The Origins of the Modern Illuminati Myth

The Illuminati of the modern imagination, the alleged all-seeing secret society that, in the popular telling, has been running the world since the late 18th century, is not, in the historical sense, the same organisation as the Bavarian order founded by Adam Weishaupt on 1 May 1776. The modern myth is a literary and cultural construction that grew up after the ban of the original Bavarian order in 1785, drawing on the work of two late-18th-century anti-Jacobin polemicists, on the longer European tradition of suspicion toward secret societies, and on the specific political and religious anxieties of nineteenth- and 20th-century Catholic, royalist, and anti-Semitic writers. To understand how the modern myth was constructed, and to understand the specific historical events and writings that gave it its current form, it is necessary to trace the development of the myth from the post-1785 vacuum, through the 19th-century reimaginings, to the 20th-century transformations, and to the modern popular form.

The Post-1785 Vacuum

The Bavarian Illuminati was banned by the Bavarian government in 1785 and never reconstituted. The order’s surviving members dispersed, with some joining the Freemasons and others withdrawing from public life. The order’s papers were seized by the Bavarian authorities and used in the published Einige Originalschriften des Illuminatenordens (Some Original Writings of the Illuminati Order) issued by the Bavarian government in 1787. The papers included, in addition to the order’s own internal documents, several forgeries commissioned by the order to discredit its opponents. The publication of the papers in 1787, in the form of an officially-sponsored exposé, established the documentary basis on which the modern myth of the order would be constructed.

The post-1785 vacuum was, in the years that followed, filled by a substantial and growing literature of anti-Illuminati polemic. The most important of the early writers was the Austrian writer Joseph von Utzschneider, who published a long series of articles and pamphlets in the late 1780s and early 1790s that purported to expose the alleged continued activities of the Illuminati in the German-speaking lands. The Utzschneider writings are, in the standard historical assessment, the most important single body of early post-1785 anti-Illuminati material, and they were, the principal source on which the first generation of the modern myth was based.

A second important early writer was the French Jesuit Pierre-Joseph de Clorivière, whose 1790 pamphlet Considérations sur l’origine, la nature et les causes des maux qui affligent aujourd’hui la France argued that the French Revolution was the result of a long-standing conspiracy on the part of the philosophes, the French Freemasons, and the Bavarian Illuminati. The Clorivière pamphlet is the first important French-language statement of the modern myth, and it is the foundation on which the more substantial French-language myth literature of the 1790s and 1800s would be built.

19th-Century Reimaginings

The two works that established the modern myth of the Illuminati in its classic form are Augustin Barruel’s Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire du Jacobinisme (1797–1798) and John Robison’s Proofs of a Conspiracy against All the Religions and Governments of Europe, Displayed in the Secret Meetings of the Free Masons, Illuminati, and Reading Societies (1797). Both works are available in modern reprints, both are widely cited in the conspiracy literature, and both are, in the standard historical assessment, the principal sources of the modern myth of the Illuminati in its classic form.

Barruel was a French Jesuit whose four-volume work argued that the French Revolution was the result of a long-standing conspiracy on the part of the philosophes, the French Freemasons, and the Bavarian Illuminati, all of whom, in his account, were agents of a much older conspiracy that dated back to the medieval Manichaeans. The book was a massive commercial success in its day, and it was, in the years after its publication, translated into English, German, and other European languages. The book is, in the modern historical assessment, an important document of late-18th-century French counter-revolutionary thought, but it is not, on the available evidence, an accurate account of the historical Illuminati.

Robison was a Scottish natural philosopher and Fellow of the Royal Society whose book, published the same year as Barruel’s, made a similar case for an English-language audience. Robison’s book is shorter, more polemical, and more directly concerned with the Bavarian Illuminati, whom Robison treated as the principal agents of a single vast conspiracy. The book was, in its day, an important document of British and American conservative thought, and it was particularly influential in the United States, where it was a major source of the early American myth of the Illuminati.

The two works were, in the 19th century, expanded and elaborated by a substantial body of subsequent literature. The 1815 Du Congrès de Vienne and the 1820 L’Europe et l’Amérique depuis le Congrès d’Aix-la-Chapelle by the Abbé de Pradt extended the Barruel-Robison narrative into the post-Napoleonic period. The 1840s American anti-Masonic writings of the Reverend Charles G. Finney and others adapted the European material to the American context. The 1850s and 1860s French Catholic polemics on the alleged secret-society conspiracy of the Second Empire treated the Illuminati as the principal agent of a continuing plot against the Catholic Church.

Anti-Catholic Adaptations

The most important single development in the 19th-century history of the modern myth was its adaptation to a specifically anti-clerical program. The 1860s and 1870s saw a substantial growth in the popular anti-Catholic literature in France, Germany, Italy, and the United States, and a substantial fraction of this literature made use of the modern myth of the Illuminati as a way of framing the alleged political and cultural threat of the Catholic Church. Notable works in this tradition include Émile Combes’s later essays, Maurice Joly’s Dialogue aux enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu (1864), and the larger body of French anti-clerical pamphlets that synthesised the Barruel-Robison narrative with the politics of the Third Republic.

A second important 19th-century adaptation was the 1890s and 1900s American anti-Catholic adaptations of the European material, particularly the writings of the American Catholic-haters of the era. The most influential single writer in this tradition is the American journalist and polemicist Thomas F. Anderson, whose The Secret Empire: A Handbook of Masonic, I.O.O.F., K. of P., and Other Secret Orders (published in two volumes in the early 1900s) treated the modern myth as a real historical phenomenon and a serious political threat.

The anti-Catholic adaptation of the modern myth was, a major step in the long process by which the modern myth migrated from the conservative religious press to the popular culture. The adaptation made the modern myth available to a much larger audience, and it is, in the standard historical assessment, the principal mechanism by which the modern myth was established in the English-speaking and French-speaking popular cultures.

The 20th-Century Transformation

The 20th century saw a substantial transformation of the modern myth. The most important single development was the migration of the modern myth from the European right-wing press to the American right-wing press, and, from the American right-wing press to the American popular culture. The migration was, in the standard historical assessment, the result of a complex set of cultural and political factors, including the rise of the American religious right, the post-World War II wave of European immigration to the United States, the Cold War suspicion of the American political elite, and the post-1960s counter-cultural interest in occult and esoteric traditions.

The most influential single writer in the 20th-century transformation of the modern myth is the American writer William Cooper, whose 1991 Behold a Pale Horse is, in the standard historical assessment, the principal single source of the late-20th-century American myth of the Illuminati. The book is, , the foundation on which a substantial fraction of the modern American conspiracy literature is built, and it is, the principal single source of the modern American myth in its post-1990s form.

A second important writer in the 20th-century transformation is the American writer Jim Marrs, whose 1989 Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy and 2000 Rule by Secrecy are, in the standard historical assessment, major single sources of the modern American myth. The Marrs works are, , important sources of the modern American myth in its post-1990s form, and they are, , useful sources for the study of the modern American conspiracy tradition.

A third important writer is the British writer David Icke, whose 1999 The Biggest Secret and 2001 Children of the Matrix are, in the standard historical assessment, the most ambitious and the most thoroughly fantastical of the modern Illuminati narratives. The Icke works are, , useful sources for the study of the modern conspiracy mind, and they are, , important sources of the modern British and global forms of the modern myth.

The Modern Form

The modern form of the Illuminati myth is, in the standard historical assessment, the result of the long process of construction that began in 1785 and continued through the 20th century. The modern myth is, in this sense, a literary and cultural construction that has been built up over more than two centuries, and it is, in the same sense, one of the most thoroughly documented single acts of cultural production in the modern Western tradition.

The modern form of the myth is, in particular, characterised by four features. The first is its visual specificity: the single eye, the triangle, the pyramid, the number 6-6-6, the hand sign, the black-and-white checkerboard floor. The second is its genealogical reach: the alleged connection of the modern Illuminati to the medieval Templars, to the early modern Rosicrucians, to the Enlightenment philosophers, to the American founding fathers, and to the modern political and financial elite. The third is its explanatory reach: the alleged role of the modern Illuminati in the French Revolution, the American Civil War, the Russian Revolution, the two world wars, the Kennedy assassination, the 9/11 attacks, and the COVID-19 pandemic. The fourth is its symbolic reach: the alleged use of the modern Illuminati symbol system in popular music, fashion, film, television, and the daily life of the modern celebrity culture.

The combination of these four features is, the principal reason that the modern Illuminati myth has, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, become one of the most recognisable single features of the global popular culture.