The Real Illuminati: Proofs of a Conspiracy...pp. 49-60

Weishaupt has lost his position, and the Illuminati were exposed for trying to push the idea that church and state ought to be two separate things. So...what do we do now? Obviously, I move forward with the book, but what does Robison do now? The Illuminati are done, and from what he's reported they weren't even that bad. Odd, sure, but there's a gaming store near me and I'm pretty sure that I can find some odd people in there. Hell, I host a skeptic's night at a bar, we are a bunch of weirdoes. No one is issuing a law to ban us. 

Weishaupt has an extended statement here (page 50) but I'm not quite sure where this comes from. Robison frames the quote as being Weishaupt's declaration of the principles of Illumination. However, there was a false doctrine that went around a bit too and because Robison is being unclear I'm not quite certain which is which, and which is endorsed explicitly by Weishaupt. Is the long excerpt from the doctrine that was given to the Illuminatus Minor and thus not the true doctrine that would be earned by those in the higher degrees? Is this Weishaupt's true explanation of Illuminism? We are going to have to act as though it is the latter because we have no further information at this point. 

First off, Weishaupt's statement (reported by Robison) begins with a challenge that every single person in mankind find a way to contradict the singular statement that, "no man can give any account of the Order of Free Masonry, of its origin, of its history, of its object, nor any explanation of its mysteries and symbols, which does not leave the mind in total uncertainty on all these points." 

This implies that Weishaupt's statement is in response to a charge that he has corrupted Masonry. Certainly, this is plausible and is, in fact, what Robison has spent several pages of his book claiming. As far as a defense is concerned, I like this, throw the gauntlet you weird mother fucker. I worked the US census with two guys who were higher-ups in the local Masonry lodge. In between jokes about them controlling Hollywood and killing Kennedy, I asked him what all the degrees actually meant, what all the symbolism is, and where it came from. They had no idea. Their explanation: we just do it because that's how it is done. 

Weishaupt spends about a page of his statement claiming that because no one knows what the hell everyone is doing there, literally any explanation is valid. This is an informal fallacy called "argument from ignorance" and it states that just because we don't know what is true, anything can be true. Since we don't know what's in the basement of Area 51 it must be aliens. It's incorrect reasoning and I was a bit worried that Weishaupt was going to use the ignorance as justification but he takes a slightly different tack. 

His problem is that because no one knows, they've let anyone decide what is true. So we have the Rosicrucians, the Exorcists, and the Kabbalists in Masonry all deciding that symbol A on temple B means that they are correct. The problem is that this has not been uniform across the lodges. This in turn is problematic because it means that each lodge must accept or deny such explanations based on the social and religious prejudices of the area. While Weishaupt is not claiming that he is the correct position because no one else knows, he is claiming that his system is pragmatically better because it fixes this problem. 

Illuminism has a clear object and method which is a clear difference, according to Weishaupt between Masonry and his group. The great object according to this statement allegedly by Weishaupt is to make man free and happy, to do this they will use the sun of reason to dispel "the clouds of superstition and prejudice." This should only be surprising if you believed in the myth of the Illuminati; at this point, they are just an enlightenment group wanting to spread rational thinking. Weishaupt was a bit idealistic in his view of how it would work: he recommends that every talent shall be given an occupation which is a bit too much Plato's Republic for my taste but I'm not a huge fan of this guy, I just find myself in the position of having to defend him from the conspiratorial allegations. 

He found in Freemasonry the type of people that he would like to recruit--what we would call "influencers" today, and he found within that group a lot of mythology and ritual that organized those people. All he tried to do was shape the system into something that he felt could create good in the world. When Robison takes back his book, he asks how Weishaupt sought to promote this.

The quick answer is recruitment and the book goes into dreary detail about how recruitment was supposed to work. What is interesting about the report is that A) it comes from the four professors mentioned in the last post that we must remember were employed by the widow of the local governor who hated secret societies and B) it's so dreadfully boring that I think it must be true. Yes, they present themselves and then have to write their names on a list of other members. They do this on something called "a table" (not making that up) which must also contain: their reasons for wanting to join, their ancestors (something more important in the 18th century), and of what use the applicant can be to the order. There are some other things too but it's not very interesting. Robison stresses that they examine the person's character, sometimes for up to two years before letting them enter the order. There is a trial period, where they will just stop communicating with the applicant if he's not going to work out. If he works out he's given more knowledge and taught science and reason while being elevated beyond to Illuminatus Minor. There's a long discussion about the pageantry and ritual here, but we know it is all cribbed from masonry, there's no deep meaning behind it and it exists for its own sake. It is still very boring.

I'm in a dilemma reading this because I know that if the information on how one joins was left out of the book, I would complain about it. I would say, "sure Robison, but isn't this like the people who claim that the Earth is flat and is surrounded by a guard ice wall? Is there a job fair for that? How does one become an ice wall guard?" 

But wiht that information I am going to complain the other way. Why is any of this important? Admittedly, I'm just saying that Robison can't win. 

Except he could have. He could have won by explaining these details last, and explaining the conspiracy first. Unless...and I dread the thought: that he already did. The conspiracy may just as well be the fact that Weishaupt and the Illuminati were teaching people not to be superstitious. Robison then gets to discussing the names they choose and that's where we will stop, because while not terribly important for the conspiracy, it's weird and it's fun weird which is a change from what we've been covering.