Some sources say that renowned writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe also joined, but this is disputed. In , Karl Theodor, Duke of Bavaria, banned the creation of any kind of society not previously authorised by law and the following year he passed a second edict, which expressly banned the Illuminati.
During the arrest of suspected Illuminati members, compromising documents defending ideas such as atheism and suicide were found in their possession, as well as instructions for carrying out abortions. This cemented the belief that the group was a threat to both the state and the Church. The Illuminati then seems to have disappeared, with some people believing that it continued underground.
Adam Weishaupt was eventually stripped of his post at the University of Ingolstadt. After being exiled from Bavaria, he spent the remainder of his life in Gotha, Thuringia, dying in From the moment they disbanded, conspiracy theories about the Illuminati began to take hold.
First president of the US, George Washington , then wrote a letter the following year in which he stated that he believed the threat of the Illuminati had been avoided, adding further fuel to the idea that the order still existed.
Books and sermons condemning the group later sprung up, and third US president, Thomas Jefferson, was falsely accused of being a member. Calling for anarchism and civil disobedience by perpetrating hoaxes, its adherents included writer Robert Anton Wilson.
Some followers of Discordianism sent fake letters into magazines claiming that events such as the assassination of US president John F Kennedy were all the work of the Illuminati. Wilson later published a book with Robert Shea, The Illuminatus! Fast-forward to the founding of the United States, and it ended up on the back end of the Great Seal on top of a pyramid.
Steven C. Bullock: The pyramid is a sign of strength and survival and long-lasting, and that's showing that the new nation is going to survive and last a long time, and it's built on 13 different steps meaning the 13 new states, the 13 former colonies.
It was a few years later that the Freemasons started using the eye. Some think it's the masons' way of projecting their own watchful power, but it's actually the opposite. Bullock: The all-seeing eye of God was designed for freemasons was designed to be a message to themselves. Freemasons were reminding themselves to keep to their own strict moral standards, not push their values on the general public. Other conspiracies say the eye on the seal of the United States and the dollar bill means the government is always watching us.
But again, its real meaning goes back to a higher power. Bullock: It's supposed to represent America being watched over by God, America being created under God's watchful eye. Joseph Uscinski: All symbols are easy for people to digest.
Their easy on the brain, you know, whereas data and evidence is much tougher for us we have to digest it and think about it and come to new conclusions. Symbols can be very powerful. Here's this symbol, it's on the back of the dollar bill. You can attach a picture to it. And it's much easier to do that than to say, "Well listen, we have free markets and we have democracy and both those things are incredibly messy and no one is really controlling it," but if I give you a few symbols and attach a name to it, all of a sudden you have an evil villain that you can pin the blame on.
But evil villains do exist Joseph Uscinski: There are all sorts of things that people see that they think are clues put out there.
The group grew to that size by becoming a sort of sleeper cell within other groups — Illuminati members joined Freemason lodges to recruit members for their own competing secret society. There were two sides to the historical Illuminati: their odd rituals and their ideals. The Illuminati did plenty of unusual things. They used symbols like the owl , adopted pseudonyms to avoid identification, and had complicated hierarchies like Novice, Minerval, and Illuminated Minerval that divided the ranks.
In the beginning, Hodapp says, Illuminati members didn't trust anyone over 30, because they were too set in their ways. Other reports of rituals are harder to confirm, but we know that members were very paranoid and used spy-like protocol to keep one another's identities secret. But while they were following these bizarre rituals, they also promoted a worldview that reflected Enlightenment ideals like rational thought and self-rule. Anti-clerical and anti-royal, the Illuminati were closer to revolutionaries than world rulers, since they sought to infiltrate and upset powerful institutions like the monarchy.
Historians tend to think the Illuminati were only mildly successful — at best — in becoming influential. Though, of course, there are also those who believe the Illuminati successfully took over the world — and still control it today.
If an all-powerful group does dominate the world, we probably wouldn't know about it. It's also difficult to untangle the success of the Illuminati from that of the Freemasons, which they infiltrated and commingled with. It's just as tough to tell what influence the Illuminati actually had as opposed to the influence people think they had. We do know the Illuminati had some influential members — along with many dukes and other leaders who were powerful but are forgotten today, some sources think writer Johann Goethe was a member of the group though other sources dispute the claim.
In a way, Illuminati influence depends on what you believe about them. If you think their revolutionary ideals spread to other groups, like the French Revolution's Jacobins , then they were successful. If you think those ideas would have prospered regardless, then they were mainly a historical curiosity. In , Duke of Bavaria Karl Theodor banned secret societies, including the Illuminati, and instituted serious punishments for anyone who joined them. Most of the group's secrets were disclosed or published, and, if you believe most historians, the Illuminati disappeared.
From the moment of the disbanding, however, the myth expanded. As described in Conspiracy Theories in American History: An Encyclopedia , documents found in the homes of high-ranking Illuminati members like Xavier von Zwack confirmed some of the spookiest Illuminati theories, like their dreams of world domination and cultish behavior even though those documents may exaggerate the truth about the group.
Almost immediately after the Illuminati were disbanded, conspiracy theories about the group sprang up. The most famous conspiracy theories were authored by physicist John Robison in , who accused the Illuminati of infiltrating the Freemasons, and Abbe Augustin Barruel , whose history of the Jacobins promoted the theory that secret societies, including the Illuminati, were behind the French Revolution.
Historians tend to see these as the first in a long line of conspiracy theories though, again, for those who believe the Illuminati run the world today, this is arguably proof of the group's power. Later on, some of the Founding Fathers managed to stoke interest in the Illuminati in the United States.
In , George Washington wrote a letter addressing the Illuminati threat he believed it had been avoided, but his mentioning it helped bolster the myth. In the panic caused by the anti-Illuminati books and sermons, Thomas Jefferson was baselessly accused of being a member of the group. Though these early Illuminati panics fizzled out, they gave the group a patina of legitimacy that, later on, would help make a centuries-long conspiracy seem more plausible.
Conspiracy theories have always been popular in the United States, but for centuries, the Illuminati were less feared than the Freemasons. The Anti-Masonic Party was based on an opposition to the Freemasons, and though the party died out, Freemasons remained a focal point for paranoia in America.
Because the Illuminati recruited many members in Europe through Freemason lodges, the two groups are often confused for each other.
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