Adam Weishaupt was born in 1748 of Jewish parents but grew up in the Catholic faith.
When his father, George Weishaupt, died in 1754, young Adam was turned over to be raised by the Jesuits by his godfather, Baron Ickstatt, who was curator of the university of Ingolstadt in Bavaria.
He converted to Protestantism when studying law at Ingolstadt.
He had also studied classic religion and theology and the Eleusian and Mithrian mysteries, and also the works of Pythagoras.
We don't know much about his childhood or his early life, and even his name itself is somewhat of a mystery.
Adam means "the first man", "Weis" means "to know" and "haupt" means "leader", which makes Adam Weishaupts name mean "the first man to lead those who know".
He graduated from the University of Ingolstadt in 1768 and was made a tutor and catechist.
In 1772 he was made a professor of Law.
He was initiated as a Freemason in 1774 in either Hanover or Munich but found that no one in his order truly understood the occult significance of the ceremonies.
He decided to found his own organization, which he did on the first of May 1776.
This organization was first known as "The Order of Perfectibilists" but became famous as the "Ordo Illuminati Bavarensis", or the Illuminati for short.
Only five people were present at the first meeting of the order, but it grew rapidly and only a few years later it had chapterhouses all over:
Germany
Austria
France
Italy
Hungary
and Switzerland.
Weishaupt and his co-conspirators, notably Baron Knigge and a lawyer named Zwack, had soon established a network of agents around Europe that infiltrated courts and other places of power and reported back useful gossip and information to Weishaupt.
The Illuminatis true goals were shrouded in mystery. Because of Weishaupt's strong anti-clerical and anti-royalistic views, some have assumed that the Illuminati were some sort of proto-communistic organization dedicated to bringing about a proletarian revolution.
Others have seen them as anarchists, or descendants of the Cathars, or the Knights Templar and the Assassins of Hassan En Sabbah, the "Old Man on the Mountain", with whom the Knights Templar were rumored to be in contact with.
Yet others have seen them as Satanic agents dedicated to nothing less than the domination of the planet and the bringing about of the Kingdom of Satan on Earth.
It is true that Weishaupt's plans certainly was hostile to the Church of Rome and the monarchies of Europe, and that he seemed to harbor what would today be called "socialistic" leanings, but Weishaupt wasn't an atheist or agnostic.
There is little doubt that Weishaupt was a deeply religious man in his own way.
Weishaupt said in a speech held shortly before the French revolution:
"Salvation does not lie where strong thrones are defended by swords, where the smoke of censers ascend to heaven or where thousands of strong men pace the rich fields of harvest.
The revolution which is about to break will be sterile if it is not complete."
This statement has often been taken as to mean that Weishaupt was in fact a sort of communist, and in a sense perhaps he was.
One could think the above quote a statement by Trotsky.
However, as the Illuminati's true goals has always been disputed it is difficult to find out what exactly was the political, if such a dirty word may be used, or ideological raison d´etre of the order.
Of course, the easiest way to be able to make an educated guess is to study the actions of the order, as we will here.
In the year 1784 the Illuminati attempted a coup against the Hapsburgs, but the plot was revealed by police-spies that had infiltrated the order on orders from the king.
This led to the total ban of all secret societies in Bavaria, and membership was punishable by death.
This edict was signed in June 1784. Weishaupt was forced to flee to a neighboring province in February 1785 and in March another edict was passed, this one specifically outlawing the Illuminati.
The Illuminati was forced to go underground in Bavaria and had to move its revolutionary efforts elsewhere.
Disaster again struck for the order when in July 1785 lightning struck an Illuminati courier, a man named Lanz, and killed him and the horse he was riding.
It is said that both Lanz and the horse was charred to coal, but the saddlebags were almost intact.
In them was found extensive documents that outlined the Illuminati's plans for world domination and revolution, and also named several high ranking Illuminati members, among them Zwack and Weishaupt.
Zwack was arrested and his home raided in October 1786.
Weishaupt's activities after 1790 are disputed, several different versions of his life after 1790 exists.
In Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea's famous trilogy Illuminatus!, for instance, it is suggested that Weishaupt traveled to America and assumed the role of George Washington.
Others claim that Weishaupt died in obscurity in 1830.
I have chosen to continue to try and trace the alleged influence of the Illuminati in the following years as it is possible, however unlikely it may seem to those who take a conventional view of history, that Weishaupt was directing things from behind the scenes.
The French revolution of 1789 has been widely attributed to the machinations of the Illuminati, and it's role has been described as everything from "negligible" to "sole cause".
Both statements are an exaggeration, but it cannot be denied that several persons who were intensively involved in the revolution was active members, among others the Comte de Mirabeau, famous author, orator, Freemason and arch-enemy of the Marquis de Sade.
Mirabeau is reported to have said in a speech at the international Freemason convention in Wilhelmsbad in 1782 that he was a member of an organization that was influenced by the Knights Templar, and that their goal was to destroy the Church and the monarchy so that the "Religion of Love" could be established in France.
Of course, the Illuminati was not the only secret revolutionary conspiracy around.
There were plenty of others in these turbulent years just before the revolution.
For instance, the Marquis de Luchet, who were opposed to the Illuminati but supportive of the revolution, said in a speech:
"There exists a conspiracy in favor of despotism, against liberty, of incapacity against talent, of vice against virtue, of ignorance against enlightenment.
This society aims to govern the world."
These inner conflicts among those who supported the revolution was also seen in other secret societies in France during this period.
Despite this many of the established lodges in France remained loyal to the king, and only a few took part in the revolution.
It is interesting to note that the very first time anyone saw revolutionaries wearing the Phrygian cap, supposed symbol of the Illuminati and the Phrygian mysteries, was at the forced interruption of a theatrical performance of Le Suborneur by the Marquis de Sade on Monday the 5th of March 1792.
Oddly enough, no-one (except for a brief passage in Wilgus´ Illuminoids) has to my knowledge suggested that the infamous Marquis was a member of the Illuminati.
Sometimes it seems that every famous person throughout history has been pointed out as a member.
It is like Ambrose Bierce wrote about the Freemasons in his The Devil's Dictionary:
"An order with secret rites, grotesque ceremonies and fantastic costumes, which originating in the reign of Charles II, among working artisans of London, has been joined successively by the dead of past centuries in unbroken retrogression until now it embraces all the generations of man on the hither side of Adam and is drumming up distinguished recruits among the pre-Creational inhabitants of Chaos and the Formless Void.
The order was founded at different times by Charlemagne, Julius Caesar, Cyrus, Solomon, Zoroaster, Confucius, Tothmes and Buddha.
Its emblems and symbols have been found in the Catacombs of Paris and Rome, on the stones of the Parthenon and the Chinese Great Wall, among the temples of Karnak and Palmyra and in the Egyptian Pyramids -always by a Freemason."
The history of the Illuminati, or it's supposed history as traced by various people, is much like Bierce's´ satirical comment.
Ludwig XVI, the French king, wasn't unaware of the revolutionary activities and general displeasure among the populace.
In June 1789 he tried to introduce some social reforms that he hoped would calm the populace.
The king's greatest mistake was when he demanded that the monarchy would be preserved and that the nobles were to retain the right of veto in all future reforms.
This led to minor rebellions that spread and finally culminated in the taking of the Bastille.
Mirabeau said in a speech shortly thereafter:
"The idolatry of the monarchy has has received a death blow from the sons and daughters of the Order of the Templars."
This statement suggests that the Illuminati had ties to both the Cathars and the Knights Templar.
Under the later period of the revolution the influence of the Illuminati becomes marked.
The red Phrygian caps are used as symbol of the revolutionaries, the symbol of the Illuminati, the eye in the triangle, is present on many revolutionary documents printed in these days.
Two years after Ludwig XVI failed escape attempt, on the 21st of January 1793, he was executed, and it is said that when the kings head fell an old man cried from the crowd:
"De Molay, thou art avenged!"
De Molay was the leader of the Knights Templar who was burned at the stake for witchcraft in March 1314 by the machinations of Philip the Fair and Pope Clement V.
It should perhaps be mentioned that before his execution De Molay was held prisoner in the Bastille, the first "victim" of the Revolution.
After the French revolution the Illuminati faced new difficulties, partly because of the confused political and social situation in France, and partly because the rest of the royal houses of Europe panicked when they realized what had happened in France and banned all secret societies.
Persecutions of Freemasons and Rosicrucian's began, and in 1792 an ex-grandmaster of a Knights Templar inspired organization was lynched in Versailles by an angry mob.
Suspicion of all secret societies was widespread, and increased when Robinson's Proofs of a Conspiracy was released in 1798.
This volume contained an outline of the orders supposed survival after it's suppression as the German Union, and how it had engineered the Revolution.
The book caused widespread fear in Europe and New England and was one of the main reasons for the ban against secret societies in most of Europe.
After the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, the days of the Illuminati in France were numbered.
Most of the existing Lodges of Freemasons and other secret societies were infiltrated by the agents of Napoleon, who made sure to remove all possible subversive organizations in order to consolidate his power.
Most conventional historians will argue that the Illuminati, if it survived at all after the events of 1785-86, now was utterly crushed.
Historians of the more unconventional kind have argued that the Illuminati continues to thrive and influence the world even today.
