Academia Iluministă (42)
Illumination:
llumination – the world’s most ancient and secret religion (also known as Illuminism).
The Illuminati – the secret society that preserves Illumination.
Illuminist/Illuminatist/
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Hegel:
The greatest trio of Grand Masters in the history of the Illuminati – three remarkable geniuses in a row – comprised Adam Weishaupt, Goethe and Hegel. Weishaupt, a German professor of civil and canon law, was also a philosopher of the Enlightenment and a radical revolutionary. Goethe was Germany’s greatest cultural figure and its foremost literary genius, and he was the man whom Nietzsche considered as coming closest to embodying his concept of the übermensch. As for the German philosopher Hegel, he is one of the most revered members in the history of the Illuminati and a towering figure in philosophy.
Hegel succeeded Weishaupt as Grand Master of the Illuminati in 1830, but died within a year. Goethe, then an old man, assumed the role, but more in an honorary capacity due to his frailty. He died within a matter of months.
The Illuminati look on this era as a particular Golden Age when it seemed that they might make a decisive breakthrough.
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Johann Adam Weishaupt: February 6, 1748 – November 18, 1830
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: August 27, 1770 – November 14, 1831
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: August 28, 1749 – March 22, 1832
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Philosopher Richard Rorty said of Hegel, “Philosophers are doomed to find Hegel waiting patiently at the end of whatever road we travel.” Derrida said, “Hegelianism only extends its historical domination, finally unfolding its immense enveloping resources without obstacle.”
Hegel is a notoriously opaque philosopher, and is frequently misinterpreted, even by experts. Part of the reason he wrote in such an impenetrable style was that he was seeking to conceal his membership of the Illuminati and the fact that his philosophy is inspired by the religion of the Illuminati. Much of the detail of the Illuminati’s religion can be found in his works. However, to many ordinary people, Hegel’s writings are mystical, incomprehensible and unreadable.
One of Hegel’s most important contributions to philosophy was his “Master/Slave” dialectic. This was based on an ancient Illuminati philosophical account of the origins of the Old World Order – how it came about that a small group of people were allowed to dominate the world, and why the majority permitted this to happen. This question remains central to the Illuminati. Many people claim to find the Old World Order intolerable, yet they go right ahead and tolerate them. There would be no Old World Order if the majority did not cooperate with the machinations of the OWO.
For those who wish to discover more about the Master/Slave dialectic, a famous modern book is pertinent. Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man is strongly influenced by Hegel and provides an excellent account of how the world’s political systems have evolved. The section entitled “The Last Man” shows the pathetic type of person that is being generated under the rule of the OWO. (Fukuyama himself does not use such terms as OWO and indeed his book is admired by the OWO because he endorses many of their views. Even so, it is a worthwhile book for interested parties to study.)
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Master and Slave:
Most of us are slaves. No matter how much we loathe that conclusion and reject it, it is true nevertheless.
If you want to know if you are a slave, consider these criteria. Every day you go and do a job you don’t like. It gives you no creative thrill, and you derive no feeling of self-worth from it. You are under someone else’s control. Your employer decides how you spend your time, not you. Your employer demands obedience, application and proper conduct from you. If you don’t comply, you will be fired. You must behave in the way that the employer sees fit, not in the way that you deem fit. In other words, you have handed over your definition of “proper conduct” to another. You have sold your time and effort to your employer. Sure, you get a salary in return. You can pay the bills, buy nice things, support your nearest and dearest, go on holidays, go out for fine meals at the weekend. In short, you can live comfortably. It is on that basis – that your petty needs are satisfied – that you can justify the fact that you have given away your control over the most precious thing you have: your own life.
Your employer, on the other hand, is wealthy, loves what he does, gets immense status and prestige from it, is admired and envied. His lifestyle is breathtaking. He has three magnificent homes, a 300-ft yacht, a stable of Ferrari super cars. He stays in the best hotels, and everyone is eager to do his bidding and fulfil his every wish. They are permanently at his beck and call, falling over themselves to please him. He can come and go as he chooses. He will never be sitting in front of another person waiting to hear if he is about to lose his job. He is the one who decides who gets hired and who gets fired. He controls his life. He allocates his time as he sees fit. He behaves as he wishes to. He imposes his views on others. Others depend on him, but he does not depend on them.
So, then, which are you…master or slave? Who are the masters? The Old World Order. Who are the slaves? The rest of us.
Who is guilty? We are. Why? Because we allow the masters to rule us. In exchange for a “comfortable” living, we sign away our own lives. All over the globe, for billions of us, the headstones of our graves will bear exactly the same inscription: “Here lies the body of a person who was an adequate employee. He did what he was told and paid his taxes. He made no impact on the world. Nothing more need be said.” Are you happy for that to be your epitaph?
But on the marble headstones of the members of the Old World Order, overlooking vast, spectacular mausoleums, will be magnificent eulogies, great lists of achievements, the tales of the lives of people to whose tune so many danced.
Overwhelmingly, the masters are those born into privilege, those handed huge and overwhelming advantages from the outset. Their parents are wealthy. They live in the finest neighbourhoods. They go to the finest schools. They join Masonic societies with the other sons and daughters of privilege. They agree to carve up all of the best jobs amongst each other. They marry each other and breed new generations of masters. They don’t care about anyone else. Why should they? They have everything they want. On their side of the equation, there is no question to be answered.
The people who must answer the question are the slaves. The question could not be simpler. It is: why do we let the masters get away with it? And the answer is a painful one. It’s because we are lazy, apathetic, cowardly, satisfied with our trivial comforts. We’d rather accept the status quo than make any attempt to change things because then we’d need to leave our comfort zone, put in time and effort, and above all be brave and take bold risks. If we weren’t content with our enslavement, we’d be doing something about it. We’d be fighting back. But how many of us are doing anything at all? Don’t ask others what you need to do. Use your initiative.
The answer to why we behave this way was provided by Hegel, one of the greatest Illuminists of all. His dialectic of the master and slave is a famous and hugely influential contribution to philosophy. On its own, it would have elevated Hegel to the highest ranks of philosophers, yet it was just one small part of his dazzling thinking.
Only those slaves who understand Hegel’s remarkable dialectic will be able to change their status and become free men.
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The Freedom Fight:
Hegel’s treatment of the master and slave dialectic is highly complex and abstract, but we will attempt to communicate the gist of his argument in a way that non specialists can follow. The starting point is the concept of self-consciousness.
Self-consciousness is, by definition, a consciousness that is able to reflect upon itself. While all non-human animals on earth display various levels of consciousness, none of them are self-conscious. Hegel asserts that self-consciousness cannot exist on its own. It needs something else with which to contrast itself. To know what it is, self-consciousness must be aware of what it is not.
A self-consciousness needs otherness, but as soon it encounters otherness it also experiences, for the first time, fear. Otherness is foreign, a potential threat, something that stands in opposition. The self-consciousness wishes to exert its will to power over the other thing. It wants to possess it, discover its secrets, absorb it, subordinate it, but, crucially, not to destroy it. If the self-consciousness takes ownership of the other thing, it will no longer find it foreign, hostile and threatening. But if it destroys the other thing, the self-consciousness will no longer have anything with which to contrast itself and will start to unravel. It cannot exist without the presence of otherness, yet as soon as it takes possession of otherness, otherness is no longer truly other. How can self-consciousness overcome this dilemma? Hegel came up with a profound and dramatic answer – by otherness arriving in the shape of a second self-consciousness.
Self-consciousness, in order to become true self-consciousness, needs not just any external object – any otherness – but another self-consciousness. By observing this other self-consciousness, by learning what it does and how it behaves, the first self-consciousness starts to understand itself. It learns what it means to be a self-consciousness.
Imagine a human child growing up on a desert island without the presence of another human or even an animal. Would the child develop language, would it become self-conscious, would it even become human in any true sense? The harsh but unavoidable truth is that it wouldn’t. We become human by growing up amongst other humans, by being taught and guided by adult humans, by socialising with humans, by developing relationships, good and bad, with other humans. We immerse ourselves in the pool of humanity and thereby become human. If we are unable to do that because we have extreme autism, or severe Down’s Syndrome, or any other debilitating condition that makes proper social interaction impossible, then we will never be truly human but more like an animal.
Think of the God of Christianity, Islam and Judaism existing in complete isolation before he allegedly created the world. How would this God develop as a self-consciousness without anything or anyone else with which to contrast himself? To a Christian, Muslim or Jew that question is not only absurd but also blasphemous and heretical. But their conception of God is ridiculous and incredible beyond words. Their God is one that could never exist. They believe in a fantasy. No intelligent person could subscribe to their religious beliefs. If you are prepared to believe in a 15-yr-old virgin giving birth to the omnipotent, omniscient, perfect, timeless Son of God in a stable in the Middle East 2,000 years ago, you are prepared to believe in anything. You are far beyond the reach of rational debate.
Hegel was fascinated by what would happen when a self-consciousness first encountered a second self-consciousness. The first self-consciousness would certainly now have another object with which to contrast itself, but this would be no simple object that could be straightforwardly owned and negated as all the previous objects had been. In fact, this other self-consciousness might be a serious threat. Also, the first self-consciousness is plunged into an identity crisis. It is no longer unique. Not only that, perhaps, the first self-consciousness worries, the other self-consciousness might want to try to own and negate it as if the first consciousness were just another object.
Imagine two humans who have been raised in perfect isolation suddenly coming into contact with one another. What will they do? How will they behave? Hegel says that each requires recognition from the other: recognition that they are independent self-consciousnesses that are not mere objects to be owned and negated. What if the other refuses to provide that recognition?
If another self-consciousness does not acknowledge that I am also a self-consciousness, my whole identity is at stake. I am thrust into an existential crisis. Who am I? What am I? What will become of me? Does my existence have meaning?
When prisoners of war are being broken, one of the main tactics used is to dehumanise them, depersonalise them, refuse to acknowledge their humanity, their existence as anything other than objects. Many people have gone insane when subjected to this treatment. If you travelled the globe and were never once acknowledged as a human being by anyone you met, if you were ignored at every turn, if you were treated as invisible, you would soon no longer be human in any functioning sense. Quite simply, we cannot be human without acknowledgement of our humanity by other humans. Most people take their identity for granted, but it is astonishingly fragile, as many prisoners of war discover to their cost. The Jews in Nazi death camps were stripped of all of their humanity.
They were turned, metaphorically, and even literally in some cases, into objects. One survivor, the great writer Primo Levi once dared to ask a guard, “Why?” regarding some incident. The response he got was infinitely chilling: “Here, there is no ‘why’.”
Recognition is not just important, it is a matter of life and death. Our whole existence hinges on it. Without it, we are objects. We are not human. We might as well be dead.
Hegel says that in the first encounter between two self-consciousnesses, the outcome is so critical, so much is riding on it, that in effect it becomes a fight to the death. Yet death must not happen. If either is killed, the other is denied the possibility of recognition and loses the chance to be a proper self-consciousness. (Remember that Hegel says that a self-consciousness cannot exist in the absence of another self-consciousness. Self-consciousness is social and plural, never singular.)
So, while each person fights as if to the death, the struggle does not actually end in death because that would be the end for both self-consciousnesses, both the victor and vanquished. The only way for the situation to be resolved is for one self-consciousness to, finally, submit to the other i.e. for one to prove to be more cowardly and weak than the other, less able to put everything on the line in order to win, less willing to risk death itself.
So, both have survived and both can now acknowledge the other, but a terrible and infinitely fateful asymmetry has entered the equation. The struggle has ended with the complete victory of one over the other. The victor is the master and the vanquished his slave. The victor was prepared to fight to the death; the vanquished wasn’t. He gave up. The victor is courageous and the vanquished a coward. The victor is strong and the vanquished weak. The master controls and the slave is controlled. The master is the ruler and the slave is the ruled.
This struggle has, symbolically, been going on since the dawn of humanity. We have all participated in the struggle and we are now all either masters or slaves. It’s easy to know which. If you work for another person, you are a slave. If you can be fired, you are a slave. If others control your life, you are a slave. If you are fearful of what others might do, you are a slave. If you have to await the decisions of others, you are a slave. The freer and the more independent you are, the more you resemble a master.
Although it seems that everything is perfectly set up for the master, Hegel says that this is not the case. Certainly, the master can put the slave to work and live excellently off the slave’s hard toil. He can indulge in play all day long if he wishes. While the slave labours from dusk until dawn, the master lives a life of leisure and ease. Yet he is dissatisfied. He was hoping for acknowledgement from another self-consciousness, another person, but now he finds it hard to see the slave as anything other than an object. The asymmetry in their relationship means that there is no equality in the recognition for which they fought. The slave hates being viewed as a thing, and the master can barely tolerate being looked at by the slave.
But a new and amazing dialectic takes over. The master, living off the labour of the slaves, does no work himself. But the slave’s work, bit by bit, begins to change the environment. Fields are cultivated, buildings constructed, goods manufactured. In all of this work, something of the slave is turning into physical form. His consciousness is becoming externally objectified. He realises he has a mind of his own, that he’s capable of creation, and of ordering his environment. He becomes proud of his achievements. His self-assurance steadily builds. He no longer feels so wretched and worthless in comparison with the master.
When the slave and master survey the world, the slave sees the fruit of his own work, while the master sees the outcome of another’s work. The slave finds that his consciousness is appearing all around him in the shape of the work he has performed. He is finding a way to attain recognition and deeper understanding of his own consciousness other than solely through the approval of another self-consciousness. He grows as a person. He pours himself into his work. He learns things and becomes increasingly skilled. The master, on the other hand, is becoming lazy and inept, with none of his own work to show for his time.
As the dialectic unfolds, the slave, theoretically, should become more and more powerful and skilled until he is the equal of the master. At that point the master will no longer be able to treat him as anything other than a free man. Each side has achieved what it wants. The slave is no longer deemed less than human, and the master at last gets the recognition he craves from an equal. The master-slave dialectic has culminated in an outcome that preserves the two most valuable features of the dialectic: the master’s freedom, and the slave’s skilful work. Now the slave can enjoy the master’s freedom, and the master can acquire the skills of the slave.
At least, that’s what’s supposed to happen. But what if a group exists – the Old World Order – that wishes to ensure that the masters always remain on the top, and the slaves remain permanently less than human? Whether we are brave enough or not to acknowledge it, that’s the world we live in today. Police and soldiers are there to enforce the masters’ will.
Our way of life is inherently based on masters and slaves. We bow to assorted Gods, like slaves bowing to masters. We bow to monarchs and presidents, to the rich, to celebrities, to bosses and managers. We never tire of bowing to others and getting on our knees. We are controlled at every turn. Isn’t it time to unshackle ourselves, to stand up straight for once?
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Goethe:
Goethe’s Faust is a key Illuminati text.
“Goethe’s thinking is dominated by the idea of a society of elects or initiates perpetuating a sacred myth…The poem Geheimnisse (Secrets) haunts his spirit. The monastic order, whose mysteries are revealed in the fragments of the poem, shares in the order of the Templars, in Rosicrucianism, freemasonry and the mystic quest for the Holy Grail.” –Lepinte
“Goethe attained the supreme mysteries.” –Rudolf Steiner
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François de Nomé:
Several researchers have asked whether the mysterious French painter François de Nomé was a member of the Illuminati. The answer is yes. His paintings contain several coded references to the mysteries of the Illuminati. François de Nomé was also known as Monsù Desiderio/ Francesco Desiderio/ Didier Barra in order to confuse the enemies of the Illuminati. No one has ever come close to cracking the secrets contained in his paintings. Can you?
The paintings that deserve particular study are:
King Asa of Judah Destroying the Idols
The Tomb of Solomon
Martyrdom of a Saint
Belisarius Recognised by one of his Soldiers
Landscape with Roman Ruins
A View of Venice
A Fantastic Architectural View
Fantastic Ruins with St. Augustine and the Child
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Riesman:
David Riesman’s The Lonely Crowd was written in 1950, but it is becoming more true and relevant as the years go by. The Illuminati consider his definition of “other-directed” people to be an accurate reflection of the sort of people the OWO are hoping to create all across the world. Which would you consider yourself to be – “tradition-directed”, “inner-directed”, “other-directed” or “autonomous”? Read Riesman’s book and find out.
The Illuminati seek a world in which autonomous people flourish – those who are not puppets of ancient texts such as the Bible or the Koran, those who are not mouthpieces of their parents, or followers of whatever the current fashion is. Autonomous people think for themselves, avoid the brainwashing that others seek to impose on them, and would never tolerate the existence of the Old World Order. The OWO have created a human race of “last men”, of people in thrall to ancient traditions that were long ago shown to be false, of people who can’t make up their own minds but prefer to have them made up for them. They lack initiative and energy. They seek petty comforts and joys and are easily satisfied by junk food, junk jobs and junk entertainment.
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The Arthurian Cycle:
The Illuminati’s first explicit attempt to set down their belief system was by way of the Arthurian Cycle – the legends of King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table, Camelot and the Holy Grail. All of the main themes of the Illuminati’s religion can be found here, although they are often heavily coded and perhaps as impenetrable to lay people as Hegel’s philosophy.
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Jung:
Carl Jung, the famous psychologist, wished to join the Illuminati. He was highly regarded but not deemed suitable on the grounds that he was a maverick and could not be trusted to follow the discipline required of all members. Nevertheless, the Illuminati worked closely with Jung because of the brilliance of his mind. Many of Jung’s ideas reflect the Illuminati’s influence, particularly what he has to say regarding alchemy and Gnosticism.
(Jung’s work on the personality inspired the Myers-Briggs personality classifications. The Illuminati devote considerable time to this subject. The vast majority of members of the Illuminati belong to a small number of Myers-Briggs types. Equally, the members of the OWO have a well-defined set of Myers-Briggs personality types. Do you know what your own Myers-Briggs type is?)
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Walker:
Gnosticism – Its History And Influence by Benjamin Walker provides one of the better introductions to Gnostic thought, though it does not touch on the unique Gnosticism of the Illuminati.
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Amfortas, the Grail King = the Grand Master of the Illuminati
The Grail Knights = the Illuminati
Montsalvache, the Grail Castle = Illuminati Headquarters
The Grail Hallows = the Holy Relics of the Illuminati
The Holy Grail = the Illuminati’s Most Sacred Object
The Spear of Destiny = the Holy Weapon for Killing “God”
The Waste Land = the World
The Wound That Never Heals = the Fractured Human Psyche
The Fisher King = He Who Catches Souls
The Round Table = Meritocracy
Galahad = The Finder of the Grail, The Saint
Parsifal = The Hero; he who embarks on the Road of Trials
Klingsor = the Magician, the Enemy, Lord of the Dark Arts (the God of Abrahamism)
Kundry (First Sorceress, First She-Devil, Hell’s Rose) = Temptation
The Flower-Maidens = Seduction (leading us away from the True Path)
The Siege Perilous = the Traitor’s Seat, for those who betray the Illuminati; the seat that’s deadly to all who are Unworthy
Simon Magus = the Divine Simon who gave the Illuminati the most precious object in the world: the Holy Grail itself
The Soul Camera = the Camera that takes a picture of the human soul. What is the connection between it and the Grail? No one who fails the Soul Camera test can ever be admitted to the presence of the Grail
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Interested in the Illuminati? Study the coded Arthurian Romances. Go and see Wagner’s Parsifal. Study the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Go and see Goethe’s Faust. Study Dante’s Divine Comedy. Go and see Tarkovsky’s Stalker. Embrace the Light. Walk the Path of Truth, the hardest path of all, the path that all Questers of Enlightenment must take.
-AC
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