can be no doubt.” One of the most infamous secret societies rumoured to exist is the Illuminati.
Bentley, J.J. Mounier and an unnamed citizen of the United States are among many who wrote pamphlets on this organization in the late 1700s, which describe the Bavarian, or German, Illuminati supposedly formed at the time.
The Bavarian Illuminati resembles the myth some people have today of a “secret power” that “strikes unseen,” that has members in every governing and religious institution of significance today, that has a hand in arranging the events of global politics and that seeks to instigate a new world order.
According to Mounier and the unnamed citizen, the Illuminati was founded by M. Weishaupt, a professor of Canon law at Inglostadt in Bavaria and Baron de Knigge who is rumoured to have recruited members in the early 1780s. Due to his recruitment the group supposedly expanded to include magistrates, ecclesiastics, ministers of state and princes.
The members of the Bavarian Illuminati were said to have insinuated themselves into all public offices, especially courts of justice but their purpose for doing so were not consistently described.
Mounier describes them as “a society which wished to correct slowly the abuses of administration and to re-establish good morals,” but he also writes that they have emissaries diffused in every country who are secretly destroying the basis of social order.
The unnamed citizen claims the society’s goals are to “abolish Christianity and overturn all government.” He writes that the Illuminati are responsible for progressing Germany “from religion to atheism, from peace and tranquillity to massacres, and rivers of blood.”
Bentley describes the group as philosophical free thinkers who subvert establishments that are oppressive and corrupt.
Bentley and Mounier also connect the Illuminati to the French Revolution.
It is not too surprising that the Illuminati, an organization whose morals and goals cannot be consistently defined, is connected to an historical event that cannot be consistently judged.
The Illuminati has been reported both to aim to destroy corrupt institutions and to aim to destroy order. The French Revolution has been described as both liberation and massacre.
This ambiguity would allow an individual to use the rumoured existence of the Illuminati as an argument for or against the revolution.
Bentley writes about the Illuminati to express his skepticism of John Robinson’s claim that the French Revolution was their work. He says Robinson’s true purpose is to “alarm the minds of the people, and to guard them against the principles of all the free and equal governments.”
The unnamed citizen warns that now this secret society is present in America.
Based on these ideas the myth of the Illuminati begins to deflate, and suggests an existence used as a political tool to incite fear in the minds of the people through thoughts of revolution and equality, or otherwise as the author wishes.
This deflation, for an organization that wishes its existence denied, is genius.
