Letters: Proofs of a Conspiracy pp. 64--73

No one writes letters anymore, because we don't have to. I want to discuss something with my friend "Amanda" I can call, text, or if need be, email; or in really dire straights I can video call as well. When old people lament about how no one writes letters anymore or writes in cursive, or whatever; they are correct. No one does that but I would guess that they adopted the phone pretty damn quickly as well. Letter writing is a skill because the writer has to communicate all of the information that they can with the understanding that it is going to be days or perhaps weeks before their response comes in. Imagine that you spend a few days writing a letter, send it off, and a week later your response is "*you're" by some grammar nazi. 

What's more interesting is that people saved their letters. It was like a record of a relationship that I cannot fathom. My phone has all of the records across three platforms of my conversation with "Amanda." I didn't do that though, the phone just does that. In the past, you had to collect the letters and store them. Which is where we are with the Illuminati now. 

I should find this interesting, I really should, but I don't. I don't because there's not much here. We've covered two letters so far and there are a bunch more. If a student of mine did this, I'd circle the entire section in red and write "this is padding, I need more you in this." Robison offers some commentary, but the letters take up most of the work. 

It's hard to even begin this week's section because of these letters. I have to offer the same criticism that I did last week, I would like some kind of providence for where these letters came from and some citation for how Robison has them. I know that I am applying 21st-century academic standards to the 18th-century Scotsman but it's just odd that we don't know how these ended up in Robison's hands. Robison described an official inquiry by the elector of Bavaria, but that doesn't explain how Robison is quoting them. Yes, it is entirely possible that Robison read a report on the trial; but he should say that instead of just launching into the inquiry itself (I note that he did in a single sentence I missed it). 

Spartacus we need to remember is Adam Weishaupt. Most of the letters attributed to him are not the nefarious machinations of the evil puppet master, most of them discuss things like this, 

"Augustus is in the worst estimation imaginable. Alcibiades sits the day long with the vintner's pretty wife, and there he sighs and pines. A few days ago, at Corinth, Tiberius attempted to ravish the wife of Democides, and her husband came in upon them. Good heavens! what Areopagitæ I have got. When the worthy man Marcus Aurelius comes to Athens (Munich) what will he think? What a meeting with dissolute immoral wretches, whore-masters, liars, bankrupts, braggarts, and vain fools! When he sees all this, what will he think? He will be ashamed to enter into an Association"--Spartacus to Cato. 

Now, this letter is without a date, which I find weird. But notice the content: Weishaupt is complaining that the leadership of his group is too occupied with getting laid to actually conduct the business of the organization. For the organization that allegedly is going to overturn the monarchies and religion of the Europe, they seem awfully unfocused. 

Robison claims that this letter was written at the same time that Weishaupt had tried to murder Cato's (Zwack's) sister: but this is the first time we are reading about this event. A later letter has Spartacus claiming that they will resurrect the group in the form of reading societies. 

A reading society was just an 18th-century book club. Typically these were groups that met up at cafes to discuss literature, politics, etc. More often than not they discussed the incidents above, but you can find several attempts at banning them throughout Europe in the wake of the French Revolution. This is where it's all to convenient that the dates have disappeared from the letters. Did the monarchies fabricate this letter in order to justify the suspension of these groups? So far, we just have reading groups and if it could be proven that the reading group in Luxembourg was reading seditious material they could be banned by the edict of the local prince. There wasn't a legal right to assembly and free speech in these monarchies. Maybe I'm making assumptions but it's also strange that in the inquest to determine the legality of the Illuminati that Weishaupt is already predicting the downfall and resurrection of his group in a letter written before the trial. 

A few letters later and Robison is discussing the plan to overthrow Christianity. Ok, finally, we get some genuine conspiring...except we don't. Philo (Baron Knigge) writes that the priests and princes have been sending men backward in knowledge and society. They have subsumed Christianity for religion. What they mean is the same thing that Lewis points out in the Screwtape letters when Wormwood writes that he's succeeded in getting people to worship the cross as an artifact rather than focus on the meaning behind it. It's easier to control people's emotions when they aren't thinking about anything. They get mad about a red Starbucks cup because there's no tree on it never understanding that the tree itself is not a Christian symbol. They've taken the simulacrum as the simulation as Baudrillard would claim. Or in Platonic terms, they've taken to worshipping the shadow on the wall rather than the thing which makes the shadow. The priests are revered because they hold positions in the religion not because they are supposed to be the literal emissaries of the divine. All Knigge is doing is pointing this out more than likely informed by Weishaupt who we should remember was a professor of theology. 

Is this our conspiracy? Well no, Knigge had been pointing out that Masonry is just Christianity disguised. This returns us to what Weishaupt claimed last week, that no one could explain the mysteries of the Masons so his explanation might as well be true. He equates Masonry with Christianity because he's pulling a "Transmorphers"--it's close enough to the real thing so why not for the less pious but definitely Christian out there. In a sense, the only conspiracy is that Illuminism is going to be a bait and switch. Once in they'll start preaching Deism and Democracy.

The order promotes a new morality which Robison claims is a mystery that even the scholar of the Bible cannot fathom. But Robison is either purposely misleading or he forgets the paragraph that he quotes from one of Spartacus' letters:

"The head of every family will be what Abraham was, the patriarch, the priest, and the unlettered lord of his family, and Reason will be the code of laws to all mankind. THIS is our GREAT SECRET. True, there may be some disturbance; but by and by the unequal will become equal; and after the storm all will be calm. Can the unhappy consequences remain when the grounds of dissension are removed? Rouse yourselves therefore, O men! assert your rights; and then p. 92 will Reason rule with unperceived sway; and ALL SHALL BE HAPPY. *"

The letter goes on, but this is the salient point. Robison wants to know what the secret of morality is? It's basing morality on reason rather than superstition. While the Illuminated claim Jesus to be their grandmaster, that's the Jesus of myth. The "love one another" and "prince of peace" Jesus, rather than the cursing-a-fig-tree or beating-the-money-lenders Jesus. It's the bait and switch, but the overall aim is to make people equal rather than subservient by virtue of birth. 

I'm not going to claim that this isn't a lie, or even that the ends justify the means. Only that the conspiracy in operation, is not the conspiracy that everyone from Robison onward claims about the Illuminati. I'm still waiting for any kind of evil to be done by them.