Weishaupt was not, he said, against religion itself, but rather the way in which it was practiced and imposed. His thinking, he wrote, offered freedom “from all religious prejudices; cultivates the social virtues; and animates them by a great, a feasible, and the speedy prospect of universal happiness.” To achieve this, it was necessary to create “a state of liberty and moral equality, freed from the obstacles which subordination, rank, and riches, continually throw in our way.”
On the night of May 1, 1776, the first Illuminati met to found the order in a forest near Ingolstadt. Bathed in torchlight, there were five men. There they established the rules that were to govern the order. All future candidates for admission required the members’ consent, a strong reputation with well-established familial and social connections, and wealth.
In the beginning, the order’s membership had three levels: novices, minervals, and illuminated minervals. “Minerval” referred to the Roman goddess of wisdom, Minerva, reflecting the order’s aim to spread true knowledge, or illumination, about how society, and the state, might be reshaped.
Over the following years, Weishaupt’s secret order grew considerably in size and diversity, possibly numbering 600 members by 1782. They included important people in Bavarian public life, such as Baron Adolph von Knigge and the banker Mayer Amschel Rothschild, who provided funding. Although at first, the Illuminati were limited to Weishaupt’s students, the membership expanded to included noblemen, politicians, doctors, lawyers, and jurists, as well as intellectuals and some leading writers, including Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. By the end of 1784, the Illuminati had 2,000 to 3,000 members.
Baron von Knigge played a very considerable role in society’s organization and expansion. As a former Freemason, he was in favor of adopting rites similar to theirs. Members of the Illuminati were given a symbolic “secret” name taken from classical antiquity: Weishaupt was Spartacus, for example, and Knigge was Philo. The membership levels also became a more complex hierarchy. There were a total of 13 degrees of initiation, divided into three classes. The first culminated in the degree of illuminatus minor, the second illuminatus dirigens, and the third, that of a king.
Society of Secrets
