Who are the Illuminati?
The original Illuminati group was founded in Bavaria in the 18th century by Adam Weishaupt, an anti-clerical professor who wanted to limit the interference of the Church in public life. He based his secret society on the Freemasons, with a hierarchy and mysterious rituals, and named it the Order of Illuminati to reflect the enlightened ideals of its educated members. The Illuminati was stamped out by a government crackdown on secret societies in the late 1780s, but rumours that it continued to survive as an underground organisation have persisted into the modern day.
In a recent interview with the BBC, David Bramwell, "a man who has dedicated himself to documenting the origins of the myth", claims the modern-day Illuminati legend was influenced not by Weishaupt but rather by LSD, the 1960s counter-culture, and specifically a text called Principia Discordia.
The book extolled an alternative belief system – Discordianism – which preached a form of anarchism and gave birth to the Discordian movement which ultimately wished to cause civil disobedience through practical jokes and hoaxes.
One of the main proponents of this new ideology was a writer called Robert Anton Wilson who wanted to bring chaos back into society by "disseminating misinformation through all portals – through counter culture, through the mainstream media," claims Bramwell.
He did this by sending fake letters to the men's magazine Playboy, where he worked, attributing cover-ups and conspiracy theories, such as the JFK assassination, to a secret elite organisation called the Illuminati.
Wilson went on to turn these theories into a book, The Illuminatus Trilogy, which became a surprise cult success and were even made into a stage play in Liverpool, launching the careers of British actors Bill Nighy and Jim Broadbent.
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