French historian René le Forestier’s monumental and solidly scholarly Les Illuminés de Bavière et la franc-maçonnerie allemande has been the go-to work on the original Order of the Illuminati since it came out in 1914.
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Le Forestier drew on original source material, most significantly documents from the Illuminati archive confiscated by the Bavarian government when it closed the Order down in the mid-1780s, to give the most exhaustively detailed account possible of its origins. He also explored how the myth of the Illuminati’s ongoing power began, making his book a key text for the study of conspiracy beliefs.
And now, over a century later, we finally have an English translation, and an excellent one at that, by Jon E. Graham, Inner Traditions’ acquisitions editor who has translated many French works on Freemasonry and related subjects. It’s a weighty tome in every sense: the 900-page, handsomely produced hardback is as heavy as a brick.
My only quibble is with this edition’s subtitle, as le Forestier’s book demonstrates that the Order of the Illuminati were anything but the World’s Most Secret Society: it was big in Bavaria for a couple of years and so rubbish at keeping itself secret that it brought about its own downfall. But I suppose ‘The Rise and Fall of a Not-Very-Secret Society in a Bit of Germany’ wouldn’t exactly grab the attention.
The Order of the Illuminati (Illuminatenorden), founded in Bavaria in 1776 by law professor Adam Weishaupt, was a response to the specific situation in that place and time. This was the age of the Enlightenment, when new, progressive ideas of civil rights, egalitarianism, democracy and religious tolerance – not to mention atheism – were spreading through Europe. Except in Bavaria, which was ruled by an autocratic Elector and where education was firmly under the control of the Catholic Church, with tight censorship that banned any mention of the new thinking from universities. Those who, like Weishaupt, wanted to bring Bavaria into the modern world had to resort to clandestine methods to spread their ideas, as well as for their own protection.
The Illuminati really were a society that was out to subvert State and Church – but only to do what was happening elsewhere in Europe without the need for secrecy.
The big claim is, of course, that the Illuminatenorden really survived, burying itself even deeper underground and thereby becoming even more powerful and dangerous, going on to aspire - or according to some achieve – world domination. Le Forestier shows that the scare was actually created by the Bavarian authorities, the key player being the Elector’s Jesuit confessor Father Frank, as a way of clamping down on pro-Enlightenment groups and individuals, such as Freemasonry, on the grounds that they were Illuminati fronts or members.
And the Illuminati ticked all the right boxes for conspiracy-mongering: not only had it enmeshed itself with Freemasonry, but the dominant Masonic system in Germany, the ‘Strict Observance’, was one that claimed descent from the Knights Templar.
(Technically, Frank was an ex-Jesuit, as the Pope had closed the Society of Jesus down because of fears that it had its own secret agenda. The wonderful irony is that the Illuminati had spread the conspiracy theory that the Jesuits continued to operate in secret. And the Illuminati were actually instrumental in bringing the Strict Observance down in order to poach its members – which entailed spreading the tale that it was a front for the Jesuits! Lynn Picknett and I have recently explored the convolutions of all this in articles on Patreon: patreon/picknettprince.
The Bavarian Illuminati is divided into six books. The first deals with the Illuminati’s founding and first years, while Book Two outlines the history of Freemasonry in Germany, both taking the story to 1780 and setting the scene for the Illuminati’s attempts to take over German Masonry. Book Three gives a detailed description of the organisation and structure of ‘Illuminated Freemasonry’, with Book Four relating its short history and the events of its suppression. Weishaupt’s writings on the philosophy that motivated the Order, based on papers from its archives as well as the books he published in exile, form Book Five. The final book, ‘The Illuminati Legend’, describes the origins and growth of the myth of its survival, at first in Bavaria and then to a wider audience through, primarily, the books of Augustin Barruel (another ex-Jesuit) and (more unexpectedly) the physicist John Robison, both of which pinned the French Revolution on the Illuminati and which have been described as the foundation texts of modern conspiracy theory, as their claims have been uncritically rehashed ever since.
While the book tells all there is to know about the real story of the Illuminati and the origins of the myth that was to grow over the next two centuries, the material on German Freemasonry and its connections with other esoteric societies of the time, such as the Rosicrucian Order and Martinists, as well as on the historical context, gives it a much wider relevance.
Above all, though, le Forestier shows that the myth of the all-powerful Illuminati, which is so widely believed today, is based on a very shaky foundation indeed. Still, I am sure that few of the believers will bother to read this book – and if they do will probably conclude that René le Forestier was himself an Illuminatus and the whole thing part of the great cover-up.
Another key message that’s very relevant to our own time is that conspiracy theory and paranoia is nothing new: the warnings circulated by both Illuminati and Jesuits about the secret power of the other were widely believed in Germany and beyond. And as the authorities’ creation of the Great Illuminati Scare shows, the use of conspiracy theory as political propaganda (so as part of a genuine conspiracy!) is nothing new either.
All in all, immensely illuminating!
- Clive Prince
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