So Supernatural - CONSPIRACY: The Illuminati

Episode Date: April 14, 2021

The Illuminati was an 18th-century secret society that supposedly ended just a decade after it began. But conspiracy theorists argue that it never really went away — it just went deeper underground, where it could slowly achieve world domination with no one the wiser. 

We all know that money and politics love to play ball, that elected officials golf with big-time donors and keep their interests in mind when they step onto the Senate floor. These are the kinds of open secrets that make us think we understand power and all its dirty little corruptions. But what if the connection between our world's wealthiest, most powerful people runs a whole lot deeper? What if they're all part of a plan, one that's been in place since before the French Revolution? And what if the plan is run by cold-blooded celebrities who see our very humanity as a game. The worst part is, they're hiding in plain sight.

And you probably know their name, the Illuminati. This is Supernatural. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. This week, we are looking at the Illuminati, an 18th century secret society that supposedly ended just a decade after it began. But conspiracy theorists argue that it never really went away. It just went deeper underground, where it could slowly achieve world domination with no one the wiser. We'll have all of that and more coming up. Stay with us.

You've probably heard the name Illuminati tossed around. It's such a popular conspiracy theory that even non-believers have encountered it, usually as a joke. After all, it's disturbing to take the rumors seriously. Most of us don't want to believe a nefarious secret society has been dictating our lives for centuries. But for a conspiracy theory that makes some very wild claims, the Illuminati has shockingly well-documented origins. It started in the late 18th century. The Enlightenment is making its way out of France and into the rest of Europe. Some aristocrats and intellectuals are intrigued by the new philosophies. They like the idea of finding truth through logic and observation. At the same time, the Catholic Church is really powerful in Bavaria, and they are not so into the Enlightenment.

They want people to find truth through faith. So Bavarian intellectuals retreat into secret societies where they can discuss whatever ideas they want without the church looking over their shoulder. The biggest, most popular of these societies is the Freemasons, but one person doesn't think the Masons are radical enough. He's a law professor at the University of Ingolstadt named Adam Weishaupt. In 1776, Adam starts his own secret society. He calls it the Illuminati, and it's about as underground as it gets. Like, Adam is obsessed with secrecy. As he puts it, quote, the great strength of our order lies in its concealment. Let it never appear in any place in its own name, but always concealed by another name and another occupation,

end quote. In other words, members can't even say or write the word Illuminati or anything having to do with its ideals. Instead, they communicate in coded letters and they meet behind closed doors, away from the prying eyes of the Catholic Church and even the Freemasons. Here they are free to do whatever they want, which I'm not really sure what that means because of the whole secrecy thing. Most of it has been lost to time, but we do know about some of their strange elaborate rituals.

For example, there's records about this one ceremony they did with new members. I'm not sure if this is the actual initiation ceremony or not, but it's still pretty creepy. Basically, you're blindfolded and led around an echoey hall with nothing to guide you but the hands of an older, more experienced Illuminati. You probably feel nervous and lost, but that's the point. It's supposed to symbolize the invisible dangers that threaten your soul, dangers the Illuminati's knowledge can protect you from. Over time, as you climb through the ranks, there are other rituals. In one of them, you circle a coffin containing a skeleton. Then another member hits you on the forehead with a mallet, basically knocking you out.

When you wake up, you're literally inside the coffin, having taken the place of the skeleton. It's supposed to symbolize that you've passed through the gates of death and moved towards deeper knowledge. The most important Illuminati rituals, though, might be the ones focused on secrecy. Because Adam is determined to make this the top priority of his followers. For example, there's a ritual where he uses a mallet to strike the tip of a compass into a member's chest right over their heart. Obviously, the tip of the compass isn't that long, so it's not like a major wound, but the ceremony definitely has a clear message. If any Illuminati betray the secrets of their society, they will pay with blood. So all these rituals about knowledge and secrecy sound

pretty ominous and over the top, especially since what they're protecting is essentially a private club to chat about academic ideas. But at the time, a lot of the ideas the Illuminati are talking about are considered very radical and dangerous, like criticisms of the Catholic Church and of Europe's governments. So Adam allegedly proposes an alternative source of power, an international government. He's obviously dreaming big, and the Illuminati need more members if they're going to run all of Europe or the world.

So Adam gets his men to infiltrate Freemason lodges where they can recruit even more powerful and wealthy people to their cause, which they do. But in the process, some of their secrecy is lost. Rumors about their anti-church, anti-government rhetoric reach the Catholic Church and other political leaders. And in 1784, the Bavarian government fights back by literally banning secret societies and going after the Illuminati in particular. They start raiding the houses of suspected members and seizing their papers. And by 1790, it's over. Adam is living in exile. His followers have disappeared. Their papers have been published exposing their secrets to all of the world.

So for all intents and purposes, the Illuminati is no more. Or so it seems. Because just a few years later, whispers about the Illuminati are back. This time in France. At this point, it's 1797, so two decades since the Illuminati was born. The French Revolution has been going on for eight long years, and it is full of chaos and bloodshed. No one is really happy, not even the radicals who were totally fed up

with the long line of French royalty. This raises an interesting question for two men, a French priest named Augustin Berauel and British physicist John Robison. They separately began to wonder, who actually started this? Who convinced the French people that revolution and the guillotine were the answer?

Later, the priest, Augustin, is sitting in his study, reading over recently published papers of the Illuminati when suddenly all the pieces fall in place. He realizes the Illuminati would have wanted anarchy. They wanted an international governing body that would overthrow Europe's nationalistic leaders. And they were anti-church, just like a lot of the French revolutionaries. To Augustin, that all sounds appalling, but it does explain things. So he starts to scribble down his ideas. The Illuminati, like the Freemasons, were dangerous radicals. Many of them were wealthy,

powerful, influential men, and together they pulled the strings of the French Revolution. Like Augustin is convinced, the Illuminati never disbanded. They just went underground. He publishes a book about this in France in 1797. John Robison publishes a similar tract in England that same year. Together, their writings send shock and horror across Europe. People hate the idea of a secret group of radicals manipulating political events. The theory even makes its way across the Atlantic to America. New England preachers begin sowing fear about the Illuminati from their pulpits. One of these is Timothy Dwight, an influential preacher and the president of Yale University.

On a hot summer day in 1798, Dwight is preparing to give a sermon. It's actually the 4th of July, so you'd think he'd want to preach about America's hopes and dreams. But as Dwight is preparing to give a sermon. It's actually the 4th of July, so you'd think he'd want to preach about America's hopes and dreams. But as Dwight sees it, America has a serious problem. So he stands up in the pulpit and lets loose. The Illuminati are in America, and their aim is no less than, quote, the overthrow of religion, government, and human society. Murder, butchery, and war, however extended and dreadful, are declared by them to be completely justifiable if necessary for these great purposes, end quote. Dwight basically makes this connection because he sees anti-church and anti-establishment ideas circulating around America, particularly in the form of Thomas Jefferson.

For one, Jefferson's a big supporter of post-revolution France, and he has some unconventional beliefs for the time. He's notorious for dismissing key pieces of Christian doctrine, like the resurrection and biblical miracles. Obviously, none of this is actual proof of a dark, secret society at work. But Dwight gets some pretty important people on board with his anti-Jefferson, anti-Illuminati shtick. President George Washington and John Jay, the governor of New York, both write letters in support of anti-Illuminati rhetoric. But ultimately, most Americans aren't convinced.

Like, no one seems to be directly undermining their new government, and Jefferson doesn't seem hell-bent on destroying their freedom and morality. Then, when Jefferson's elected president, the rumors fade. Even Dwight stops talking about them. Still, over the next few centuries, whenever events tend toward anti-religious anarchy, chaos, or even just radical change, whispers of the Illuminati come back. Skeptics can't help but wonder if maybe the Illuminati are still operating from the shadows. A new generation, but the same organization with the same dream of taking down national governments.

The 18th century turns into the 19th, then the 20th, and then U.S. President Kennedy is assassinated in broad daylight in Dallas, Texas. His skull is shattered, along with the illusion of trustworthy power and government. And with that, people are convinced. The Illuminati are to blame. Coming up, Illuminati theories explode across America. Now back to the story. Kennedy's assassination is like the mother of all modern conspiracy theories. Not only was the president murdered,

but his suspected killer was assassinated just days afterwards, before a trial could take place. Plus, the investigation that did follow was riddled with inconsistencies. The whole thing just seemed fishy, and people started connecting it to any number of shadowy organizations. The big one was the CIA, who was busy overthrowing governments in Latin America around the same time, or the FBI who were illegally stalking Americans on national soil and harassing civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. But some Americans pointed to an even more shadowy culprit, the Illuminati. So as far as I can tell, the rationale is pretty simple.

The Illuminati's anti-nationalism led them to murder a U.S. president. But there's no evidence, and it's a way less popular theory than the CIA or FBI. Still, it eventually catches the attention of a Playboy magazine editor, Robert Anton Wilson. To be clear, Wilson doesn't really think that the Illuminati are behind JFK's assassination. As a journalist, he cares about the facts, and there just aren't any here. Not to mention, Wilson's also an enthusiast of a niche philosophy called Discordianism, which is basically this anarchist group who wants people to question whether the things the authorities tell them are actually true. They essentially want people to distinguish between fake news

and actual news. Okay, so here's where things get a little counterintuitive. You'd think that with Wilson's background in journalism and his love of facts, he wouldn't want this Illuminati world domination conspiracy to get any further. But instead, he decides to take all the rumors about the Illuminati that he can dig up, maybe even manufacture a few more, then spread the whole theory as far and wide as he can. His hope is that people will buy into the stories and start questioning their whole reality, but that eventually they'll use their powers of reason to see that it's all a lie. In the end, they'll take away an important Discordian lesson. Don't believe everything you hear. It's essentially an elaborate practical joke. And again, Wilson isn't an Illuminati believer, but he does have the resources to pull off the prank. He uses his job

at Playboy, a nationally distributed magazine, to start publishing a few Illuminati theories. And he talks to his friend, the co-founder of Discordianism, Kerry Thornley. Together, Wilson and Thornley pool their contacts at other magazines and newspapers to get even more Illuminati stories out into the ether. Over time, they're incredibly successful. And thanks to Discordianism, a new era of the Illuminati is launched. One of the theories claims that George Washington was assassinated by Adam Weishaupt, the founder of Illuminati, and that Weishaupt took Washington's place as president of the United States. Mind you, not something that there's any proof for. Another one argues that the jurors in the JFK assassination case are all Illuminati members.

You can tell because none of them have a left nipple. And there's definitely no proof of that, and that's not even part of traditional Illuminati lore. Still, the ideas are spreading like wildfire because again, ever since JFK's assassination, people are super suspicious of official narratives. Counterculture is strong and this stuff actually feels plausible to a fair number of people. Wilson is delighted. He's creating this perfect opportunity for people to be critical readers. And he and another Playboy editor, Robert Shea,

decide to take the experiment even further. They compile all the Illuminati theories they've uncovered or embellished into three books. And in 1975, the Illuminati theories they've uncovered or embellished into three books. And in 1975, the Illuminatis trilogy is finally released to the public. But if Wilson expects people to start questioning whether any of these stories are real, he is giving them too much credit. Even though Illuminatis is technically fiction, a lot of readers take the books seriously. They're convinced the Illuminati never disappeared and that they're actively messing with global politics to this day. It's obviously risky business, but the readers make

an interesting point, one that Wilson and Thornley originally speculated about themselves, which is that if the Illuminati do exist, getting their name out there surrounded by wacky stories is the perfect way to hide in plain sight. In which case, Illuminatis is actually part of a genius Illuminati plan. A plan in which pop culture is a shield for real secret power and a dangerous plot for a global takeover. In his 2000 novel Angels and Demons and its movie adaptation, author Dan Brown suggests that the Illuminati have been around since the time of Galileo, and even celebrities start referencing the secret society. In the 1995 remix of I Shot Ya by LL Cool J, rapper Prodigy says, Illuminati want my mind, soul, and my body.

At this point, it's the turn of the century and pop culture just keeps spitting out more Illuminati content as more and more believers of this conspiracy are starting to get online. They start talking to other conspiracy theorists and some of them come to a disturbing realization. The Illuminati's members aren't just morally bankrupt, scheming elites. They aren't human at all. Coming up, the Illuminati's identity becomes more cold-blooded than ever.

Now back to the story. The past couple of decades is where the theories around the Illuminati get really complicated because they're interacting with a whole bunch of other adjacent theories. One of them is the so-called New World Order theory, which claims a secretive group is trying to take over the world, possibly led by the Illuminati. But there are even wilder theories, like the idea that the Illuminati members are actually extraterrestrials. Obviously, that's a huge leap,

but people came to this conclusion through a couple different routes. One of them ties back to the men in black theory I covered in another episode. Men in black are basically mysterious suits who intimidate and threaten people who have seen aliens, basically trying to hide their encounters, and they usually seem to work for the U.S. government or military. According to some, the whole reason for this is that the men in black are trying to protect the Illuminati aliens who have taken over the U.S. government. Now, the proof for that is non-existent, but that's just one route to the Illuminati alien theory. The biggest way people

arrive there all hinges on one simple fact, that there are some very powerful people, especially celebrities, who seem too successful and too perfect to actually be real. So the only way to explain this is that they aren't actually human, but aliens, or as some people call them, lizard people. Take Beyonce, for example. She's the celebrity most often associated with the Illuminati. Her powerful voice can fill a stadium. She dances with incredible, almost robotic precision. She looks, as her song would put it, flawless. Then, as a sweating fan screams that they love her, she smiles, glances back at her dancers, and raises her hand in a specific gesture. Picture her thumb and pointer finger pinched together and the other three fingers spread out.

To most of us, it just means okay or perfect. But allegedly, it has another meaning. It's somehow associated with the devil, and it's called the 666 Illuminati hand sign. Beyonce's husband Jay-Z uses a different hand symbol, a triangle made with the thumb and forefinger of both hands. Supposedly, this represents the all-seeing eye inside a pyramid, like what's on the U.S. dollar bill. Historically, this is a symbol of the Freemasons, but it's become one of the longest-standing symbols that is also associated with the Illuminati. Tons of other Hollywood and music industry stars are suspected of being members of the society. The singer Rihanna has actually played into the accusations, kind of like Beyonce with her hand symbol. Throughout her 2011 music video for S&M, Rihanna flashes the

headline, Princess of the Illuminati. For non-believers, it seemed like a cheeky, playful response. But for Illuminati believers, it felt like a slap in the face, like she was lording her Illuminati world domination status over everyone else. People have even taken their fear of her to the next level. In February 2018, Rihanna was planning to visit Dakar for a conference hosted by an organization called the Global Partnership for Education. Other attendees were political heavyweights, like the French and Senegalese presidents. But as she prepared for the trip, local religious groups panicked. They were convinced that Rihanna was coming to advance Satanism and Illuminati agendas. This was a big group too, a coalition of 30 religious organizations. Their banner was literally, quote,

no to Freemasonry and homosexuality, end quote. So clearly they had a bigoted agenda, and they hoped that their size would give them enough clout to keep Rihanna from crossing into the country. It didn't. In the end, Rihanna came and went, and as far as I know, the Illuminati didn't dig its claws into West Africa.

But why even be so terrified in the first place? Because again, as far as we have actual records to show what happened to the Illuminati, they died out in the 1700s once their founder went to jail. And everything that's come to light since then can be tracked back to Robert Anton Wilson and his Discordian friends. If anything, that seems like the real conspiracy. And the hand symbols celebrities make? Some of them have plausible non-Illuminati explanations. Jay-Z himself says that his triangle represents a diamond,

symbolizing his former record label, Rockefeller. And as far as I know, Beyoncé hasn't explained hers, but it's clear she's annoyed. Beyoncé's even fought back against the accusations through her lyrics. In the first line of her song Formation, she says her haters are, quote, corny with that Illuminati mess. Honestly, Illuminati theorists who target celebrities like Beyonce, Rihanna, and Jay-Z probably are haters. Their inability to believe that a Black woman could be as perfect as Beyonce without being an alien or at least selling her soul to a secret society just sounds like the result of racism.

And most of the celebrities who have been accused of being Illuminati members just so happen to be Black. So are the Illuminati real? Probably not. But could a huge, wealthy society be running the world's most important organizations? Maybe. It comes down to the brass tacks, which is that powerful, wealthy people have always worked behind closed doors and had enormous influence over the rest of us. So while there's no evidence that any of them are Illuminati, it's possible there's still some sort of orchestrated plan. But to me, the whole conspiracy doesn't tell us so much

about what could be going on as it tells us about what people believe and what they're afraid of. In this case, it sounds like a great big fear of the unknown. Thanks for listening. I'll be back next week with another episode. To hear more stories hosted by me, check out Crime Junkie and all AudioChuck originals.