The Descent of Bolshevism/The Illuminati
CHAPTER V
The Illuminati
Born of mysticism and religious chaos, the movements in the East against organized society were, nevertheless, concealed by the apostles of violence, under the cloak of religion. There have been similar movements in the West, which, under the mask of philosophy, sought to undermine all existing authority in the state and all creeds and moral codes in the nation.
Most prominent among these is the intellectual Bolshevism, which first appeared in Germany in the latter part of the 18th century. The rebel cry of a group of fanatics, who were then known as the Illuminati or Perfectibilists, is re-echoed today and translated into machine guns by the Sparticides, whose patron saint is not the Thracian gladiator and leader of the slaves against Rome in Pompei's time, but Adam Weishaupt, who adopted the name of Spartacus. And the members of the secret society he founded assumed the names of Cato, Hannibal, Alcibiades and other heroes of antiquity.
Adam Weishaupt, who was Professor of Canon Law at the University of Ingolstadt, had studied with the Jesuits, was for a time a militant member of the Order and later became its bitterest enemy. When it was suppressed in Germany, Weishaupt proposed to found another order based upon the same principles of discipline, but with a vastly different object. His scheme was to establish a society which in time should govern the world by abolishing, as we shall see, Christianity and overturning all civil governments. He discussed with some of his Jesuit friends the more attractive, the innocuous features of his project, but they refused to have anything to do with it. Weishaupt then struck out alone, availing himself of the medium of his lecture room to spread among his pupils his pet theories of equality and internationalism, and his philosophy of the pastoral virtues. He drew for them fascinating pictures of a happy society, where "every office was held by a man of talent and virtue and every talent is set in a place fit for its exertion."
In the undercurrents of his Canon Law lectures, Weishaupt was a link between Rousseau and Hebert. Patriotism is a narrow-minded prejudice, incompatible with universal benevolence;—the princes and nobles—the diplomats of our day—instead of serving the people, served only their kings, and under the flattering idea of "the balance of power" they kept the nations in subjection;—the pernicious influence of accumulated property is an insurmountable obstacle to the happiness of any nation;—man has fallen from his high estate in civil society and only by returning to nature can he accomplish a complete regeneration. And now and then, not in the lectures perhaps, but certainly in the letters of Spartacus, he advocated the adoption of any means to an end. The preponderancy of good in the ultimate result consecrated every means, and wisdom and virtue consisted in properly determining the balance. Here we get his idea of Cosmopolitanism, or internationalism, which was to be promoted, when necessary, by violence.
Thus paving the way in his lecture room, which "became the seminary of Cosmopolitanism," he was able in 1776 to gather a few intellectual rebels, his staunch disciples, and form the secret society of the Perfectibilists, which later became known throughout Europe as the Illuminati. Its first object was to check the tyranny of princes and priests and establish a state of universal equality. It sought to enlist among its members Christians of every profession and especially free masons of the eclectic order, such as the Lodge Theodore of Good Council, which was founded in Munich in 1775 and became afterwards the principal centre of the Illuminati.
The members on admission were pledged to blind obedience to the order of their superiors. Their subservience was assured by a strict system of secret confessions and monthly reports checked by mutual espionage. And like the Jesuit Order, they made special efforts to enlist young men of wealth and rank and social importance, so that gradually, through them, they would control the mainsprings of all authority and power. Furthermore, like the secret societies of the East, its membership was divided into classes and degrees. But the free masons alone—a proof that it had abjured Christianity—were eligible to the degrees of regent and magnus, or masters of the higher mysteries.
All the members, however, were to be the beneficiaries of a system designed to free them from all religious prejudices, to cultivate among them the social virtues and to animate them by a great, a feasible and speedy prospect of universal happiness. (A sort of Get-Happy-Quick Scheme, indeed.) And this can only be realized in a state of liberty and moral and social equality, free from all the obstacles which subordination, rank and riches throw in the way of man. "Our secret association," wrote Weishaupt, "works in a way that nothing can withstand it, and man shall soon be free and happy."
It worked, in fact, in many ways; one of which was to unite and dominate through the Lodge Theodore in Munich the various secret societies of Europe. And more secret ways, on which the higher mysteries only can shed some light. For as far as the public utterances of Weishaupt go, they seem to embody nothing outside of a legitimate purpose to overturn the despotisms of kings and priests and to free the mind of man from political fallacies and religious superstitions. But when we penetrate behind the veil, we find the dark currents that connect the Illuminati with the Ismailites of Islam as well as with the Mazdakites of Persia.
All things, good and evil, come out, it seems, of the East. The Illuminati, like the Ismailites, dealt in allegories; and like the Mazdakites, they played with fire. In the letters of Spartacus-Weishaupt, if they are all authentic, is a complete revelation of the secret teachings and designs of the Order.
"The allegory on which I am to found the mysteries of the higher order," he writes to Cato (Zwack, a judge of Munich) "is the Fire-Worship of the Magi. We must have some worship,"—shades of the Old Man of the Mountain!—and none is so apposite." And he goes on to give his own allegorical interpretation of Christianity. Jesus of Nazareth is made out to be "the Grand Master of the Order." For he taught the lesson of reason under the guise of religion; he combined his secret doctrines, which he revealed only to the chosen few, with the popular beliefs and customs of his time. Liberty and equality are the great aims of all his teachings; and these can only be attained through morality and virtue. Here is an example: Man has fallen from the condition of liberty and equality—the state of pure nature. He is under subordination and civil bondage, which are born of organized society. His submission is the Fall, the Original Sin. And the Kingdom of Grace is that of restoration by illumination, or through the disciplina arcani (secret disciplines) and the pastoral virtues. This is the New Birth.
All of which would seem quite innnocuous, no better and no worse in fact than parlor anarchy or socialism. But the Illuminati did not stop here. They would restore man to his pristine purity, free him from all subjugation, raise him to his original state of liberty and equality, redeem him, in a word, and all mankind through secret schools of wisdom. Here we get an intimation of the higher purpose, a peep into the higher mysteries, where even allegories are stripped of their seductive masks. But the teachings of the Assassins and the doctrines of the Ismailites are clothed, for the benefit of the Illuminati, in philosophic rags picked up at the doors of Spinoza and Plato. All things are inherent in Nature and God and the World are one, may cover a few sore spots; but the nakedness here and there of Atheism, is as appalling as that of Hasan ibn Sabah, who denounced all religions as the contrivances of ambitious and wicked men. Immorality, too, suffers no disguise. And with these we are to have the Patriarchal State, based upon the Pastoral Virtues, where "the peasant, the citizen, and the householder" are sovereigns and where subordination and inequality are no more. They must vanish forever from the face of the earth.
"By this plan," writes Spartacus to Cato, "we shall direct all mankind. In this manner and by the simplest means we shall set all in motion and flames. The occupations must be so allotted and contrived that we may in secret influence all political transactions." And the list of the contents of a chest, which was discovered after the Order was suppressed by the Elector of Bavaria, gives us an idea of "the simplest means" of setting the world in flames, of destroying the universe in order to establish on its ruins the reign of the Pastoral Virtues.
Among the things mentioned in this list are explosives of various kinds, dynamite, "a composition which blinds and kills when spurted in the face," "a method for filling a bed-chamber with pestilential vapors," strange herbs for procuring abortion, and aphrodisiacs concealed in Latin names. Simpler by far is the method of the Assassins.
But unlike the Assassins and unlike his namesake, Spartacus and his followers were timid in action,—they lacked the heroic spark, and the self-sacrificing zeal. Their incendiarism was an abstraction. They only dreamed and philosophized. They had visions, too, of eternal bliss and voluptuous pleasures. For they were also to found a Lodge of Sister Illuminati. "It will be of great service," wrote Alcibiades, "and procure us both much information and money, and will suit charmingly the taste of many of our truest members who are lovers of the sex. It should consist of two classes, the virtuous and the free-hearted."
But the members had some trouble, it seems, in achieving pristine purity and practicing the pastoral virtues. According to John Robison, who exposed the Order a few years after it was suppressed and who translated some of the letters of Spartacus, they were sneaky, white-livered rascals, without the virtue even of an Ismailite, who fought in the open or an Assassin, who sacrificed himself for a full share of Mohammed's paradise. Spartacus himself realized this and bemoaned it in print.
Thus, for instance, to Cato: "Alcibiades sits the day long with the vintner's pretty wife and then sighs and pines. A few days ago at Corinth (they also gave modern cities ancient names), Tiberius attempted to ravish the wife of Democides, and her husband came in upon them. Good heavens, what Areopagitae I have got."
Admitting that some of these Spartacus letters may be forgeries, designed to discredit the Order, there is nothing to disprove that among its secret practices the so-called disciplina arcani often became a bacchanalian orgy. For, all the pastoral and social virtues to the contrary, sensual pleasures were restored to the rank they hold in the Epicurean philosophy—but not openly proclaimed.
Herein they differ from the Bacchanalians of Rome, who, in the sixth century of the Republic, tried to cover with the wine-stained mantle of their god the most nefarious designs against the established authorities of the City and the State. But the Illuminati were secret worshippers of Bacchus, while they pretended to be votaries of Ceres. That they took the names of the heroes of antiquity in vain, is the least of their sins. And while secretly preparing their "pestilential vapors" and poison gases for the human race, formally and on stoical principles, they santioned only self-murder. They little realized, in doing this, that they were invoking in their justification the memory of Judas. Indeed, as far as they, at least, were concerned, Judas Iscariot was their patron saint. For as a rule, rebels are loyal to each other, and members of a secret society practice loyalty at least in self-defense. But the Illuminati spied upon, cheated and betrayed each other.
Indeed, the downfall of the Order was brought about by two of its own members who, to save their own skin, revealed its high mysteries to the authorities, before it entered upon the tenth year of its "illumination." Whereupon the Bavarian Government issued an edict against it, many of its members were deported, and Weishaupt was deprived of his professorship and banished to Switzerland. Its secret doctrines, however, continued to spread over Europe. They leavened more or less all the subsequent revolutions and found good soil for a time in the United States.
John Humphrey Noyes, who became, through what he called "a second conversion," a perfectionist, founded the Oneida Community and, harking back to the Illuminati and beyond them towards the East to the Mazdakites, tried to establish a Utopia, in which all things were held in common. For Noyes and his followers, who accepted the reign of God, there was no longer any law or rule of duty. They were a law unto themselves. They were free to do as they pleased. And under the influence of the divine Spirit, which dwelt in them, they could do only what was right. They were perfect—Perfectionists. And they were equalitarians: they held all things in common. And they gave up all religious observances, like the Ismailites, renounced allegiance to the United States Government, and instituted, what was called, "a complex system of marriage." But complex or simple, John Noyes could not by any marriage system or lack of it, raise communism to a virtue or an acceptablelegal formula, or even screen it under the semblance of religion. Noyes was a mild and sincere fanatic. But his Community, after a checkered career of forty years, developed into—and is still today—a fruit canning establishment—The Oneida Company, Ltd.! But he was not responsible for this vulgar metamorphosis of his Utopia; for long before that, when his marriage system was exposed, he fled with a few of his followers to Canada.
Many other experiments in universal brotherhood and equality took place in the United States, and were conducted in a peaceful and truly philosophic or religious manner. In spite of which, their success was only temporary. Human nature itself was against them—did not respect even the undoubted sincerity of their founders. I need but mention two other utopians in proof of this. There was Thomas Lake Harris, who established the Brotherhood of the New Life and who, having survived it and its internal dissensions, set to work finally as a vinyardist in Santa Rosa, California. And there was the French reformer, Etienne Cabet, who fled his own country and sought to establish, in 1848, the reign of equality and brotherhood in Texas. But the internal dissensions of his Icarian Community and the external suspicions that darkened its horizon, marred, alas, the happiness of its followers, and ultimately placed on its door the seal of bankruptcy and failure.