The only Illuminati we can be sure existed are the Bavarian ones whose society was started on May 1st in 1776 by Adam Weishaupt. The movement seems to have been a largely philosophical one connected to the Age of Enlightenment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illuminati
http://atheists.org/The_Enlightenment,_Freemasonry,_and_The_Illuminati
Goethe was certainly involved and Mozart and Beethoven have been considered possible initiates. It can be argued that Germany´s love of occult societies gradually took it down the route to Nazism, yet the Bavarian Illuminati seemed to have decent aims. The movement was closed down in 1784, at which stage it had about two thousand members spread through Europe.
Sometimes the Illuminati are credited together with the Freemasons with a plot that triggered the French Revolution. The revolution became a bloodbath but I can´t help feeling that the storming of the Bastille at the start was a good event. But then my earliest reading on the subject was Tale of Two Cities. Maybe some modern-day Illuminati should arrange a storming of Guantanamo Bay.
I got thinking about the Illuminati recently for a couple of reasons. Firstly a nuisance poster was flooding a forum I use with irrelevant posts about them. His hatred of them was so extreme it got me feeling sorry for the Illuminati and trying to look for some good in them. The other reason I became conscious of them again was because of a Spanish book I am reading about Isaac Peral, the inventor of the modern submarine and predecessor of the U-boat. He came from Cartagena, the city where I live.
http://www.marcialpons.es/fichalibro.php?id=100833106It´s a long and complicated book that has had me going off from time to time to read up on the historic background to this invention. The book is written by his great grandson. Peral seems to have been hard done by. He was an honourable man who only wished to give his grand invention for the good of Spain rather than make money by selling it to foreign powers. One of the characters he came up against was Zaharoff. I read up on this extraordinary man – a war-monger who is sometimes cited as a member of the Illuminati. He certainly had several politicians including Lloyd George in his pocket and came from nothing - a poor Greek kid in Istanbul, showing visitors to brothels at the start of his life. He rose to great power through a series of acts of skullduggery and became incredibly rich mainly from selling armaments - so much so that he was able to buy the casino in Montecarlo in later life..
http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Basil_Zaharoff
If he really was Illuminati, Basil Zaharoff typifies the kind of figure the contributor to the forum hated and feared. These days the term Illuminati is often applied to a mysterious bunch of powerful people who are trying to change world order. Maybe they exist and maybe they don´t. Who is on the list is certainly ripe matter for speculation – the Founding Fathers of America, presidents, etc. They are sometimes confused with the Masons, the Order of the Skull and Bones and various other occult societies. The freemasons I have met have been very pleasant men who liked to socialise and do a bit for charity. I can´t say I got any sinister vibes – but maybe they weren´t high enough up in the order for that. My chief objection to freemasonry is that the present form doesn´t include women. That is bad – a bit like the Garrick Club. My editor grandfather, Victor Pitt-Kethley, took membership of the latter when he retired. He used to travel to London once a week for lunch with a friend there. I lunched there myself with my former literary agent, Giles Gordon. It was a pleasant experience – not least because it is the location of a fabulous art collection related to the theatre – Zoffany, de Wilde, etc.
http://www.garrickclub.co.uk/art.asp
I had spotted some of these paintings in a lighted building while I was reading in the Arts Council Poetry Library before it relocated to the South Bank. It was years before I worked out they were in the Garrick Club. I would have rather liked being a member in my more successful literary days, but alas it was impossible as I don´t have a penis. In 1995, I went there again for a Times Christmas party. I remember waiting for the man who was about to become my husband to retrieve his coat. I was asked to move by a female employee as I had accidentally sat down in a men only room! Yes, things like that can still happen in this day and age. I got pregnant soon after and planned to bring the babe next year once I knew it was to be a boy. I thought it would be fun to thrust his pushchair through the door of a men-only room while I remained outside… Unfortunately, the Times had its next party elsewhere…I have not been to the Garrick Club since.
I was invited to the Times party because I occasionally wrote articles for them. The editor who commissioned these from me played his own role in world history, according to another editor there. He was in Berlin and asked the question: “Why can´t the Wall come down now?” It had, till he asked that question, been seen as a matter for discussion rather than for immediate action. The rest is history. You could say this editor played an illuminati style of role – saying the right thing at the right moment to the right people and thus changing the course of world events. I have chatted to him many times and can affirm that he is a good family man and not some power-mad puppet-master with politicians in his pocket.
When the Wall came down I was giving a poetry reading at Magdalene College, Cambridge. William Cash, son of Bill Cash, was my host. He and several other students were determined to rush to Berlin to see it for themselves in the morning. In his case he was going to have to make a long drive home to retrieve his passport before catching a flight. I slept that night in CS Lewis´s bed. He had been an honorary fellow of the college. CS Lewis was a member of a very harmless all-male secret society known as the Inklings. Tolkien was its other most famous member. Peter Jackson´s wonderful trilogy of the Lord of the Rings was in the pipeline at the time of the 911 tragedy. It is easy to draw parallels between the title Two Towers in Tolkien´s epic depiction of the struggle between good and evil and the Twin Towers . Tolkien´s view of life is essentially positive though. The freedom of mankind is saved although the elves (possibly the equivalent of the Illuminati) have to pass on to another world. Curiously, when I checked the date of the Two Towers film I found out that there had been a short one made in 1911 called the Twin Towers . 1911 – so near the date of the tragedy.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0351886/
I would love to know what that film was about.
At least some of the anti-Illuminati sentiments spring from anti-semitism. The Rothschilds are almost always cited as being Illuminati . A Jewish banker is sometimes seen as only being a few steps removed from a Shylock-style money-lender. Personally, I have always rather liked the figure of Shylock. I had to play him at school at the age of eleven, which was something of a challenge. I certainly prefer him to the profligate Venetians who despised him, mocked him, yet wanted his money in the play. Must a banker always be a bad person? Probably bankers are only bogeymen to the poor and envious. Probably the Rothschilds, like most families, are composed of both good and bad people. Peñarroya, the mining firm that ruined the town of Portman a few miles from where I live, was the property of the Parisian Rothschild bank..
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/economia/PEnARROYA/Penarroya/cierra/ultima/fundicion/plomo/Espana/elpepieco/19920402elpepieco_14/Tes/ At the other end of the scale the Rothschilds have done plenty for charity.
Bankers are usually the first port of call for politicians going to war. They are not usually the cause of it though. In the current crisis bankers have gone cap in hand to politicians for money – an unusual turnaround. Perhaps they will be seen as less sinister in the future.
The love of money may be the root of evil, but money is not evil in itself. If you are happy to give it away like Bill Gates you can do a lot for humanity.
Some detractors make the assumption that the Illuminati believe they are elite/ perfect etc. and are not bound by ordinary laws or conventions. That could be dangerous. James Hogg´s early novel “The Confessions of a Justified Sinner” is the study of an individual who believes he is elect and can do no wrong. Such a path is insanity.
Some of the more extreme forms of Christianity have individuals with this attitude. Only they are right. There was a wonderful line in an episode of the Simpsons: “I went to Bible camp to learn to be more judgmental!” Yet the Illuminati are more often classed as anti-Christian, even Satanist, by their detractors. Their earliest philosophy seems pantheistic. Presumably that was considered atheistic by the standards of judgmental religious men. The founder had a Jesuit education. Those I´ve met who had this tended to grow up not too keen on religion, partly because Jesuits seem to favour corporal punishment in conjunction with learning. I heard an amusing story from a guy in the navy who had suffered at their hands. He and his friends had liberated Jesus from the large crucifix in the classroom. They were threatened with dire physical punishment all round unless they “nail Christ back on his cross” . Don´t know what Jesus would have made of that.One of the main objections people have to secret societies is the belief that what is secret must be nefarious. But is this necessarily true? Many artists and writers, myself included, hate to have their work seen half done…Inventors need to keep their secrets under wraps until they are patented. Traditionally people keep secret presents until the day they are given. Those who are anti-secrecy would argue that the identity of the artists, the inventors, the donors will eventually be known. True. But in the case of charity many people value anonymity. For them it carries a greater value than public giving. So what if the illuminati are well-intentioned instead of ill-intentioned? Could they be doing good not bad secretly? Maybe we shouldn´t worry too much about the good Illuminati and just let them get on with improving the quality of our lives – that is, if they exist….
