Illuminati
Cartography of Networks: Edition III
Welcome to Cosmographia. This post is part of our Cartography of Networks series. For the full map of posts, see here.
The Illuminati own all the International banks, the oil-businesses, the most powerful businesses of industry and trade, they infiltrate politics and education and they own most governments – or at the very least control them. They even own Hollywood and the Music Industry… The Illuminati run the drug trade industry as well … The leading candidates for Presidency are carefully chosen from the occult bloodlines of the thirteen Illuminati families… The main goal is to create a One World Government, with them on top to rule the world into slavery and dictatorship… They want to create an ‘outside threat,’ a fake Alien Invasion, so that the countries of this world will be willing to unite as ONE.
— From the about page of an Illuminati website (via Niall Ferguson)
A little over two months before the United States’ Declaration of Independence, a secret society was founded with the aim of changing the world. Less than 11 years later, the Illuminatenorden (Order of the Illuminati) had all but ceased to exist, banned in its native Bavaria and its founder forced to flee into exile.
Despite the society’s lofty aims to “enlighten the understanding by the sun of reason,” and “to give reason the upper hand,” it achieved little of note except to create a spectre for paranoid conspiracy theories that has lasted well over two hundred years.
As well as remaining a favourite villain in fiction like the 1970s Illuminatus Trilogy, Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum (1988), Dan Brown’s novel, and subsequent movie starring Tom Hanks, Angel and Demons (2000), as well as 2001’s Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, the phantom of the Illuminati continues to rear its shadowy head in genuine, albeit fringe, political discourse. The literature of the anti-Communist John Birch Society and the Christian conservative Pat Robertson’s 1991 book New World Order are but two pre-internet examples, but since the world has gone online the myth of the Illuminati has gone truly viral.
There are hundreds of Facebook groups, Youtube channels, podcasts, and websites that purport to expose the secret cabal that controls the world, or are willing to sell you the incredibly elusive instructions on how to join it. On platforms like Twitter X, Reddit, 4chan, Telegram, and Discord, one can frequently find discussions over the various elites, celebrities, and public figures who are supposedly part of the powerful cult; the Clintons, Obamas, Angela Merkel, George Soros, Bill Gates, Jay Z, Kanye West, and Beyoncé are just a few of the purported members. One prominent substack newsletter with thousands of paying subscribers recently tied the near assassination of Donald Trump to the secretive, all-powerful organisation. On Amazon one can buy Illuminati card games, Madonna has supposedly written songs about the group, and I even found a registered business in my native UK called House of the Illuminati (though suspiciously it’s in the process of being struck off).
So, what is the true history of the mysterious group that was mentioned in the correspondence of the first President of the United States, and also inspired a collection of Marvel superheroes to exile the Hulk into space? Who was behind the Illuminati? What were its aims? Does it still exist today?
In this post we’ll answer these questions and more.