10. The Illuminati

Unknown Superiors

Concerned with the political activism of the Frankist sect, Frederick William III of Prussia instructed his chargé d’affaires in Frankfurt, Councillor Formey, to conduct an investigation in Offenbach who reported that “The Frankist sect is rumored to be in close contacts with the Freemasons, Illuminati, Rosicrucians, and Jacobins.”[1] In his famous article, “Redemption Through Sin,” Gershom Scholem explained, “Toward the end of Frank’s life the hopes he had entertained of abolishing all laws and conventions took on a very real historical significance.”[2] As Frank’s own nephew, Moses Dobruschka, took part in the upheavals, as Scholem further noted, “as a result of the French Revolution the Sabbatian and Frankist subversion of the old morality and religion was suddenly placed in a new and relevant context, and perhaps not only in the abstract…”[3] Government officials who intercepted the communications among the Frankists led them to suspect that the many references to a man named “Jacob” were dealing with the Jacobins, who were intent on radicalizing the Jews of the ghetto.[4]

The Illuminati gave their name to the Age of Enlightenment, whose ideas played a major role in inspiring the French Revolution, and emphasized the rights of common men as opposed to the exclusive rights of the elites. The devil dupes humanity by disguising himself as an angel of enlightenment. Many European thinkers claimed to have been influenced by such British philosophers John Locke, Thomas Paine and Adam Smith, who served as a source of inspiration to many generations of European liberals.[5] According to Yirmiyahu Yovel, author of The Other Within: The Marranos: Split Identity and Emerging Modernity, the Marrano experience contributed to the use of “dual language,” which deliberately employed equivocation, where terms and ideas had to be presented to appear to discuss one matter to outsiders, without disclosing their true meaning to for their intended audience, “set a linguistic pattern that played an indispensable role in the process of European modernization.” Thus, Jewish esoteric ideas could be disguised as “Christian” or even secular philosophy. Therefore, according to Yovel, explaining the sources of Enlightenment philosophy:

In perfecting the uses and modes of equivocation, the Marranos set a linguistic pattern that played an indispensable role in the process of European modernization… Hence we can say that some measure of marranesque element was indispensable in that evolution; the creators of modernity often had to act like quasi-Marranos. The Enlightenment in particular manifested this need—Hobbes and Spinoza, Hume and Shaftesbury, Diderot and Mandeville, Locke and Montaigne, the Deists, the materialists, possibly Boyle, even Kant (on religion) and Descartes (on his intended project), and a multitude of lesser figures and mediators found it necessary to revert to various techniques of masked writing.[6]

Leading Jewish statesmen and intellectuals, such as Heinrich Heine, Johann Jacoby, Gabriel Riesser, and Lionel de Rothschild, supported the general cause of freedom and liberty sweeping across Europe, as it was also a means to achieve emancipation for the Jews. John Locke, a member of Benjamin Furly’s society of Rosicrucians known as the Lantern, and regarded as the “father of liberalism,” is regarded as one of the prophets of the American and French revolutions.[7] The French Revolution hailed ideals borrowed from Freemasonry, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” essential prerequisites for Jewish emancipation. Inspired by the ideals of “liberty,” the first laws to emancipate Jews in France were enacted during the French Revolution, establishing them as citizens equal to other Frenchmen. The two authors at the time shared a conclusion that the Illuminati, founded in 1776 by Adam Weishaupt (1717 – 1753), were the source of the French Revolution. In 1797, the Abbé Augustin de Barruel (1741 – 1820), an ex-Jesuit who came to Britain following the September Massacre, published the first volumes of his four-volume account of the French Revolution, Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism. That same year, John Robison (1739 – 1805), professor of natural philosophy at Edinburgh, published his own history of the Revolution, Proofs of a Conspiracy against all the religions and governments of Europe. Like Robison, Barruel claimed that the French Revolution was the result of a deliberate conspiracy subvert the power of the Catholic Church and the aristocracy, hatched by a coalition of philosophes, Freemasons and the Order of the Illuminati.

In 1771, according to Barruel and Lecouteulx de Canteleu, a certain Jutland merchant named Kölmer, who had spent many years in Egypt, returned to Europe in search of converts to a secret doctrine founded on Manicheism that he had learned in the East. Lecouteulx de Canteleu suggests that Kölmer was Altotas, described by Figuier as “this universal genius, almost divine, of whom Cagliostro has spoken to us with so much respect and admiration.” On his way to France, Kölmer stopped at Malta, where he met the famous charlatan Count Cagliostro (1743 – 1795)—the notorious mystic widely regarded as a charlatan, and another important disciple of Jacob Falk—but he was driven away from the island by the Knights of Malta after he nearly brought about an insurrection amongst the people. Kölmer then travelled to Avignon and Lyons, where he made a few disciples amongst the Illuminés. In the same year, Kölmer went on to Germany, where he encountered Adam Weishaupt and initiated him into all the mysteries of his secret doctrine.[8] According to Cagliostro’s own admission, his mission “was to work so as to turn Freemasonry in the direction of Weishaupt’s projects,” and that the funds which he drew on were those of the Illuminati.[9]

As reported by Terry Melanson, in Perfectibilists, his history of the order, the Rothschild family had at least three important connections to the Illuminati. They were Karl Theodor Anton Maria von Dalberg (1744 – 1817), Prince Charles of Hesse-Kassel (1744 – 1836), and the Thurn und Taxis family.[10] According to Niall Ferguson, Mayer Amschel Rothschild was acting as Dalberg’s “court banker.”[11] Dalberg was also a notable patron of letters, and was the friend of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 – 1832) and Friedrich Schiller (1759 – 1805).[12] In 1780, Amschel Rothschild became one of the preferred bankers of Karl Anselm of Thurn and Taxis (1733 – 1805), Head of the Princely House of Thurn and Taxis, Postmaster General of the Imperial Reichspost. As explained by Amos Elon in Founder: A Portrait of the First Rothschild and His Time:

The Thurn and Taxis postal service covered most of central Europe and its efficacy was proverbial… Rothschild’s ties with the administration of the Thurn and Taxis postal service were profitable to him in more than one way. He was a firm believer in the importance of good information. The postal service was an important source of commercial and political news. The Prince was widely thought to be paying for his monopoly as imperial postmaster by supplying the Emperor with political intelligence gained from mail that passed through his hands. He was not averse to using this intelligence himself—perhaps in conjunction with Rothschild—to make a commercial profit.[13]

It is reputed that the ground plan for the French Revolution was discussed at the Grand Masonic Convention in 1782 at Wilhelmsbad, at which Comte de Mirabeau (1749 – 1791), leader of the Jacobins, attended as an observer.[14] The congress was convoked by Wilhelm I of Hesse-Kassel (1743 – 1821), while his brother, Illuminatus Prince Charles of Hesse-Kassel (1744 – 1836) was main organizer.[15] Both Prince Charles and his brother Wilhelm were members of a family descended the “Alchemical Wedding” and from Maurice of Hesse-Kassel, the chief supporter of the Rosicrucian cause, and was linked closely to the Rothschilds. Mayer Amschel Rothschild, the founder of the dynasty, built his fortune as banker to Prince Charles’ brother, William I.

Of thirteen children and eldest daughter of Frederick V and Elisabeth Stuart was Elisabeth, Princess of Bohemia, who corresponded with Descartes, had no children. Their brother Rupert (1619 – 1682), gained fame for his chemical experiments as well as for his military and entrepreneurial exploits, including the founding of the Hudson’s Bay Company in Canada, and also played a role in the early African slave trade. Louise Hollandine (1622 – 1709), was an accomplished painter and student of Gerritt van Honthorst. Sophia, who became the Electress of Hanover, was renowned for her intellectual patronage, particularly of Leibniz and John Toland.[16] She was well-read in the works of Descartes and Spinoza.

The eldest son, Charles I Louis, Elector Palatine (1617 – 1680), and his younger brother Rupert spent much of the 1630s at the court of his maternal uncle, Charles I of England, hoping to enlist British support for his cause. Charles Louis was still in England in 1648 when the Peace of Westphalia restored the Lower Palatinate to him, and remained in England long enough to see the execution Charles I by the forces of Oliver Cromwell. He then returned to the devastated Palatinate in 1649. In 1650, he married Landgravine Charlotte of Hesse-Kassel, the granddaughter Maurice of Hesse-Kassel. Over the more than thirty years of his reign there, he strove with some success to rebuild his shattered territory. In foreign affairs, he pursued a pro-French course, and in 1671 married his daughter Elizabeth Charlotte to Philippe I, Duke of Orleans (1617 – 1680).

Philippe I was the great-great-grandfather of Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orleans (1747 – 1793), another friend of Jacob Falk, as well as an Illuminati member and Grand Master of the Grand Orient of France.[17] Philippe I was the younger son of Louis XIII of France, the son of Henry IV and Marie de Medici. Philippe I’s brother was Louis XIV of France, the “Sun King,” whose chief advisors included cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin. Mazarin’s sister, Anne Marie Martinozzi, was married to Armand, Prince of Conti, the brother of Louis, Prince of Condé, who was involved in a conspiracy with Menasseh ben Israel, Isaac La Peyrère and Queen Christina to create a world government of the Messiah based in Jerusalem. As Joscelyn Godwin explained in The Theosophical Enlightenment, “The whole Orleans family, ever since [Philippe I, Duke of Orléans], was notoriously involved in the black arts.”[18] Philippe I was close to Louis XIV’s mistress, Madame de Montespan, who was involved in the L’affaire des poisons (“Affair of the Poisons”), where Catherine Monvoisin, known as La Voisin, and the priest Étienne Guibourg performed Black Masses for human sacrifice for her.[19]

Through the influence of Swedenborg and his pupil Count Cagliostro, Falk had become revered as the Unknown Superior of revolutionary Freemasonry, and the convention was determined to learn more about him.[20] Some Masons believed that Falk was the “Old Man of the Mountain,” the traditional name of the leader of the Ismaili Assassins.[21] Falk was one of the “Unknown Superiors” of the Rite of Strict Observance, founded in the 1760s by Karl Gotthelf, Baron Hund (1722 – 1776).[22] Cagliostro was also a disciple of the most notorious figure of the era, the enigmatic Comte de St. Germain (c. 1691 or 1712 – 1784).[23] Prince Charles was preoccupied with a search for the “hidden superiors” and the “true secret,” and was also an ardent devotee of alchemy, possessing his own laboratory, and was a student of Comte St. Germain, whom he had hosted at his home.[24]

St. Germain claimed to be the son of Francis II Rakoczi (1676 – 1735), Prince of Transylvania, and knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece, and Charlotte Amalie of Hesse-Wanfried, the great-granddaughter of Maurice of Hesse-Kassel.[25] Francis II’s grandfather was George II Rakoczi (1621 – 1660) and Sophia Bathory, two families who employed the emblem of the Order of the Dragon. In 1639, Samuel Hartlib published a pamphlet dedicated to George II.[26] St. German was apparently educated by Gian Gastone de Medici (1671 – 1737), Grand Duke of Tuscany, and last of the Medicis.[27] Gian’s mother, Marguerite Louise d’Orléans, was the daughter of Gaston, Duke of Orléans, the son of Henry IV of France Marie de Medici, making her a first cousin of Louis XIV, the “Sun King,” who married Madame de Montespan, and whose brother was Philippe I, Duke of Orleans. Gian married Anna Maria Franziska of Saxe-Lauenburg, the granddaughter of Christian Augustus, Count Palatine of Sulzbach, at whose court were found the Kabbalists Mercurius van Helmont and Knorr von Rosenroth.[28]

Jacobites

After the death Charles II of England in 1685, his Catholic brother James and II of England (1633 – 1701) ascended to the throne. When James II issued a Declaration for Liberty of Conscience, allowing various opposing creeds to co-exist, the Parliament not only condemned the king but had him deposed for daring to acknowledge the alternative faiths. Seven prominent Englishmen wrote to William III, Prince of Orange (1650 – 1702), inviting him to invade England and accept the throne. William III’s father was William II, Prince of Orange (1626 – 1650) was the son Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, and grandson William the Silent. William III’s mother was Mary, Princess Royal, sister of Charles II and James II.

As recorded by William Thomas Walsh, William III joined the Freemasons and with their connivance, invaded England on November 5, 1688, in an action that ultimately deposed James II and won him the crowns of England, Scotland and Ireland, what became known as the “Glorious Revolution.” The expenses for the expedition, reported Walsh, were paid for by a Jewish banker of Amsterdam, Isaac Suaso, who in return was made Baron de Gras, while other Jews, particularly Sir Solomon de Medina and Alfonso Rodrigues, who provided the finances for the final conquest of Ireland.[29] The king was forced to leave the throne, bringing to an end the Stuart succession to the throne of England. The throne was then offered jointly to William III and his wife Mary, sister of Charles II and James II, known as the reign of “William and Mary.”

James II married the niece of Cardinal Mazarin, Mary of Modena, of the House of Este who had long-standing associations with the houses of the de Medici, Savoy, Gonzaga and Habsburgs. Their son, James Francis Edward Stuart (1688 – 1766), nicknamed The Old Pretender, married Maria Clementina Sobieska, whose family was related to Jacob Frank.[30] Princess Maria Klementyna Sobieska, granddaughter of the Polish King and Lithuanian Grand-Duke, John III Sobieski. Their sons included Charles Edward Stuart (1720 – 1788), known as Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Young Pretender, and his brother Henry Benedict Stuart, the Cardinal York (1725 – 1807), the fourth and final Jacobite heir to claim the thrones of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland publicly, who was a great supporter of the Frankists.[31] In crypto-Jewish circles, it was thought that Henry Benedict had an affair with a Jewish woman named Reyna Barzillai of Venice.[32] Though William and Mary were of Stuart lineage, the Scots were disappointed at the loss of a Stuart monarch, and in 1689, the year of James II’s deposition, Bonnie Dundee led a force of Highlanders against government troops at Killiecrankie. The rebellion was called a Jacobite Rising, because of their support of James II, which is derived from the Latin Jacomus, or Jacob in Hebrew.

Parliament passed the Bill of Rights barred Roman Catholics from the throne of England, and gave the succession to Mary’s sister, Anne who inherited the throne when William III died in March 1702. However, Parliament had passed the Act of Settlement in 1701, to settle the succession to the English and Irish crowns on Protestants only, whereupon Sophia of Hanover—the daughter of Elizabeth Stuart and Frederick V of the Palatinate, of the Alchemical Wedding—as the next Protestant in line, was designated the next heir to the British throne. When Sophia died a few weeks before Anne, the Act of Settlement was responsible for the accession of Sophia’s son George I of Great Britain (1660 – 1727) in 1714, from whom all later British kings and queens would descend.

The Masonic Grand Lodge of England was founded shortly after George I ascended to the throne and the end of the first Jacobite rising of 1715. The federalization of four London lodges in the Grand Lodge of London and Westminster was founded in London on St. John the Baptist’s day, 24 June 1717, coinciding with the summer solstice. One of the first Grand Masters was followed Jean Theophilus Desaguiliers (1683 – 1744), scientist and, later, a cleric ordained into the Church of England. Desaguiliers was a British natural philosopher, clergyman, engineer who was elected to the Royal Society in 1714 as experimental assistant to Newton. In 1721, a Scottish Presbyterian pastor, Reverend James Anderson (c. 1679/1680 – 1739), was instructed by Grand Master Desaguiliers to revise and condense the Old Masonic Manuscripts observed by the English Lodges. This would lead to the 1721 Anderson’s Constitution. Anderson’s Constitution was reprinted in Philadelphia in 1734 by Benjamin Franklin (1706 – 1790), who was that year elected Grand Master of Masons in Pennsylvania.

The foundation of Grand Lodge in London had been followed by the inauguration of Masonic Lodges on the Continent, receiving their warrant from the Grand Lodge of England. However, the men who founded the Grand Lodge of Paris, whose leader was Charles Radclyffe (1693 – 1746), were Jacobites, a cousin of Bonnie Prince Charlie. While English Freemasonry offered three degrees of initiation that became universal throughout the order about 1730, Radclyffe, who was eventually acknowledged grand master of all French lodges, became responsible for promulgating Écossais Freemasonry, which introduced higher degrees.

Amongst the Jacobites supporting Radclyffe was a member of the Royal Society, Andrew Michael Ramsay (1686 – 1743), known as Chevalier Ramsay, then living as an expatriate in Paris. In 1710, Ramsay was converted to the Roman Catholic faith by the Jesuit-educated Francois Fénelon (1651 – 1715), Archbishop of Cambrai. As a young man, Ramsay joined a quasi-Rosicrucian society called the Philadelphians, and studied with a close friend of Isaac Newton. He later associated with other friends of Newton, including John Desaguiliers. He was also a particularly close friend of David Hume. When he lived in Paris, he frequented the Parisian literary Club de l’Entresol in the company of Montesquieu. In 1715, during his stay in France, Ramsay also had formed a friendship with the Regent of France, Philippe II, Duke of Orleans (1674 – 1723), the son of Philippe I, Duke of Orléans and Elizabeth Charlotte, Madame Palatine. Philippe II married Françoise Marie de Bourbon, Mademoiselle de Blois, a legitimized daughter of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan. Philippe II was Grand Master of the Ordre de Saint-Lazare, instituted during the Crusades as a body of Hospitallers, and inducted Ramsay into order, after which he known as “Chevalier.”[33]

Illuminés of Avignon

After the resignation of Radclyffe as Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Paris in 1738, Écossais Freemasonry “boldly came forward and claimed to be not merely a part of Masonry but the real Masonry, possessed of superior knowledge and entitled to greater privileges and the right to rule over the ordinary, i.e. Craft Masonry.”[34] It was after 1738, when Radclyffe was succeeded by Louis de Pardaillan de Gondrin, Duc d’Antin (1707 – 1743), great-grandson of Madame de Montespan, that the additional degrees were first heard of. The Rose-Croix degree first adopted by the Freemasons of France in about 1741, was so Catholic in character that is aroused suspicions that it was devised by the Jesuits.[35] However, on the death of the Duc d’Antin in 1743, he was replaced by Count of Clermont (1709 – 1771), becoming the fifth Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of France.[36]

Clermont was also descended from Madame de Montespan, as his mother was the Duc d’Antin aunt. Clermont’s father was Louis III, Prince of Condé, the grandson of Louis, Grand Condé, the co-conspirator with Menasseh ben Israel, Isaac La Peyrère and Queen Christina.[37] According to some sources, the Comte of Clermont retained the position of Grand Master until his death in 1771, and was succeeded by his cousin, Louis Philippe d’Orléans.[38]

The Royal Order of Heredom maintained links with the Count of Clermont, and his elite Rose-Croix rite, the Rite of Perfection.[39] The paternity into highly Christianized degrees within a special order of Freemasonry, the Royal Order of Heredom of Kilwinning, which claimed Bonnie Prince Charlie as its Grand Master, is generally attributed to Ramsay.[40] The degree the Scottish Rite known in modern Masonry as “Prince of the Rose-Croix of Heredom or Knight of the Pelican and Eagle” became the eighteenth and the most important degree in what was later called the Scottish Rite. According to the tradition of the Royal Order of Scotland this degree had been contained in it since the fourteenth century, and had been instituted by Robert Bruce in collaboration with the Templars after the battle of Bannockburn.[41] In answer to a question about the ritual term “Heredom,” Charles R. Rainsford (1728 – 1809), a British MP, Swedenborgian Freemason and a close friend of Falk, replied that it did not refer to an actual mountain in Scotland but rather to the Jewish symbol for Mons Domini or Malchuth, the tenth Sephira of the Kabbalah:

The word “Heridon” [sic] is famous in several degrees of masonry, that is to say, in some invented degrees (grades forges), or in degrees of masonry socalled. Apparently, the enlightened brethren who have judged it proper to make the law, that Jews should be admitted to the Society have received the word with the secrets (mysteres) which have been entrusted to them.[42]

In 1741, Swedenborg and his Masonic colleagues in London assimilated the sexual practices of the Sabbateans within the Order of Heredom.[43] As Schuchard explained, the Kabbalistic belief that proper performance of Kabbalistic sex rites rebuilds the Temple and manifests the Shekhinah between the conjoined cherubim was particularly attractive to the initiates of the Order. One of the leaders of this rite, the French artist and engraver Lambert de Lintot, produced a series of hieroglyphic designs, which included phallic and vaginal symbolism, representing the regeneration the psyche and the rebuilding the Temple of the New Jerusalem.[44] In the Rite of Seven Degrees, to which belonged Falk and Swedenborg, de Lintot cited the Duke of Orleans as his Deputy Grand Master.[45]

From the activities recorded by Falk’s servant Hirsch Kalisch in his diary of 1747-51, evidence emerges in the journals, correspondence, and diplomatic reports of visitors to London which suggests, explains Schuchard, “that Falk became involved in a clandestine Masonic system that utilized Kabbalah and alchemy to support efforts to restore James Stuart, the ‘Old Pretender,’ to the British throne.”[46] From the first published report of his Kabbalistic skills, the Count of Rantzow’s Memoires (1741), reported that Falk also performed a magical ceremony with a black goat before the Duke of Richelieu (1696 – 1788), French ambassador in Vienna, and the Count of Westerloh, during which Westerloh’s valet had his head turned backward and died of a broken neck.[47] Armand de Vignerot du Plessis, Duke of Richelieu, was the Marshal of France and the lover of Marie Louise Élisabeth d’Orléans, Duchess of Berry, the eldest of the surviving children of Philippe II, Duke of Orléans.

The first high-degree “Scottish” lodge was started in 1756 with Carl Friedrich Eckleff (1723 – 1786), whose father had worked closely with Swedenborg, as Master. In 1759, Eckleff started the Chapitre Illuminé “L’Innocente,” which utilized the seven-degree system of the Royal Order of Heredom and the Clermont Rite.[48] Eckleff established his lodges of higher and lower degrees based on certain files received from abroad, dating from around 1750, referred to as Grand Chapitre de la Confraternité I'Illuminée, a chapter in Geneva that had received its knowledge from another in Avignon, where there was a high-level system of Illuminés.[49]

The Martinists, or French Illuminés, were a movement evidently more powerful and influential than the more infamous Illuminati. Martinism was founded by Martinez Pasqually (1727? – 1774) a Rose-Croix Mason who also showed an interest in Swedenborg, and founded the Ordre des Chevalier Maçons Elus-Coën de L’Univers (Order of the Knight Masons, Elected Priests of the Universe) in 1754. Pasqually knew Kabbalah, and legend has it that he travelled to China to learn secret traditions.[50] Pasqually had frequently been described as a Jew. A Martinist named Baron de Gleichen (1733 – 1807) wrote that, “Pasqualis was originally Spanish, perhaps of the Jewish race, since his disciples inherited from him a large number of Jewish manuscripts.”[51] Gershom Scholem has called attention to the contacts between the Ordre de Elus-Coën and the Sabbateans.[52] Pasqually’s system was derived from the philosophy of Swedenborg and his belief in the existence of supernatural beings. According to J. M. Roberts, the Elus-Coën philosophy “was expressed in a series of rituals whose purpose was to make it possible for spiritual beings to take physical shape and convey messages from the other world.”[53]

Grand Orient

The first cover the Illuminati was the Amis Réunis and the Philadelphes, a secret core created within the Philalethes. In 1771 an amalgamation of all the Masonic groups was effected at the new lodge of the Amis Reunis. The society was founded by Savalette de Langes (1745 – 1797), State Treasurer of France under Louis XVI, was Grand Officer of the Grand Orient, under Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orleans, as its Grand Master. Before supporting the ideas of the French Revolution, de Langes was captain of the national guards of the battalion of Saint-Roch and aide-de-camp of the marquis de La Fayette (1757 – 1834). Like Savalette, many members of the Amis Réunis came from France’s financial establishment, as well as high-ranking officials, in addition to bankers, businessmen, landowners and the highest level of finance officials from the military.

A further development of the Amis Reunis was the Rite of the Philalethes, compounded by Savalette de Langes in 1773 out of Swedenborgian, Martinist, and Rosicrucian mysteries, and which investigated the theosophical claims of Falk, Swedenborg, and other gurus of illuminism.[54] The members of this rite—which some historians qualify as an “occult academy”—were dedicated to uncovering the “rapport of masonry with Theosophy, Alchemy, the Cabala, Divine Magic, Emblems, Hieroglyphs, the Religious Ceremonies and Rites of different Institutions, or Associations, masonic or otherwise.”[55] They were particularly interested in the Bohemian Brethren of Comenius, which evolved into the Moravian Church of Zinzendorf.[56] Their ultimate aim was a “total synthesis of all learning,” towards the creation of a “world religion that all the devout of whatever persuasion can embrace.”[57] A modified form of the Rite of the Philalethes was instituted at Narbonne in 1780 under the name of Free and Accepted Masons du Rit Primitif, by the Marquis de Chefdebien d’Armisson, a member of the Strict Observance as well as the Amis Réunis.

The Philalethes attracted the higher initiates of the Amis Reunis, Court de Gebelin, the Prince Charles of Hesse-Kassel, Condorcet, the Vicomte de Tavannes, Jean-Baptiste Willermoz (1730 – 1824), and others. At the time of the congress, both French and German Freemasons were very unclear with regard to the whole subject, purpose and conflicting accounts of the origins of Masonry. As Savalette de Langes, royal treasurer in Paris, reported in his correspondence with the Marquis de Chefdebien:

Dr. Falc, in England. This Dr. Falc is known to many Germans. From every point of view he is a most extraordinary man. Some believe him to be Chief of All the Jews, and attribute all that is marvelous and strange in his conduct and in his life to schemes which are entirely political… There has been a curious story about him in connection with Prince de Guemene and the Chev. de Luxembourg relating to Louis XV. whose death he had foretold. He is practically inaccessible. In all the higher Sects of Adepts in the Occult Science, he passes as a man of higher attainments…[58]

By the third quarter of the eighteenth century, there were a number of different Masonic authorities operating in Germany. In Berlin there was the lodge Zu den drei Weltkugeln (“Three Globes”), which adopted the Strict Observance. Another Berlin grand lodge, the Grosse Landesloge, founded in 1770, worked the multi-degree Swedish Rite, whose Grand Masters were nephews of Frederick the Great, the brothers Charles XIII of Sweden (1748 – 1818) and Gustav III of Sweden (1746 – 1792), Grand Masters of Swedish Freemasonry and patrons of Swedenborg. The Swedish lodges claimed to possess precious documents that contained the Masonic secrets embedded in “the hieroglyphic language of the old Jewish wisdom books,” a reference to De Lintot’s engravings and Falk’s revelations.[59]

Another group of lodges practicing French high-degree Masonry, the best known of which was the Grand Lodge of Prussia called the Royal York for Friendship.[60] The Lodge L’Amitié (“Friendship Lodge”), founded in 1752 by the French Freemasons in Berlin, became in 1761, by merger with the Lodge Three Globes, the Lodge Friendship of Three Doves, then in 1765, the Royal York of Friendship Lodge, after having initiated Prince Edward, Duke of York and Albany (1739 –1767), brother of King George III, and the second son of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, whose nephew was Illuminatus Ernst II, Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Alternburg (1745 – 1804), a friend of Adam Weishaupt, who was the great-grandfather of Prince Albert the husband of Queen Victoria. Prince Edward’s godparents were Frederick William I of Prussia. The lodge then separated from the Three Globes after it joined the Strict Observance in 1767, in order to become in turn a Mother Lodge, and was affiliated with the Grand Lodge of England.[61] When London recognized the Grand National Lodge of the Freemasons of Germany in 1773, it was joined by the Royal York following year, but fundamental differences in views on the rituals and degrees would lead to a break in 1778.

Weishaupt had decided to infiltrate the Freemasons to acquire material to expand his own ritual and establish a power base towards his long-term plan for political change in Europe. In early in February 1777, he was admitted to the Rite of Strict Observance. Weishaupt was persuaded by one of his early recruits, his former pupil Xavier von Zwack, that his own order should enter into friendly relations with Freemasonry, and obtain the dispensation to set up their own lodge. A warrant was obtained from the Grand Lodge of Prussia called the Royal York for Friendship, and the new lodge was called Theodore of the Good Counsel, which was quickly filled with Illuminati. By establishing Masonic relations with the Union lodge in Frankfurt, which was affiliated to the Premier Grand Lodge of England, lodge Theodore became independently recognized, and able to declare its independence. The lodge Theodore was named with the intention of flattering Charles Theodore, Elector of Bavaria (1724 – 1799).[62]

Although receiving a patent from the York Lodge, lodge Theodore formed a particular system of its own, by instructions from the Martinist Loge des Chevaliers Bienfaisants at Lyons, with which it was in correspondence.[63] Martinism was later propagated in different forms by Pasqually’ two students, Louis Claude de Saint-Martin (1743 – 1803) and Jean-Baptiste Willermoz (1730 – 1824), who was a member of the Rite of the Philalethes. Saint-Martin was interested in Swedenborg and was the first to translate the writings of Jakob Boehme from German into French. In the 1770s, Willermoz came into contact with Baron Hund, founder of the Strict Observance, which he joined in 1773. Willermoz was the formulator of the “Inner Order” of the Rectified Scottish Rite, or Chevaliers Bienfaisants de la Cité-Sainte (CBCS), founded in 1778 as a variant of the Rite of Strict Observance, including some items coming from the Elus-Coën of his teacher Pasqually. The order oversaw numerous lodges, including the Strict Observance and the Lodge Theodore of Good Counsel in Munich.[64]

Congress of Wilhelmsbad

The main purpose of the Congress of Wilhelmsbad was to decide the fate of the Strict Observance, which claimed to be a revival of the Templar Order. The Grand Master of the order was Ferdinand Duke of Brunswick (1721 – 1792), whose great-great-grandfather as Augustus the Younger, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel.[65] The Order of the Strict Observance was in reality a purely German association composed of men drawn entirely from the intellectual and aristocratic classes, and, in imitation of the chivalric orders of the past, known to each other under knightly titles. Thus, Prince Charles became Eques a Leone Resurgente, Illuminati member Ferdinand Duke of Brunswick was Eques a Victoria, the Prussian minister Johann Rudolph von Bischoffswerder (1741 – 1803) Eques a Grypho, Baron de Wächter Eques a Ceraso, Joachim Christoph Bode (1731 – 1793), Councillor of Legation in Saxe-Gotha, Eques a Lilio Convallium, Christian Graf von Haugwitz (1752 – 1832), Cabinet Minister of Frederick the Great Eques a Monte Sancto.

The Convent of Wilhelmsbad actually achieved was the demise of the Strict Observance. The lack of a coherent alternative to the two strains of mysticism allowed the Illuminati to present themselves as a credible option. It was as a result of their influence exercised at the Masonic congress at Wilhelmsbad of 1782 that the Illuminati came to wield enormous influence in the world of European secret societies. Many influential intellectuals, clergymen and politicians counted themselves as members of the Illuminati, including Ferdinand Duke of Brunswick, and the diplomat Xavier von Zwack, who became the order’s second-in-command. The Illuminati attracted literary men such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Johann Gottfried Herder, the leading exponents of the Romantic movement and Weimar Classicism.

At Wilhelmsbad in 1782, Bode abandoned the Christian mysticism of Willermoz in favor of a radical interpretation of Enlightenment. He entered negotiations with Adolph Freiherr Knigge (1752 – 1796), a member of the Illuminati, and finally joined the order in 1783, acquiring the rank of Major Illuminatus. Prince Charles of Hesse-Kassel joined the following month.[66] After the Illuminati was first outlawed in Bavaria in 1784, through edict by Charles Theodore, with the encouragement of the Catholic Church, Bode became the de facto chief executive officer after Knigge’s resignation and Weishaupt’s escape.[67]

At Barruel affirms in his writings that the Philalethes was constituted to fight the monarchy.[68] It was a secret congress of the Philalethes convened in 1785, attended by Bode, Baron de Busche, Cagliostro, Savalette de Langes and others, where the death of Louis XVI was decreed.[69] The congress brought together 120 deputies, most of whom were notorious occultists.[70] Among the topics discussed were the linkage between Jacob Falk and Jacob Frank.[71] Ferdinand Duke of Brunswick led the German delegation and the English one was led by a close friend of Falk, General Charles R. Rainsford (1728 – 1809), a British MP, Swedenborgian Freemason and a member of the Royal Society.[72] As a new cover for the order, Bode declared: “We agreed… for France, we would adopt the name Philadelphes instead of Illuminati.”[73] Chaillon de Jonville, deputy Grand Master of the Grand Lodge, the institution which preceded the Grand Orient, in a text which appeared in 1789, denounced the Philadelphes as responsible for the revolutionary disturbances.[74]

As explained by Terry Melanson, “Contrary to popular belief, most Masonic Lodges outside of Bavaria were not completely purged of their Illuminism; and the Order—at the very least, its members—merely went underground, only to resurface later under the guise of reading societies and Jacobin clubs.”[75] In 1790, Mirabeau would become the president of the most influential of the political “clubs” in French politics, the Jacobins, founded in 1789. When he returned to France, Mirabeau had introduced the philosophy of Illuminism into his Masonic lodge. In 1788, deputies of the Illuminati were sent upon Mirabeau’s request to inform the French lodges on strategy. Their first item of advice was the creation of a Political Committee in every lodge, from which arose the Jacobins. Soon, nearly every lodge in the Grand Orient was infiltrated by supporters of Weishaupt, who became active in spreading the political policies of terrorism against the state.[76]

French Revolution

The Illuminati conspiracy behind the French Revolution was orchestrated under the watch of the Duke of Orleans, at his Palais-Royal. In 1790, at the Palais-Royal was founded the French revolutionary organization, Amis de la Verité (“the Society of the Friends of Truth”), also known as the Social Club, by Nicolas de Bonneville (1760 – 1828) and Claude Fauchet (1744 – 1793). In 1787, Bonneville had been converted to the ideals of the Illuminati during the first of two visits to Paris by J.C. Bode.[77] An official diplomatic communiqué, dated 1791, containing a list of “Illuminati and Freemasons” was sent by Bavarian Foreign Minister Count Karl Matthäus von Vieregg (1719 – 1802), to Imperial Ambassador Ludwig Konrad von Lehrbach (1750 – 1805) at Munich, who then forwarded it to Vienna. Known as the Graf Lehrbachs Illuminaten-Liste, the list was only discovered in the Archives of Vienna by Sebastian Brunner in 1869. The list includes many known members who had not been confirmed elsewhere, such as the Duke of Orleans, Jacques Necker, Marquis de Lafayette, Jacques-Pierre Brissot, Mirabeau, Fauchet and the English-born American revolutionary Thomas Paine (1737 – 1736).[78]

Bonneville was an influential political figure of the French Revolution and was among the first to propose the storming of the Bastille. The Social Club, whose prominent members included Camille Desmoulins, Marie-Jean Condorcet, Brissot, and Jean Baptiste Louvet, became a forum for revolutionary and egalitarian ideas, attracting Gracchus Babeuf (1760 – 1797) and Sylvain Maréchal (1750 – 1803), who wrote a manifesto in support of Babeuf’s goals, Manifeste des Egaux (“Manifesto of Equals”). Babeuf was the leader of the Conspiracy of the Equals, was a failed coup d’état of 1796 during the French Revolution. The French Revolution can be said to have been ignited in the gardens of the Palais-Royal on July 12, 1789, when Camille Desmoulins (1760 – 1794) rallied a crowd with “Aux armes!” (“to arms!”), calling for a response to the news that had just come from Versailles about the king’s dismissal of his finance minister, Jacques Necker (1732 – 1804). The mob burst forth carrying a bust of Necker and the Duke of Orleans. On July 14, they stormed the sparsely populated prison and armory known as the Bastille. When the Bastille was stormed, the Comte de Mirabeau, allegedly said, “the idolatry of the monarchy has received a death blow from the sons and daughters of the Order of the Templars.”[79]

The Duke of Orleans, who would go on to play a leading role in the French Revolution as Philippe Égalité, would be next in line to the throne should the main Bourbon line die out with the death of King Louis XIV. The duke’s purported primary motivation, besides his hatred of the King Louis XIV and his wife, Marie Antoinette, was to himself succeed as king. To ensure his succession to the throne, Jacob Falk is believed to have given him a talisman consisting of a ring, which Philippe Égalité, prior to his execution on November 6, 1793, is said to have sent to a Jewess, Juliet Goudchaux, who passed it on to his son, subsequently King Louis Philippe.[80] However, the year he was executed, Philippe Égalité had issued a manifesto repudiating his connection with Freemasonry, and he was now of the opinion that in a republic no secret society should be allowed to exist.[81] When Louis XIV, King of France was executed on January 21, 1793, a voice in the crowd cried out “De Molay is avenged!”[82]

In August 1789, Mirabeau and Abbé Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès (1748 – 1836), a member of the Philalethes and Neuf Soeur, played a central role in conceptualizing and drafting the final Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Illuminatus Lafayette prepared the principal drafts in consultation with his close friend Thomas Jefferson. As a cryptic clue to their true origin, the declaration features several prominent occult symbols. First, is the Illuminati symbol of the All-Seeing Eye within a triangle, now found on the Great Seal of the United States. Underneath the title is an Ouroboros, an ancient Gnostic symbol of Satan, found in Western alchemy. Underneath it is a red Phrygian cap, derived from the pagan Mysteries of Mithras. The entire Declaration is guarded by the twin Masonic pillars.

[1] Maciejko. The Mixed Multitude, p. 242.

[2] Gershom Scholem. The Messianic Idea in Judaism, p. 221.

[3] Gershom Scholem. The Messianic Idea in Judaism, p. 221.

[4] Gershom Scholem. The Messianic Idea in Judaism, p. 221.

[5] Keith A.P. Sandiford. “Great Britain And The Revolutions of 1848.” Encyclopedia of Revolutions of 1848. Retrieved from https://www.ohio.edu/chastain/dh/greatbri.htm

[6] Yirmiyahu Yovel. Spinoza and Other Heretics: The Marrano of Reason (Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 351.

[7] William Uzgalis. “John Locke.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2022 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.). Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2022/entries/locke/

[8] Webster. Secret Societies and Subversive Movements.

[9] Henri Martin. Histoire de France, Vol. XVI. p. 531; cited in Webster, Secret Societies and Subversive Movements, p. 233.

[10] Melanson. “Murdoch’s Illuminati.”

[11] Terry Melanson. Perfectibilists: The 18th Century Bavarian Order of the Illuminati (Trine Day).

[12] Hugh Chisholm, ed. “Dalberg § 2. Karl Theodor Anton Maria von Dalberg.” Encyclopædia Britannica. 7, 11th ed. (Cambridge University Press, 1911). pp. 762–763; Melanson. Perfectibilists.

[13] Amos Elon. Founder: A Portrait of the First Rothschild and His Time (Viking Adult, 1996), pp. 75-76; cited in Melanson. “Murdoch’s Illuminati.”

[14] Howard. Secret Societies, pp. 73-74.

[15] Melanson. Perfectibilists.

[16] Lloyd Strickland (ed. and transl.). Leibniz and the Two Sophies: The Philosophical Correspondence, (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2011).

[17] George Rude. The Crowd in the French Revolution (Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 215. Cited in Melanson. Perfectibilists.

[18] Joscelyn Godwin. The Theosophical Enlightenment, (State University of New York Press, 1994), p. 101.

[19] Ibid., p. 101.

[20] J.S. Tuckett. “Savalette de Langes, les Philaletes, and the Convent of Wilhelmsbad, 1782.” Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, 30 (1917), pp. 153-54; cited in Schuchard, “Dr. Samuel Jacob Falk.”

[21] Marsha Keith Schuchard. “Falk, Samuel Jacob.” In Wouter J. Hanegraaff ed. Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism (Leiden: Brill, 2006). p. 357.

[22] Webster. Secret Societies and Subversive Movements.

[23] Ibid.

[24] Christopher McIntosh. Rose Cross and the Age of Reason: The Eighteenth-Century Rosicrucianism in Central Europe and its Relationship to the Enlightenment (SUNY Press, 2012), p. 170.

[25] Isabel Cooper-Oakley. The Comte de St. Germain (Milan, Italy: Ars Regia, 1912).

[26] Trevor-Roper. The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century, p. 239.

[27] Isabel Cooper Oakley. The Comte de St. Germain: the secret of kings (Milan: Sulli-

Rao, 1912), pp. 21-22. Cited in David Hunter. “Monsieur le Comte de Saint-Germain: The Great Pretender.” The Musical Times, 144 (1885), pp. 40–44.

[28] Elizabeth W. Fisher. “‘Prophesies and Revelations’: German Cabbalists in Early Pennsylvania.” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 109:3 (1985), p. 306.

[29] William Thomas Walsh. Philip II (New York, Sheed & Ward, Inc., 1937).

[30] Catholic Jew. “Frankists and the Catholic Church.” alternativegenhist.blogspot.ca (April 15, 2014).

[31] Ibid.

[32] Edward Gelles. The Jewish Journey: A Passage through European History (The Radcliffe Press, 2016), p. 151.

[33] Facsimile of the ms Minutes, Renaissance Traditionnelle, 114 (April 1998):110-111; cited in Ramsay’s Life, The Beginnings of French Freemasonry, The Two Main Versions of the Discours by W. Bro. Alain Bernheim, PS Review of Freemasonry. Retrieved from http://www.freemasons-freemasonry.com/bernheim_ramsay01.html

[34] E. J. Castle. Proceedings against the Templars, A.Q.C., Vol. XX. Part III.

[35] F.-T. B.-Clavel. Histoire pittoresque de la Franc-Maçonnerie (Paris: Pagnerre, 1843), p. 166.

[36] Supreme Council, 33 ̊ U.S.A. Condensed History of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite Masonry from Its Introduction Into the United States (Drummond & Neu, 1887), p. 5.

[37] Richard Popkin. “Chapter 14: The Religious Background of Seventeenth Century Philosophy.” In Daniel Garber & Michael Ayers, (eds.). The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-century Philosophy, Volume 1. (Cambridge University Press, 1999).

[38] Henry Wilson Coil. Coil’s Masonic Encyclopedia (Richmond, Virginia: Macoy Publishing Co., 1961).

[39] Ibid., p. 213.

[40] David Murray Lyon, “The Royal Order of Scotland,” The Freemason (September 4, 1880), p. 393; cited in Schuchard. Emanuel Swedenborg, p. 305.

[41] Albert G. Mackey. A Lexicon of Freemasonry (Philadelphia: Moss, Brother & Co., 1860), p. 267.

[42] G. Hills. “Notes on the Rainsford Papers in the British Museum,” Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, 26 (1913 ), pp. 98-99; Schuchard. “Dr. Samuel Jacob Falk,” p. 211.

[43] Schuchard. “Why Mrs. Blake Cried.”

[44] Ibid.

[45] Keith Schuchard. “The Secret Masonic History of Blake’s Swedenborg Society.”

[46] Keith Schuchard. “Dr. Samuel Jacob Falk.”

[47] Ibid., p. 204.

[48] Keith Schuchard. Emanuel Swedenborg, p. 511.

[49] “Eckleffsche Akten.” Freimaurer-Wiki. Retrieved from https://www.freimaurer-wiki.de/index.php/Eckleffsche_Akten

[50] Edmund Mazet, “Freemasonry and Esotericism,” in Modern Esoteric Spirituality. ed. A. Faivre (New York: Crossroad, 1993), p. 256; cited in Hugh Urban, “Elitism and Esotericism: Strategies of Secrecy and Power in South Indian Tantra and French Freemasonry.” Numen, 44 (1997), p. 34 n. 22.

[51] Souvenirs du Baron de Gleichen, p. 151, cited from Webster. Secret Societies and Subversive Movements, p. 169.

[52] Duker. “Polish Frankism’s Duration,” p. 312

[53] J. M. Roberts. The Mythology of Secret Societies (London: Secker and Warburg, 1972) p. 104.

[54] J.E.S. Tuckett. “Savalette de Langes, Les Philaléthes, and the Convent of Wilhelmsbad, 1782,” AQC (1917), pp. 131-71; series of articles in Le Monde Maçonnique, 14-15 (1873-74); cited in Keith Schuchard. “The Secret Masonic History of Blake’s Swedenborg Society.”

[55] Margaret C. Jacob. Strangers Nowhere in the World: The Rise of Cosmopolitanism in Early Modern Europe (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006) p. 109.

[56] Karl R. H. Frick. Die Erleuchteten: Gnostisch-theosophische und alchemistisch-rosenkreuzerische Geheimgesellschaften bis zum Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts, ein Beitrag zur Geistesgeschichte der Neuzeit (1973), p. 574 ff., originally included as an appendix at the end of McBean and Gabirro. A Complete History Of The Ancient And Primitive Rite (2002). Cited in Terry Melanson, “Karl R. H. Frick on The Philalèthes.” Bavarian-Illuminati.com.

[57] Jacob. Strangers Nowhere in the World, p. 109.

[58] J.S. Tuckett. “Savalette de Langes, les Philaletes, and the Convent of Wilhelmsbad, 1782.” Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, 30 (1917), pp. 153-54; cited in Schuchard, “Dr. Samuel Jacob Falk.”

[59] In-Ho Ly Ryu. “Freemasonry Under Catherine the Great: a Reinterpretation” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1967), 136, 145-59; and “Moscow Freemasons and the Rosicrucian Order,” in J.G. Garrard (ed.) The Eighteenth Century in Russia (Oxford: Clarendon, 1973), p. 215; cited in Keith Schuchard. “Dr. Samuel Jacob Falk,” p. 217.

[60] McIntosh. Rose Cross and the Age of Reason, p. 43.

[61] “La Royale York de l’Amitiè Berlin.” Musée virtuel de la musique maçonnique. Vincent Lombardo (trans). Retrieved from https://www.freemasonryresearchforumqsa.com/grandlodgeof-prussia-royal-york.php

[62] René le Forestier. Les Illuminés de Bavière et la franc-maçonnerie allemande, Book 3 (Paris, 1914), pp. 193–201.

[63] John Robison. Proofs of a Conspiracy (1798).

[64] Ibid.

[65] Vera Keller. Knowledge and the Public Interest, 1575–1725 (Cambridge University Press, 2015), p. 89.

[66] le Forestier. Les Illuminés de Bavière et la franc-maçonnerie allemande, pp. 343–88.

[67] Ibid., pp. 453, 468–469, 507–508, 614–615.

[68] Collectif. Encyclopédie de la franc-maçonnerie (Le Livre de poche, 2008).

[69] Webster. Secret Societies and Subservive Movements, p. 234.

[70] Melanson. Perfectibilists.

[71] C. Porset. Philalethes, p. 502; cited in Keith Schuchard. “Dr. Samuel Jacob Falk,” p. 220.

[72] Marsha Keith Schuchard. “Freemasonry, Secret Societies, and the Continuity of the Occult Tradition in English Literature.” Ph.D. diss., (University of Texas, Austin, 1975).

[73] Bode. Travel Journal; cited in Melanson. Perfectibilists.

[74] Ibid.

[75] Melanson. Perfectibilists.

[76] Michael Howard. Secret Societies: Their Influence and Power from Antiquity to the Present Day (Simon and Schuster, 2007), pp. 74.

[77] James H. Billington. Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith (Basic Books 1980), p. 96.

[78] Marco di Luchetti. Illuminati Manifesto of World Revolution (1792) (Booksurge Publishing, 2011), p. 235-239; Le Forestier. Les Illuminés de Bavière et la franc-maçonnerie allemande, p. 654.

[79] Howard. Secret Societies.

[80] “Falk, Hayyim Samuel Jacob (also known as De Falk, Dr. Falk, or Falkon),” Jewish Encyclopedia (1906)

[81] George William Speth. Royal Freemasons (Masonic Publishing Company, 1885), p. 12.

[82] Ibid.