Academia Iluministă (37)
The Ancient History of the Illuminati:
The origins of the Illuminati stretch far back into prehistory, but as a formal organisation, the Illuminati began, as has been mentioned, as the mystery school of Pythagoras in the Greek colony of Croton in Southern Italy. The Illuminati prospered for a time before being savagely attacked by enemies envious of their secret knowledge. Most were killed, including Pythagoras himself.
The survivors escaped to Greece and set up a new school. For safety, the Illuminati kept on the move, relocating every ten years throughout the Greek city-states and their colonies, and then in the countries conquered by Alexander the Great, including Syria, Egypt, Babylonia, Persia and Northern India. As the star of Rome rose, the Illuminati made their base in Rome, and then in provinces of the Roman Empire. Around 200 CE, the Order established itself in the intellectual centre of the world: Alexandria in Egypt. It remained there until the brutal execution of Grand Master Hypatia in 415 CE at the hands of Christians.
In Bertrand Russell’s book on the history of Western Philosophy, he provides this horrific description of what transpired: “St Cyril, the advocate of unity, was a man of fanatical zeal. He used his position as patriarch of Alexandria to incite pogroms against the very large Jewish colony in Alexandria. His chief claim to fame is the lynching of Hypatia, a distinguished lady who, in an age of bigotry, adhered to the Neoplatonic philosophy and devoted her talents to mathematics. She was torn from her chariot, stripped naked, dragged to the church, and inhumanly butchered by the hands of Peter the Reader and a troop of savage and merciless fanatics: her flesh was scraped from her bones with sharp oyster-shells and her quivering limbs were delivered to the flames…After this, Alexandria was no longer troubled by philosophers.”
As in the time of Pythagoras, the Grand Master was not the only Illuminatus to perish: the Christians slaughtered hundreds – many of the finest minds of the ancient world – and most of their precious writings were destroyed with them.
The survivors were in a quandary about where to go to rebuild. The Roman Empire was collapsing. Alaric in 410 CE had sacked Rome itself. Barbarians and Christian extremists were everywhere. The Illuminati decided to go to a remote, well-protected country on the fringe of the Empire that they had visited in ancient times and where they had been based prior to moving to Alexandria in the first place. That country was Britain. The Romans had only just departed (the final withdrawals taking place in about 407 CE) and the country was still relatively stable and civilised. Although there were problems with barbarians, these were not as bad as in many other areas of the disintegrating Roman Empire. Moreover, many Britons had not yet succumbed to Christianity, or only at a superficial level, and there were still vestiges of ancient enlightenment religions of paganism, most especially Druidism.
The Illuminati stayed in Britain for the next few hundred years, and it is in this period that the historical events took place that furnished the basis for the future tales of Arthur, Merlin, Camelot and the Knights of the Round Table, and of the Waste Land and the Quest for the Holy Grail (which is, of course, pagan and not Christian).
The Knights of the Round Table embarking on a holy mission to find the Grail became the model for the future Knights Templar – a tightly knit group of holy knights dedicating their lives to sacred tasks.
Merlin (a Druid) became the template for the future Alchemists.
Camelot became the symbol for a City of God on Earth, the perfect city-state to which humanity should aspire.
The Round Table became the symbol of Meritocracy over Privilege.
Arthur became the symbol of leaders dedicated to higher ends rather than greed and self-interest.
The Waste Land became the symbol of both the Satanic Abrahamic world and the barbarian hordes flooding across Europe.
The Gnostic religion of Arthur and his realm became the template for the future Gnostic religion of Catharism – the religion of the “pure ones”. The priests of the Cathars were called the Perfectii – the “perfect ones” (those who had dedicated themselves to achieving enlightenment and becoming perfect – becoming God). Females Perfects were called Perfectae. (Women, unlike in Christianity, were eligible for all of the same religious positions as men.)
Now you have seen the trail that leads from Pythagoras to Rome to Alexandria to Arthurian Britain, and then to Alchemy, the Cathars and the Knights Templar.
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The Hidden Light:
Although the Illuminati has always been a secret society, its ideas have featured prominently in world history, albeit at one step removed. Plato, one of the greatest intellectuals of all time, was an Illuminatus. He was expelled from the society at an early stage for failing to protect its secrets, thus breaking the membership oath he had taken in common with all other members. Nevertheless, being a genius, he was able to form a relatively clear idea of where the basic teachings of the Illuminati that he had already learned were leading.
The works of Plato are filled with the ideas of the Illuminati, though they are heavily intertwined with his own unique and brilliant contributions. Plato established his famous Academy in Athens, basing it on the model of the Pythagorean schools of the Illuminati. His most famous pupil was Aristotle, an equally important figure in Western thought. Aristotle became frustrated and embittered when, on Plato’s death, he was passed over as the new leader of the Academy despite being the most outstanding candidate. He left Athens, and when he returned years later he established his own school, called the Lyceum.
Aristotle was not an Illuminatus, but Plato’s influence on him ensured that his philosophy also featured many ideas compatible with Illuminism.
Through Plato and Aristotle, some of the key ideas of Illuminism indirectly found their way into the world.
During the Roman Empire, the Illuminati formed a plan to create a religion compatible with Illuminism that might allow them to take control of the empire via the Roman army. That religion was Mithraism. Not until the era of Hegel did the Illuminati place in the public arena anything that could properly be called Illuminism. Anyone who has studied Hegel’s philosophy – regarded by many expert philosophers as staggeringly complex – will understand why it would have been futile to have done so at any earlier time.
Although Mithraism did indeed become the favoured religion of the Roman legionaries, it was never powerful enough to overcome Roman politics. There was never any realistic possibility that the Roman legions would unite to fight under the banner of Mithras and create an enlightened Roman Republic based on the principles formulated by the two great tribunes of the People: the Gracchus brothers. In fact, it wasn’t until the formation of the American Republic via Freemasonry that the Illuminati’s plan seemed to have come to belated fruition. But the American Dream turned into a nightmare.
The French Republic was another attempt (partially successful), and the final attempt was Hegel’s in relation to Prussia (a complete failure). The Illuminati also assisted in the Russian Revolution, but it was not an official Illuminati project due to worries (later justified) over how Communism would evolve.
As for Mithraism, it suffered the strangest of fates. A Mithraic priest from a Jewish background – the man known to history as Saint Paul – combined it with Messianic Judaism to create the religion that eventually swept half the world: Christianity. Just as the Illuminati had hoped to create a Mithraic army to change the world, there came a time when Christian armies did exactly that.
When it became clear that Mithraism could not defeat Christianity (because it had effectively been subsumed by Christianity), the Illuminati looked for another way to stop the spread of Christianity. A brilliant Grand Master called Ammonius Saccas, the first to establish himself in Alexandria in Egypt, decided to teach a group of talented “outsiders” a simplified version of Illuminism (just as Mithraism was). He hoped that these individuals would use the new ideas in various ways to produce inspirational systems, at least one of which would rival Christianity and stop it in its tracks.
Since the philosophy of Plato was highly influential amongst the educated class and since it already reflected many ideas of Illuminism, it was decided to create a religion based on Platonism. This became known to history as Neoplatonism (hence why Hypatia was referred to by Bertrand Russell as a Neoplatonist).
Although Plato’s work contained religious ideas, it was far more philosophical than religious. Neoplatonism was designed to reverse the emphasis and give primacy to religion over philosophy, while preserving the firm philosophical base.
In effect, Neoplatonism turned abstract Platonism into religion. In the past, most popular religions had been based on prophets, holy books, wise men, tales of gods, angels and demons. Neoplatonism was one of the few that sought to place reason and logic at the core of religion, and to assert that religion could be worked out from first principles by the human mind. No revelations were required, no faith – just the workings of clever human minds. Neoplatonism was a way of trying to take back religion from the irrationalists.
People who assert that religion occupies a different space from philosophy and science are deluded. How can there be three truths? In fact there is only one truth approached from three angles. The three angles must converge. They cannot contradict each other. So, when “revelation” makes opposite claims to science then either science is wrong or revelation is wrong. Any intelligent person will surely side with the scientific evidence over the words of some crazy prophet claiming that he is the channel of the Word of God.
In the Grand Unified Theory of Everything, mathematics, science, philosophy and religion must all be compatible at the deepest level. From its inception, the Illuminati dedicated itself to this task. The Illuminati alone did not succumb to the fragmentation and specialisation that happened everywhere else. While all other schools of thought distilled themselves into pure philosophy, mathematics, science or theology, the Illuminati maintained all four on the same footing. The final truth comes from them all; not from one or the other. It has been a disaster to split them off into separate activities with little in common. Scientists on the whole are entirely ignorant of philosophy, religion and even of a great deal of mathematics. Theologians know nothing of science and mathematics and have only a superficial knowledge of philosophy. Stephen Hawking recently said that philosophers no longer had much to say about the true nature of things because they had been unable to keep up with the latest science. In turn, philosophers say that scientists have not understood the precarious foundations of a great deal of scientific “knowledge”. Some philosophers say that science does not so much discover the truth as construct it.
Human beings will never be satisfied until they have all the answers and see how everything comes together in one infinitely satisfying whole. Illuminism is precisely that greatest of human undertakings: the project to understand the Mind of God mathematically, scientifically, philosophically and religiously.
From the school of Ammonius Saccas in Alexandria, two of the most distinguished figures of the age appeared: Origen and Plotinus. The former was a Christian and the latter a pagan. Ammonius Saccas hoped that Origen might poison Christianity from within with heretical ideas, while Plotinus, a skilled and poetic writer, was judged capable of taking and transforming the teachings of Neoplatonism into a beautiful new religion that would capture the imagination of the people more than Christianity ever had. Neoplatonism’s founder was Ammonius Saccas, but its most famous exposition is through the work of Plotinus.
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Hypatia:
Hypatia was born into an educated Greek family that lived in Alexandria, Egypt under the rule of the Roman Empire, and she became a distinguished and greatly respected scholar. Her name means “highest, supremest”, and it was a fitting name for one of history’s most remarkable women. She is often described as the first woman to be recognised as a mathematician and she also taught advanced philosophy and astronomy. It has been said that her murder brought the curtain down on the period known as Classical antiquity, although others have identified a better end-point as the closing of Plato’s Academy in Athens by order of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian in 529 CE. That certainly symbolised the death of the great pagan philosophical and religious traditions of ancient Greece, and led to the disastrous domination of Christianity for the next thousand years: THE LOST MILLENNIUM. THE DARK AGES. Even now, the darkness has not been dispelled.
But there are those who seek the world of Light, who seek the New World Order. Women, who were treated abominably by Christianity, Judaism and Islam, need different role models to turn to. There is none better than Hypatia, the pagan genius.
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Illuminati Degrees:
The Illuminati have ten degrees: seven standard and three mystery degrees. The original degrees were formulated by the first Grand Master of the Illuminati – Pythagoras, the ancient Greek mystic, philosopher and mathematician. His system was based on his cosmological system, which was as much symbolical as real.
Pythagoras was the first man to call himself a philosopher – a lover of wisdom – and he was also the first to declare that the earth wasn’t the centre of the universe. Instead, a mystical central fire (not the sun) was put at the centre of the cosmos, thus making this model a forerunner of the Copernican system. The central fire was referred to as the “House of Abraxas” – and represented, symbolically, the home of the True God, the eternal realm of divine light and warmth. (The central fire might also be considered as energy, in particular as mental energy, radiating life, mind and consciousness to the cosmos.)
Ten heavenly bodies revolved around the cosmic fire: the counterearth (this was identical to the earth and followed the same orbit, but was diametrically opposite on the far side of the central fire and therefore permanently invisible from the earth), the earth itself, the moon, the sun, the five planets known at the time and the sphere of fixed stars of the celestial plane. Beyond, lay infinite space. The heavenly bodies, moving in perfect circular orbits, created the divine sound known as the Music of the Spheres, which permeated the entire universe but could be heard only by the True God.
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The Pythagorean Degrees of the Illuminati
Standard degrees:
1st: The Heaven of the Fixed Stars.
2nd: Kronos (Saturn). Kronos was the leader of the Titans. (He castrated his father Uranus, thus taking his power from him. He ruled the world during the mythological Golden Age. He was the father of the Olympian gods. He was overthrown by his son Zeus, and he and the other Titans were bound in the underworld.)
3rd: Zeus (Jupiter, Jove). The king of the Olympian gods.
4th: Ares (Mars). The god of war.
5th: Helios (Sol). The sun.
6th: Aphrodite (Venus). The goddess of love and beauty.
7th: Hermes (Mercury). The messenger of the gods.
Mystery Degrees:
8th: Selene (Luna). The moon.
9th: Gaia (Terra Mater). The earth.
10th: Antichthon. The counter-earth.
Antichthon is the highest degree because it represents the opportunity for humanity to transform itself beyond recognition. While this earth is corrupt, wicked and fallen, the counter-earth offers the promise of the complete opposite: paradise, free of the malignant influence of the Demiurge and the Old World Order. Antichthon, the counter-earth, is what the earth can and should be. The Golden Age of Saturn can be restored (indeed Saturn is now said to live on the counter-earth – heaven – while the earth is now the opposite – hell).
The Mithraic Degrees of the Illuminati
In later times, the Greek Pythagorean degrees were restyled according to a Roman system. The seven standard degrees became those of Mithraism, a mystery religion closely related to Illumination.
Standard degrees:
1st: Corax (the Raven), under the rule of Mercury.
2nd: Nymphus (the Bride), under the rule of Venus.
3rd: Miles (the Soldier), under the rule of Mars.
4th: Leo (the Lion), under the rule of Jupiter.
5th: Perses (the Persian), under the rule of the Moon.
6th: Heliodromus (the Sun Runner), under the rule of the Sun.
7th: Pater (the Father), under the rule of Saturn.
The Mystery Degrees:
8th: Minerva (symbolised by an owl – the Owl of Minerva).
9th: Magus (symbolised by the Phoenix, the sacred firebird that rises from the ashes).
10th: Deus Absconditus (the Hidden God, Abraxas, symbolised by the Tetraktys).
(The last of the four major Illuminati symbols is the skull and crossbones in honour of Simon Magus; the Greek Sphinx is also accorded special significance.)
These remain the degrees of the Illuminati in the present day. The majority of members belong to the standard degrees; the 10th degree is for the 12 members of the Ruling Council only. The identities of the Ruling Council are completely unknown to the basic membership, but at each initiation, one masked member of the Ruling Council is always in attendance and conducts the final part of the ceremony.
There were ten degrees in total because, for Pythagoras, the number 10 was divine. 1, 2, 3 and 4 were also revered as numbers because they add up to 10 and they form the divine triangle – the Tetraktys – which symbolized the four elements (earth, air, fire, and water) and, in its totality, also the mystical fifth essence, the Quintessence.
The Tetraktys is an equilateral triangle composed of dots in four rows, a visual representation of the equation: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10. The Tetraktys contains a hexagon and a three-dimensional cube (as shown in the picture at http://
If the Tetraktys is extended by adding new rows, up to a total of 36, the 36th “triangular” number is 666: the Number of the Beast in the Christian Book of Revelation! The number 36 has a crucial significance for the Illuminati, as does the Tetraktys extended to order 36. As for the 666th triangular number, this is equal to 222111. When two successive “triangular” numbers are added, the result is a square number e.g. 1 + 3 = 4; 3 + 6 = 9; 6 + 10 = 16; 10 + 15 = 25.
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Pythagoras, First Grand Master of the Illuminati:
Pythagoras was born in 570 BCE on the Greek island of Samos. He was taught how to perform miracles by a mystic called Pherecydes who often travelled with Pythagoras’s father, and it was Pherecydes who first introduced him to the doctrines of the Illuminati. (At this time, the Illuminati did not exist as a formal organisation, but as a loose group of nomadic thinkers and mystics.) Pherecydes instructed Pythagoras on the immortality and transmigration of the human soul, the soul’s wanderings in the “underworld”, and the purpose of the soul’s cycle of reincarnations.
Pherecydes recommended Pythagoras to other members of the Illuminati, amongst whom were Egyptian priests, the most illustrious and learned of teachers in those times. When Pherecydes died, Pythagoras boarded ship and went to Egypt where he was taught secret knowledge, profound mysteries and advanced mathematics by the priests at Heliopolis, Memphis and Thebes. Later, he learned astronomy from the Chaldeans, geometry from the Phoenicians and occult knowledge from the Persian Magi. He also met the prophet Zarathustra (Zoroaster) in Persia. On his travels, he acquired all of the greatest wisdom then available in the world. He was uncontaminated by Judaism; and Christianity and Islam did not exist at this time. For people nowadays, it’s easy to forget that there was a time when people did not suffer from the warped mindset of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The world was once free of these horrific religions, and so it can be again.
According to Christianity, every human being went to hell before the coming of the “Redeemer”, Jesus Christ. If he had never come, the whole of humanity would have been condemned to hell. What sort of religion contemplates sending everyone to eternal perdition? What manner of Creator damns his own creation?
In Croton in southern Italy, Pythagoras founded a school where he taught the secret knowledge he had acquired. Here, the Illuminati first took shape as a formal organisation, with Pythagoras as the first Grand Master. Only he had the charisma and knowledge to command everyone’s unswerving loyalty. He and the newly initiated members of the Illuminati lived in a community where everything was held in common. There was no private property. Brotherly and sisterly cooperation was emphasised.
Pythagoras addressed the Illuminati from behind a curtain, so none could see him. Only those who had graduated to the mystery degrees of the Illuminati were admitted into his presence. Those who had attained the mystery grades, the inner circle, were called mathematikoi – the mathematicians – while the outer circle were called the akousmatikoi (“listeners”).
Pythagoras developed a secret language (still used by the senior members of the Illuminati), and elaborate numerical codes and symbolic messages. He devised initiation rites and introduced secret symbols and special handshakes. Compasses and set squares, tools of mathematics, were given high prominence as symbols. All of the trademarks of Masonic lodges were already evident here. The Illuminati formally created Freemasonry millennia later, based on these original Pythagorean customs and practices.
Pythagoras’s students considered him supernatural and a demigod. They said, “There are in the universe men and gods and beings like Pythagoras.” A biographer called him the “harmonic deity, halfway between gods and men.” (The idea of individuals ascending the scale between humanity and divinity is critical to the Illuminati.)
The Italian city of Sybaris was legendary for the opulence and luxury enjoyed by its citizens. This was an Old World Order city par excellence. Pythagoras condemned it as a lazy, corrupt, materialistic society, heedless of the poor, dedicated to making money and contemptuous of philosophy and ideas. The Crotons, rivals of Sybaris, attacked it and destroyed it.
The Illuminati grew increasingly more influential, but when a man called Chion, a person of “high birth” (i.e. a member of the Old World Order) was refused admission to the Order, he and a gang of thugs burned down the Illuminati’s headquarters, killing most of the initiates. Pythagoras escaped, but was pursued, caught and put to death in horrific fashion.
Pythagoras is one of the most brilliant and mysterious men in history. He was the first to attempt to bring together reason, logic, philosophy, mathematics and mysticism, subjects that have preoccupied the Illuminati ever since. One of the treasures of the Illuminati, only ever accessed by the Ruling Council, is an ancient manuscript by Pythagoras. As far as the wider world is concerned, he never wrote anything down.
He considered numbers to be the arche, the most fundamental element of the universe, the true nature of things. Although this sounds eccentric, no one can doubt that mathematics is deeply embedded in the fabric of the universe. If the universe weren’t mathematical it would be impossible to make any sense of it.
Mathematics is the language of order, organisation and patterns. When equations are solved, numbers are the result.
In the “clockwork” universe conceived by the French mathematician and philosopher Laplace, if the positions and motion of every particle in the universe could be determined at one time then all future positions and motions could be calculated too. In this sense, the universe could be characterised as a vast matrix of ever-changing numbers describing the dynamical positions of every particle (being moved around by the forces operating on them).
The introduction of quantum uncertainty simply changes the complexity of the matrix, but not the underlying numerical basis of this vision of reality. If the universe can be described on a moment to moment basis as an enormous matrix of numbers describing all possible positions of all possible particles, and all the experiences of humanity are coded in those numbers, then Pythagoras’s statement is not as strange as it initially sounds.
The movie The Matrix famously showed “reality” as huge arrays of numbers and symbols – machine code – cascading down computer screens, which then had to be translated into the reality with which we are familiar. After a while, this translation became automatic for those looking at the screens. This image would instantly have appealed to Pythagoras, except he may have regarded the screens of numbers and symbols as more real than the images of real life derived from them. The code would be the arche, while the decoded images would be secondary and derived, hence less real.
Pythagoras was the person most responsible for the numerology that features heavily in occult thinking. He condemned the visible world – the creation of the Demiurge – as false and illusory. In the classic language of Gnosticism, he said that the heavenly light was broken and obscured in mist and darkness. He had many characteristics in common with St Francis of Assisi; a love of poverty, despair at the behaviour of privileged elites, and a desire for brotherhood. He was even said to talk to animals, just like St Francis. Men and women were admitted into the Illuminati on equal terms, an exceptional occurrence in those times.
Bertrand Russell said that the vast majority of Plato’s philosophy had its roots in Pythagoreanism. Given the impact of Plato on the Western world, this shows just how important Pythagoras was. He could legitimately be considered the most influential of all philosophers. The great tragedy for the world was that it strayed away from Pythagoras, Gnosticism and the Illuminati and instead embraced the evil and idiotic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, plunging us into millennia of horror and despair. But Pythagoras will be reborn, and his message, and that of the Illuminati, will triumph in the end.
Russell wrote of Pythagoras, “The whole conception of an eternal world, revealed to the intellect but not to the senses, is derived from him.”
He was also reputed to have the ability to project messages onto the moon for the world to see. Using his own blood, he would write a message on a looking glass, point it at the moon, and the inscription would appear on the moon’s disc.
Pythagoras is famous for his theorem regarding right-angled triangles, but that is the least of his remarkable achievements. He taught that each number had its own special attributes.
Number Attribute:
1 monad (unity) the number of reason, the generator of numbers
2 dyad (diversity, opinion, otherness), first female number
3 triad (harmony = unity + diversity), first male number
4 (justice, retribution) squaring of accounts
5 (marriage) first female + first male
6 (creation) first female + first male + 1
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10 (Universe) Tetraktys
The number pair 220 and 284 were an Illuminati recognition code. 220 and 284 are “amicable” numbers. Two numbers are amicable if each is the sum of the proper divisors (that is all the divisors except the number itself) of the other.
The sum of the proper divisors of 220 is 1 + 2 + 4 + 5 + 10 + 11 + 20 + 22 + 44 + 55 + 110 = 284. The sum of the proper divisors of 284 is 1 + 2 + 4 + 71 + 142 = 220.
If an Illuminati member showed a talisman bearing the number 220, the correct response was for another member to show a talisman bearing the number 284. This pair of numbers has become significant in magic, sorcery, astrology and the occult.
Other recognition codes were based on so-called Deficient, Perfect and Abundant Numbers. A number is perfect if it is equal to the sum of its proper divisors. 6 is a perfect number (1 + 2 + 3 = 6). A number is deficient if its sum falls short of the number. 8 is deficient (1 + 2 + 4 = 7). A number is abundant if the sum exceeds the number. 12 is abundant (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 6 = 16).
Each degree of the Illuminati was associated with a particular Deficient, Perfect or Abundant number, and could be used by one member to reveal his rank to another.
These are just a few examples of the complex numerology used by the Illuminati.
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The Historical Illuminati:
In contemporary mythology, the Illuminati have been branded as the puppetmasters who stand behind the establishment, pulling the strings, orchestrating the enslavement of the people of the world. The opposite is true. The Illuminati have always led the resistance against the tyrants. On occasions, they have come tantalisingly close to success, but mostly they have endured catastrophic defeats. They have tried to infiltrate the establishment, tried Trojan Horse strategies, guerrilla tactics and popular uprisings, tried to win the intellectual and religious debate, tried to subvert and undermine the establishment. Most attempts have ended in disaster, with the establishment unmolested and more powerful than ever. But it is never acceptable to surrender or abandon the struggle.
Too many people retreat into their micro-worlds of petty comforts where they pose no threat to the establishment, and that’s exactly what the establishment desire – our compliance and obedience, our refusal to stand up to them. The game of the establishment is nothing new. It was explicitly set out in Machiavelli’s The Prince, which baldly states the unscrupulous principles of how those with power should hold onto it. Lying, cheating, brutality, cruelty, pitilessness, inspiring fear and terror, breaking solemn oaths, hypocrisy, greed, bribery and corruption, extermination of rivals, making pacts with your enemies only to break them when it suits you, are all advocated as necessary tools. This behaviour is still on display every day from every government on earth.
The Illuminati have had a number of guises in the public arena, have formed many alliances and have founded many groups that they have used for particular purposes in the ongoing struggle against tyranny. But the objective has always been the same – to destroy the Old World Order, the network of powerful dynastic families and privileged elites that have engineered earthly wealth and power for themselves, and to hell with everyone else. The Old World Order were the masters thousands of years ago and they are the masters now. They assiduously follow the advice of Machiavelli, but they didn’t need him to tell them the rules of the game. Machiavelli merely methodically described what they had been doing for millennia.
Through every disaster, the OWO endure. Has the latest financial disaster dented their power? Not in the slightest. Nothing has changed. People talk about doing this and doing that against them, but in reality nothing happens. The system is locked down. It is impossible to change it within its own parameters. It is designed to be resistant to anything other than revolution, but there are few revolutionaries left in the world. The Old World Order’s system is close to perfection. It is a matrix of absolute control. Only a small number of people (some 6,000) run the world, yet they are backed up by all the agencies of oppression: the police, the military, the intelligence services, the law (designed, ultimately, to protect the assets of the rich). The billions of ordinary people in the world, who could sweep away tyranny in an instant, are too scared to fight back. They are cowed and docile. They are the “last men” to whom Nietzsche referred to derisively.
The Illuminati’s mission, in one sense, is to help last men regain their dignity, to throw off their chains and stand up straight for once. How is that to be done? By putting people in touch with their higher selves. When the divine spark is released in an individual, he no longer tolerates the condition of slavery, no longer mires himself in trivial and meaningless pursuits to pass the time. Above all things, the Old World Order fear what would happen if their manufactured mastery were challenged by legions of those who had found their higher selves and lost their fear. As will be shown below, many brave groups have resisted the OWO. The vastly more numerous forces of the OWO crushed them, but it will not always be so. “The darkest hour is just before the dawn.”
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There are several key ways for ordinary researchers to identify movements and groups from history that were linked to the Illuminati. The groups in question probably taught reincarnation; probably had an unusually strong message of freedom and equality directed at the least privileged strata of society; probably wished to remove power and wealth from the greedy and oppressive rulers of society; probably emphasised the “Holy Spirit”; and probably made claims that seemed astonishing and heretical to those brainwashed by revealed religions such as Christianity, Judaism and Islam.
These claims would often be perceived as self-exaltation to such a degree that it amounted to self-deification. “I am becoming God” sounds to some people like a crazy assertion, but the meaning behind such a claim was that the practitioners were asserting that they had made first contact with their higher self – with the divine spark, part of the divine order – and they could now start to partake of the divine experience i.e. they had attained the initial stage of godliness and could anticipate progression to full union. Revealed religions regard such claims as the greatest taboo whereas for mystery religions they are the supreme truth, the culmination of the personal quest for ultimate knowledge, for the Holy Grail itself.
Not all groups that taught messages of this kind were directly linked with the Illuminati. Some were imitating the Illuminati, based on second-hand knowledge and rumours, some were led by renegade Illuminists who had been expelled from the society for transgressions; and some inspirational leaders just happened to create religions and philosophies (usually in opposition to revealed religions) that shared elements in common with the teachings of the Illuminati.
The Illuminati have never had a large number of members for the simple reason that secrets do not remain secrets if too many people have access to them. It is because the Illuminati have adopted a leadership role behind the scenes rather taken the field as a mass movement that they have been described as “puppet masters”.
Below is a list of the groups and movements that were either led by the Illuminati, connected with the Illuminati, or influenced by the Illuminati. It is a history of resistance to the rich elites. In the same way that the establishment is essentially a coherent whole, duplicated across nations and time, so is the resistance to it. By no means is all resistance associated with the Illuminati, but resistance of a certain type, with the sorts of characteristics described earlier, invariably is. It is the world’s most fascinating secret history.
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The Order of Solomon – Solomon, the famous Biblical King of Israel, is sometimes referred to as a Grand Master of the Illuminati even though he lived centuries before the first official Grand Master, Pythagoras. He was given this title retrospectively to honour his importance to the Illuminati. In Solomon’s time, the Illuminati were wandering holy men, mystics and philosophers. One of these travelled to the kingdom of Israel, was introduced to Solomon, and succeeded in enlightening him. (Solomon, renowned for his wisdom, was quick to see the truth of what he was being told.) Solomon created a secret group that came to be called the Order of Solomon, the task of which was a) to work to end the Hebrews’ worship of Jehovah, and b) something much more remarkable – to actually kill Jehovah. (This forms the background of the book The Armageddon Conspiracy by Mike Hockney.) The Order of Solomon disintegrated after Solomon’s death, though it was reborn much later in the form of the Order of Poor Knights of the Temple of Solomon – the famous Knights Templar whose earliest years were dedicated to excavating the foundations of Solomon’s Temple to rediscover ancient treasures and secrets.
Druidism – a Celtic version of Gnosticism. (Just as there were Celtic and Roman versions of Christianity, with the Roman emerging on top, there were also Celtic and Greek versions of Gnosticism. The Celtic version was virtually exterminated when the Romans slaughtered the Druids in Britain. Remnants of Druidism survived in Ireland but gradually succumbed to Christianity. (Druids met Pythagoras, the Illuminati’s first Grand Master, and adopted many of the teachings of the Illuminati. Merlin, in the legends of King Arthur, represents both Druidism and the “magical” power of a man who has direct and reliable contact with his higher self.)
Simon Magus – was the greatest and most revered Grand Master of the Illuminati, for reasons that will not be disclosed at this time. Early Christian Church Fathers regarded him as the most prominent and dangerous Gnostic, the heresiarch. There were many Gnostic sects, all of which were respected by the Illuminati, but there was considerable divergence between what each sect taught. The Gnostic sects that were closely linked to the Illuminati were the Carpocratians (mentioned in Prohibition A by Mike Hockney), Cainites, the Ophites and the Johannites (see The Armageddon Conspiracy).
Mithraism – a Gnostic mystery religion led by the Illuminati. The Illuminati attempted to introduce a religion that would appeal to the Roman army and thereby allow them to secure military control of the Roman Empire. Many Roman soldiers became Mithraists, but the secrecy inherent in Mithraism eventually counted against it. For obvious reasons, mystery religions cannot go public on any significant scale and that prevents them from becoming mass movements. Christianity entered the public sphere and became far more popular and powerful than Mithraism. It stole many Mithraic elements and gradually neutralised the threat of Mithraism.
Manichaeism – Mani was a member of the Illuminati tasked with creating a Gnostic religion open to all (rather than to approved initiates only, as in Mithraism), which would directly rival Christianity. It was called the Religion of Light. The idea was that the best Manicheans would then be introduced to the Illuminati’s higher mystery religion – Illumination. Manichaeism was highly successful for a time, but was ultimately defeated by the world’s main religions. Mani himself suffered a horrific death. For 26 days he was kept in prison in heavy chains, then he was flayed alive and his skin, stuffed with straw, was nailed to a cross and suspended over the main gate of the great city of Jundishapur as a terrifying spectacle for those who followed his teachings. His dead body was decapitated and the head placed on a spike.
Hermeticism – a school of thought not directly established by the Illuminati but which was inspired by Illuminism and addressed many similar interests. It helped to keep alive esoteric thinking in a time when the Illuminati came close to extinction during the collapse of the Roman Empire and the coming of the Dark Ages. Hermeticism has always been greatly respected by the Illuminati. The central difference between Hermeticism and Gnosticism is that Hermeticists do not say that the world is the creation of an evil Demiurge and that humanity is under his malign power. Rather, they claim that humanity is separated from God by a kind of laziness, apathy, stupor, ignorance, lust, and enslavement to bodily concerns instead of those of the spirit. If only humanity could wake up and free itself of sensual pleasures and distractions, of a materialistic mindset, it could commune directly with God.
Gnosticism and Hermeticism both concern the quest to discover the higher self, the divine spark, the means for man to become God. To that extent, the Illuminati are supportive of the agenda of Hermeticism. Those people who do not find themselves convinced that earth is in thrall to a malignant force can still find their way to many of the truths of Illumination via Hermeticism. Illumination and Hermeticism are two roads to salvation. The Illuminati have always taught that those who follow the Hermetic path will, one day, as they discover higher truth and insights, reach the same path as the Illuminati.
The essential difference between Hermeticism and Illumination on one side, and religions like Christianity, Judaism and Islam on the other is that whereas followers of the latter are alienated from God and regard him as external, distant and infinitely far above their level, the former see him as internal, close and, when enlightenment is attained, identical with them. Buddhists and Hindus, meanwhile, think that when they reach enlightenment, they will become absorbed in the divine essence, the great and eternal Oneness. In other words, Christians, Jews and Muslims view themselves as always separate from God, Buddhists and Hindus as becoming one with God/Nature (but with their own individuality completely extinguished), and Hermeticists and the Illuminati as becoming God, but with their individuality retained.
This is a difficult concept for most people to grasp. The best modern analogy is that of a hologram. Physicist David Bohm said of the hologram, “…one in effect sees the whole of the original structure, in three dimensions, and from a range of possible points of view (as if one were looking at it through a window). If we then illuminate only a small region [of the hologram], we still see the whole structure, but in somewhat less sharply defined detail and from a decreased range of possible points of view (as if we were looking through a smaller window). It is clear, then, that there is no one-to-one correspondence between parts of an ‘illuminated object’ and parts of a [holographic image of this object]. Rather, the interference pattern in each region [of the hologram] is relevant to the whole structure, and each region of the structure is relevant to the whole of the interference pattern [of the hologram].” Do you see the holographic analogy to God and the divine sparks that reside in humanity? Each spark is individual yet contains the whole (God), but “as if one were looking through a smaller window”. Moreover, the whole (God) relies on each individual part.
So, which path will you choose? Do you want to stand always in God’s infinite shadow as the Christians, Jews and Muslims do, or become absorbed by him so that you as an individual no longer exist, as the Buddhists and Hindus advocate, or do you want to attain divinity while retaining your individual identity? The answer should be obvious to any thinking person.
An example of a group led by a renegade Illuminist was the Euchites (Messalians) who looked back to the early years of the Illuminati. The Illuminati started out as wandering holy men, mystics and philosophers before becoming a settled organisation. The Euchites went back to basics and again became nomadic holy men living by begging. They taught that they had communed with their divine selves and were therefore incapable of sin: everything they did was good and justified, they declared. This often led to anarchic excess, particularly of a sexual nature. This represented a corruption of the Illuminati’s controversial teaching of “Sin for Salvation” which requires high levels of control and self-discipline and must always be harnessed to strict asceticism. Sinning for sinning’s sake is self-indulgent, counterproductive and leads to no genuine contact with the higher self. But “sin” when used as a deliberate attack on the teachings of false religions can be an instrument of transcendent liberation. Much of the rhetoric of sin has nothing to do with good and evil and is all about control; about mass brainwashing to promote the agenda of the controllers. Nothing is more important than ridding humanity of such “sins” – the sins defined by the Old World Order, which are no sins at all.
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