APPENDIX J

The Rosicrucians and the Bavarian Illuminati

Two radically different organizations with their origins in Germany form the deep background of the occult revival to which the Fraternitas Saturni was heir. These are the Rosicrucians (founded ca. 1604) and the Bavarian Illuminati (founded 1776). The Rosicrucians are often discussed in FS documents, while the Illuminati are rarely, if ever, mentioned. It would appear that the FOGC shares certain organizational principles in common with the Illuminati, except perhaps for the FOGC’s trafficking with personified demons!

From the very beginning the Rosicrucians have been an elusive object of understanding. If this was part of the original plan, they have succeeded well. For anyone seeking some understanding of what the Rosicrucians were and are, the best places to start are Christopher McIntosh’s The Rosicrucians (1997) and Francis Yates’s The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (1972).

Germany was a breeding ground for secret societies in the years immediately following the inception of the Protestant Reformation in the beginning of the 1500s. The deepest immediate roots in the region for such activities were probably mystical chivalric orders in the Middle Ages such as the Teutonic Knights. A manual known as the Theologia Germanica, written by a member of this order, was a direct and profound influence on Luther. An insightful article on this book has been written by Glenn Magee entitled “The Germanization of Christianity in the Theologia Germanica.” This type of material was cross-fertilized with newly discovered Hermetic theories funneled through the Florentine Renaissance.

Practitioners such as John Dee and Francis Bacon in England or Paracelsus and Agrippa in Germany seem to have been part of a general movement and emerging ideas for the reform of the world in light of newly discovered mystical doctrines, but a centralizing and guiding myth was lacking. This myth, necessary to give the movement an identity and sense of solidarity and direction, was suddenly provided by a series of mysterious documents that appeared in central Europe between the years 1614 and 1616. These were the Fama Fraternitatis (1614), the Confessio Fraternitatis (1615), and The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz (1616; original German title: Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Rosencreütz anno 1459).¹ All of these texts were likely written by Johann Valentinus Andreae (1586–1654), a Protestant German theologian, although their authorship remains somewhat mysterious.

The myth promulgated in these documents is that there was a German man named Christian Rosenkreutz who set out for a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but ended up among the “Arabs” in Damascus instead. From them he learned an ancient wisdom and way of life. He traveled in the East and though the Mediterranean and eventually returned to Germany and established a brotherhood based on what he had learned. What he learned, a synthesis of magic and Kabbalah, appears to have been a form of wisdom far older and more universal than that of Islam itself. The brotherhood that was formed remained secret for a hundred years, before it was revealed in the early 1600s. This idea of a secret fraternity—made up of men who possessed all sorts of secret knowledge and abilities to heal the sick and transmute metals—that was operating in the midst of ordinary people became a powerful myth that would endure until the present.

It is possible that the Rosicrucian documents were written as a distillation of the new and revolutionary thought of men such as Dee, Bacon, and Paracelsus, and that the organization which these documents outlined represented more of a wished-for “future,” rather than a description of past events. In other words, these documents magically launched and evoked the Rosicrucian movement. If this was their intent, they were successful.

The aim of the Rosicrucians was none other than the reform of the order of the world as it stood, both spiritually and materially. This was to be accomplished by the application of mystical technologies, which constituted the special work of the Rosicrucians. These technologies were applied to man himself as well as to his natural environment. The members of the Rosicrucian circle can be said to be the children of the Renaissance and the fathers of the Enlightenment.

The teachings of the Enlightenment came late to Bavaria. The kingdom was firmly in the grip of the Roman Catholic Church and the monarchy. Although some slight liberalization occurred in 1745, which allowed non-Jesuit individuals into the university system centered in Ingolstadt, the Society of Jesus exerted a controlling influence that remained hostile to Enlightenment ideas. Adam Weishaupt was a student there who had received a liberal education in the home of his godfather, the newly appointed rector of the university. He graduated in 1768 and struggled against the oppressive anti-intellectual environment that prevailed at the time.

Weishaupt was a radical freethinker: progressive, liberal, rationalistic, materialistic, and egalitarian. He was inspired by his readings about secret societies in history and envisioned an order that would act in secret to overthrow the clerical interests, which, as he saw it, were mired in superstition. At first he thought of using the Freemasons for this, but abandoned the idea due to the already fixed nature of Masonry and the expense of gaining Masonic degrees.

On May 1, 1776 he founded his new order with five fellow members. At first they were called the “Perfectibilists,” but they soon changed the name to the Order of Illuminati. Weishaupt set out to recruit young men who were “rich, eager to learn, virtuous and docile, though firm and persevering.”² The order had limited success in the beginning, but this changed in 1780 with the membership of Baron Adolph Knigge, who gave the order entrée into the world of the Freemasons. The membership expanded greatly, probably to somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 members by 1781. These were, for the most part, influential and powerful men.

The ends toward which the individual Illuminist was to work were: “to ameliorate and perfect his moral character, expand his principles of humanity and sociability, and solicit his interest in the laudable objects of thwarting the schemes of evil men, assisting oppressed virtue and helping men of merit to find suitable places in the world.”³

Internal strife, especially between Weishaupt and Knigge, led to the exposure of the Illuminati to the civil authorities of Bavaria and the order was banned and shut down in 1787. We know so much about the order because internal documents were published at the time. It is widely held that the methods of the Illuminati were carried forth by a variety of individuals, groups, and clubs.

As a side note to more recent speculations regarding the Illuminati as a force for sinister worldwide conspiracies (the “New World Order,” etc.), those who typically make such claims often do so in the name of “freedom,” and it was just this freedom that the Illuminati of Adam Weishaupt set out to develop and expand. The aims of the Bavarian Illuminati were largely similar to those of the signers of the American Declaration of Independence. Their signatures were affixed to that document only just over two months after the formation of the Illuminati itself. The Illuminati was dedicated to reason over superstition (conventional religion) and tyranny (absolute monarchy). These forces did suppress the Illuminati in Bavaria, but many of the ideas have prevailed. Those who today vilify the Illuminati can only do so either in defense of the ancien régime of Church and King, or out of pure superstition combined with an ignorance of history. The aims of the Illuminati were indeed in part political, but the character of many of the aims was largely in keeping with those of the American and French Revolutions.

The Rosicrucians and Illuminati represent two very different streams of thought and methods of working in the world. The Rosicrucians existed and exist as an esoteric body without any formal organization (although many formal organizations claim to be “Rosicrucian”). The Illuminati, on the other hand, were a definite organization with a fixed ideology and identity. Rosicrucians are spiritual and mystical, whereas the Illuminati were purely materialistic and rational. The Rosicrucians are children of the Renaissance and Reformation while the Illuminati are the offspring of the Enlightenment. These and other fundamental differences led to the conflict between these two streams of thought in the late eighteenth century.