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9 Questions About the Illuminati You Were Too Afraid to Ask
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When it comes to shadowy cabals that supposedly control the world, the Illuminati should be at the top of any conspiracy theorist’s list. An Illuminati Facebook page has 3.4 million likes, Madonna writes songs about the group, and YouTube channels calling pretty much everyone Illuminati notch almost 200,000 subscribers.
To sort out the truth about the Illuminati, I consulted a variety of experts on the subject.Mark A. Fenster a law professor at the University of Florida and author of Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture, sums up the group’s long-lasting appeal. “It’s absurd on its face that you’ve got this sacred group that’s more than 300 years old and continue to see arguments about its relevance today,” he says. “The fact that the discussion is alive is amazing.”
The Illuminati wasn’t always just some crazy chimera — it used to be a very real group with ambitious goals. And even though the Illuminati doesn’t exist anymore, the fact that many people still have paranoid beliefs about it reveals a lot about power, our culture — and, of course, what we think about Jay Z.
1) What is the Illuminati?
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Universal History Archive/Getty Images
In a historical sense, the term “Illuminati” refers to the Bavarian Illuminati, a secret society that operated for only a decade, from 1776 to 1785. This organization was founded by Adam Weishaupt, a German law professor who believed strongly in Enlightenment ideals, and his lluminatenorden sought to promote those ideals among elites. Weishaupt wanted to educate Illuminati members in reason, philanthropy, and other secular values so that they could influence political decisions when they came to power.
“It was pretty ambitious for six or nine guys, but they really wanted to take over the world,” says Chris Hodapp, the co-author of Conspiracy Theories and Secret Societies for Dummies with Alice Von Kannon.
The Illuminati’s goals — and reputation — often exceeded its means, Hodapp notes. In its early days, the group was just a handful of people. And even at its largest, the Illuminati only consisted of somewhere between 650 and 2,500 members. 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.
2) What did the Illuminati believe?
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Universal Images Group/Getty Images
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.
3) Did the Illuminati manage to control the world?
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. Δ.)
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.
Source: http://truthisscary.com/2015/05/9-questions-about-the-illuminati-you-were-too-afraid-to-ask/
