John Birch Society #fundie jbs.org

Illuminati

Claim: The Order of the Illuminati, created by an obscure ex-professor named Adam Weishaupt on May 1, 1776, was the ancestor of the Communist movement and the model for modern subversive conspiratorial movements.

Status: Documentable

Although relatively little is known about him by way of biographical detail, the life of Adam Weishaupt was immensely consequential. A Jesuit-trained ex-professor of Canon Law at the University of Ingolstadt, Weishaupt fell away from the Catholic Church and became a determined enemy of the Christian worldview and the social order built upon it.

Determined to destroy Christian society and rebuild a new humanist order, Weishaupt organized the Order of the Illuminati in Bavaria on May 1, 1776. That date, celebrated by occultists as Beltane, became a universal holiday for Communists and other revolutionaries who trace their heritage to the conspiratorial group founded by Weishaupt.

Behind a carefully wrought facade of humanitarian activism, the Illuminati was organized as a strict hierarchy, with details of the organization's true nature incrementally revealed as the inductee advanced in rank. New initiates were called novices or “minervals”; at that level they were led to believe they had enlisted in a benevolent effort to promote harmony by making mankind into a single family. As he advanced to the rank if Illuminatus Minor, the adept was taught that the only impediment to universal peace and brotherhood was the stubborn bigotry of existing religious and political institutions, which would have to be destroyed – or at least brought under the influence of the Order -- in the name of the greater good.

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