Adam Weishaupt and the Bavarian Illuminati

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. I've been thinking about
secret societies lately for no particular reason. Oh yeah, I

(00:21):
really don't, just one of those things, so I'm like, huh.
I've also been thinking a lot about conspiracy theories for
more particular reasons, which is that they are rampant right now.
But oh yeah, the historical secret society that gets the
most attention, that springs to people's minds when you mentioned
those words is, of course, the Illuminati. It gets invoked

(00:41):
anytime someone believes that people are acting in secretive ways
to manipulate various happenings in the world. BBC correspondent Sophia
Smith Gaylor wrote of the Illuminati in twenty twenty that
it has become quote the conspiracy theory to dwarf all
conspiracy theories. We're going to talk more about her work later,
but that's the truth. I mean, it's an easy one

(01:03):
to invote because it's all secret. Nobody knows you can
make stuff up. But in reality, the Illuminati, at least
the Bavarian group that is generally considered the main start
of the Illuminati, although there are people that will say
it goes back farther than that. It is much less dramatic,
at least in terms of machination than conspiracy theories would

(01:25):
lead you to think. For one, it's been defunct for
more than two hundred years, and for another, it was
not any kind of mystical or particularly conspiratorial group. You
could argue that there were some conspiratorial things going on,
but it was that it's heart a protest organization formed
out of frustration with dogmatic church practices and trying to

(01:45):
find ways to undermine those and overcome them. So today
we're going to talk about it. We're going to talk
about the founder of the Illuminati, Adam Weisoupt, how he
came to form the Bavarian Illuminati, how that group functioned
question and then was disbanded, and how the idea of
the Illuminati as a secret controlling society it's sometimes called

(02:07):
the New World Order, how that concept came to be. Also,
this is a little bit of an anticipatory topic as
Tracy and I look forward to our upcoming trip to Germany.
We're going to be spending time in Bavaria with some
of our listeners at the end of September. Yeah, so
I'm preempting our trip instead of doing things after the fact.

(02:30):
So the man at the heart of the Illuminati story,
as Holly just said, was Adam Wiseaupt. He was born
in seventeen forty eight in Ingolstadt, Bavaria that's part of
Germany today. Ingelstatt incidentally was also where doctor Victor Frankenstein
created his creature in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Historically, the Wisaups

(02:53):
were Jewish, but they converted to Christianity long before Adam
was born, Yeah, what generations before. I will also say
that Mary Shelley Strankenstein, there are people that think that
she specifically placed it there because of the stories of
the Illuminati. But as for wiseaut he was born at

(03:14):
a time when the people of Bavaria were largely seeking
reform after years and years of being heavily governed by
Catholic Church doctrine. There was a lot of unrest as
the greater population saw the churches in Bavaria had seemingly
endless wealth, while the average family was struggling to get
by Additionally, church officials seemed kind of untouchable and there

(03:38):
was a lot of corruption. But in the mid seventeenth
century some of that started to shift. When Maximilian the
third Joseph became Elector of Bavaria in seventeen forty five,
he was kind of like a breath of fresh air.
He was very much in line with Enlightenment ideals, and
he sought to expand agriculture and industry in Bavaria, and

(03:58):
he also sought loose in the Church's grip on day
to day life. Adam's father, George Weishaupt, was a criminal
law professor at the University of Ingolstadt, and his uncle,
Johann Adam von Eckstatt, was the director of the university
and was embroiled in intense fights with the Church over
the books that were chosen for the school curricula. Extott

(04:22):
wanted to use texts that were not approved by the
Catholic Church, and this led to a really fierce battle.
As a quick note, ex Stott is often referred to
as Adam's godfather, but Extott was also really at odds
with the Church, so it just seems a little odd
to refer to him by that religiously oriented title rather

(04:43):
than just calling him uncle. So if you pursue additional
reading about this and you're wondering, that's why. That's what's up. So,
as that battle over books was going on, George Weishaupt
died and Ixtott became seven year old Adams caretaker. It
is unclear to me where the mother figure might have

(05:05):
been in this, But because he was so wrapped up
with this conflict with the Church, ickstat in a somewhat
contradictory move, sent Adam to the Jesuits for his schooling.
That seems contradictory, but I also suspect it was kind
of the only option. It was like homeschool or this,
those are the ways your kid's going to get an education.
Wisapt was a very very curious child, super smart and

(05:28):
a voracious reader, and he supplemented his education by also
reading books that he selected from his uncle's very expansive library.
Vernon Staufer, writing in his nineteen eighteen book New England
and the Bavarian Illuminati, cites this as a formative exposure
to new ideas, stating quote, the boys questioning spirit was

(05:49):
deeply impressed by the brilliant the pretentious works of the
French philosophers with which the shelves were plentifully stocked. Here
was food for the fires of imagination just beginning to
flame up in this unsophisticated and pedantic youth. Here also
were ready solvents for the doubts with which his experience
with the Jesuit teachers had filled his mind. Many accounts

(06:13):
also say that Weisaupt was a Jesuit for a period
of time. That is a little bit unclear to me.
I never found any definitive statement that said that he
took orders. But there is also a caveat here because
most of the more in depth biographies of Adam Weisaupt
are written in German and are not translated, and I
do not speak German. All of this reading did seem

(06:37):
to ignite a desire for more knowledge, both for wisaupten
for others. He wanted to continue the family's tradition of
being educators and dedicated himself to learning as much as
he could about a lot of topics that he concentrated
on law, politics, philosophy and history. He attended the University

(06:57):
of Ingolstadt and graduated with a law degree in seventeen
sixty eight at the age of twenty. Following his graduation,
he worked as a tutor of both law and church doctrine.
By that time, his uncle Extat was no longer actively
involved in the workings of the university, but he was
still highly respected, and, as we're about to discuss, Adam

(07:20):
benefited very highly from his uncle's remaining power in academic circles.
In seventeen seventy two, Wisaupt secured a position as a
professor at Ingolstadt, and the following year he was made
chair of the canon law department. That was unusual. That role,
which specialized in the legal laws of the Church, had

(07:41):
been held by people chosen by the Jesuits, and was
often a member of the Jesuits. So Wisaupt was the
first in almost a century who was not Again, there
is some fuzziness here because of the claim that he
was a Jesuit for some period of time. I have
to wonder if there was in conflation where it was like,
of course, when that held that job was a Jesuit.

(08:03):
Again unknown to me, but this appointment is generally believed
to have happened thanks to his uncle's influence, but that
relationship between himself and Ickstat experienced some strain in the
months that followed this appointment because Adam got married to
a young woman that his uncle did not approve of.
I wish I had more detail about her and what

(08:24):
this whole marriage situation was. But despite whatever friction this
marriage caused, Adam continued to benefit from nepotism, or at
least from association with his uncle. In seventeen seventy five,
he became the dean of the Faculty of Law. He
was twenty seven. This is not a case where that

(08:44):
happened back then. It was just as weird then as
if it happened today. It also kind of sounds like
he had the overconfidence and lack of diplomacy of youth,
because in this role he was very outspoken in his
criticism of the Church. This is not a great idea,
and we will talk about the repercussions of it after

(09:06):
we pause for a sponsor break. Naturally, watching a very
young and inexperienced academic rise through the ranks to a
significant leadership at the university while simultaneously trash talking the

(09:29):
Church made the Jesuits at the university deeply unhappy. So
for contexts, the Jesuits had a very significant presence at
the school for more than two hundred years at this point.
In fifteen forty nine, several Jesuits had become members of
the faculty at the University of ENGLISHTADT, and this had
come about because the Duke of Bavaria at the time, Wilhelm,

(09:51):
had specifically asked for it. He had written to Pope
Paul the Third asking if the Church could send academics
to fill out the theology and philosophy departments. In sixteen
eighty eight, the Jesuits became the sole controllers of the
philosophy department. They were deeply entrenched in the school's identity
and social structure, and they had a strong effect on

(10:14):
policy decisions. So to have a dean openly criticizing an
entire segment of the university stirred up a lot of conflict.
It was also incredibly foolish on the part of Wisout,
who may have enjoyed a degree of protection due to
his family's long connection with the school, but who was
still provoking the incredibly powerful Catholic Church with all of

(10:36):
this negative rhetoric. And that was on top of the
fact that the Church had already been angry with his
family over that book selection issue, and with Ickstat's very
anti clerical stance, all of this bubbled up into a conflict.
Wysap used it to characterize himself as a free speech
martyr who was being unfairly targeted by the Church. During

(11:00):
this time, he also further distanced himself from his uncle
when he helped a Jesuit professor get a prestigious appointment. E.
Shott felt like that was a betrayal. It also felt
like a move that went against everything that Wishapt claimed
to stand for. At that point, his uncle severed all
ties with him. Yeah, that is another instance where it's

(11:23):
a little unclear what's going on there. To me. I
know that he made that connection or whatever agreement or
assistance he was giving this Jesuit that was all kept secret,
and then they had a falling out, and then it
came out when had happened. He clearly knew that it
looked shady for him to be doing that. It was

(11:43):
also at this point where he's in conflict with everyone
around him, that the idea of a secret society to
combat the power of the Church started to really grow.
In Wisapt's mind. He wanted to build up a group
of enlightenment minded people who could surreptitiously work against the
Church and against anything the group believed was not in

(12:04):
line with the ideals of reason, so things like superstition,
fear based beliefs, folk tales, et cetera. The Vernon Stauffer
account from nineteen eighteen that we referenced earlier has a
footnote offering a read on Wisout's mindset at the time
that he was planning this group, which is quote. The
motives which led weis Out to consider the formation of

(12:25):
a secret organization of the general character indicated were not
all of a kind. In part, they were creditable, in
part discreditable that he had a genuine interest in the
cause of liberalism and progress, born largely of the personal
discomfort and injury he had experienced at the hands of
intolerance and bigotry. There can be no honest doubt but

(12:48):
a thirst for power was also a fundamental element in
his nature. The despotic character of the order which he
attempted to build up is in itself a sufficient proof
of this. Beside the cast of his personal affairs at
the time the organization was launched, smacks loudly of the
man's overweening vanity and yearning for personal conquest, and that's

(13:11):
probably a pretty good take on the situation. Wisapt was
entirely against dogmatic insistence on one idea of truth as
set forth by the church, but he had been burning
down a variety of relationships since his promotion to dean
of the faculty. In addition to the rift between him
and his uncle, he had fallings out with other faculty

(13:34):
who had been his allies previously. He also started to
poke his nose into business in other areas of the
university that really had nothing to do with him. He
was kind of stirring up fights, possibly using the subsequent
rebuttals to bolster his claims that his right to speak
was being infringed. Yeah, he was just going to other

(13:56):
departments and being like, oh, I heard you're having a
problem with this person. Yere's what you need to do,
and they'd be like, Hi, what we got this. I
feel like I know people who are on university faculty
today who would describe their working lives as like this
still ye, with just a lot of petty drama and

(14:18):
like infighting. Some universities in academia were great. A lot
of people that I know, as well as Tracey, have
similarly unpleasant drama stories. Wisout is said to have actually
attempted to become a Mason at this time, thinking that
he could leverage the connections of that society to achieve

(14:42):
these goals of undermining the Church. But he wasn't able
to become a member, at least initially, for both ideological
and financial reasons. For one, there was an initiation fee
and then annual dues, and Whysout was really not in
a position to cover those costs. But for another, as
he began to read through the available literature, he realized

(15:04):
he was not aligned with freemasonry. He actually thought it
was not secretive enough, that it was too accessible, and
that its rituals were kind of silly. He wanted, at
least initially, to have a true secret society of like
minded people who were willing to put in the work
to achieve the goal of diminishing the Catholic Church's power.

(15:25):
On May first, seventeen seventy six, Wysap established the Covenant
of Perfectibility. This was not a big group, It was
just him and five of his students, once again quoting
Staffer quote. It was Wyshap's original purpose to style the
new Order the Perfectibilists, but this he later renounced as
too bizarre and lacking in the element of mystery. Although

(15:50):
he claimed that he found the Mason organization to be silly,
he still modeled his group on it in a lot
of ways, including having three levels or grades of membership,
which he called Novice, minerval and illuminated minerval. Interestingly, he
did wind up joining the Masons in seventeen seventy seven,

(16:11):
possibly to study their structure and governance as part of
refining his plan for his own group, I want a
T shirt that says illuminated minerval. Wishaupt was intent that
recruitment of young people was the key to the group's success.
He wrote to his friend Franz Anton von Massenhausen in
September of seventeen seventy six about it, quote, every day

(16:35):
I think about and apply myself to our great building project.
Continue working a year, end two and send along some
building blocks. Don't let up on your efforts. Seek the
company of younger people, Observe them, and if you find
one who is suitable, take hold of him. I too
have found another one who is attractive and insightful. What

(16:57):
you cannot accomplish yourself do through others. Agathon, Danaos, and
Shaftesbury are given modem imperry to mingle with young people,
observe them, have that recruit others, make suggestions, and then
wait for orders. This must happen immediately. Using the form
that was sent to him, Agathon should send a list

(17:20):
of the young people that he encountered during his stay.
This is imperative. The setup of this society was pretty
sloppy at the beginning, but over time Wysap codified or
made notes about each of these classifications, and it quickly
becomes apparent that he started to lose the plot regarding

(17:40):
those enlightenment and reason ideals. The novice designation was for
younger members who held the qualities that Wyshap sought to promote,
which were virtue, docility, curiosity, and here's the kicker wealth.
If a novice was accepted, he was to be assigned
an older member to teach him about the organization while

(18:02):
he was keeping anything that could identify other members a secret.
As part of the stage a novice was to make
a comprehensive inventory of the books that he owned and
his family tree, his personal enemies and the explanation of
that status, a self assessment of his personal character, and
a similar analysis of all family members. This was the

(18:26):
first of many reports that were expected from members, as
they were also to write up each month how they
had benefited in the previous weeks from their involvement with
the group. They also had recruitment goals that determined when
they might achieve one of the higher levels, so it
was sort of like an MLM structured secret society. Yes,

(18:50):
I have recruited you, and now you must recruit more people,
and when you recruit enough people, you will come to
my level. But I will move up because you have
recruited more people. It's like oh, oh adam. If a
person rose to the minerval level, that meant that they
still had to do all the novice stuff, but they
also had additional assignments. Studies became a really high priority,

(19:13):
with regular reports and papers submitted to the group's leadership,
and Wisapt envisioned this society becoming kind of like an
underground university, with leadership directing the lower tiered members in
their scholarship, and all of this scholarship, of course, was
about the superiority of reason over faith based belief systems,

(19:34):
and moreover, reason over authority. This also was the time
when members would meet other people from the order when
they got promoted to minerval. Illuminated Minerval was the highest rank,
so obviously that went only to members who really stood
out as exceptional quote in the judgment of their superiors.

(19:56):
That indicated a high level of scholarship with mastery of
any subjects, as well as service to the order. At
this level, members were encouraged not only to continue reporting
on their studies, but also to write more involved academic
papers about them. These men were also given the task
of closely observing the minervals who were immediately under them

(20:19):
and reporting up to them as a means of learning
about human psychology. This was so they would become adept
at what was considered to be directing people down the
correct intellectual path, but there was definitely a plan to
manipulate with this knowledge. It was always couched as being
something very beneficial, like manipulating people to be better, but

(20:40):
this was still a manipulation and the people being targeted
with that manipulation had no say in any of it.
They were expected to report on the men under them
in a special meeting that was scheduled every month for
this exclusive group alone. I like to imagine that as
a very gossipy session. Feels God must have been do

(21:02):
you know what so and so did. All of this
was set up, according to Wysout, to evolve humanity to
a better state in which base emotions would no longer
govern anyone's behavior. This was different from a political revolution,
It was a social and intellectual one in Wysoup's view.
He also felt that through this system of manipulating people,

(21:25):
it was going to force them to self reflect and grow.
This is one of those things that might sound good
on paper, like you're encouraging people, but it ignores the
concept of personal agency completely. It also is all sort
of contradictory in that Wysout did want to overthrow the
clerical components of education and government, which is more of

(21:48):
him imposing his will on something than everyone evolving together.
And just to be clear, he always said he was
not anti religion. He just felt that religion had become
corrupt and that religious in spec institutions relied on the
fanaticism of their followers to enrich those at the top
and consolidate power. By seventeen eighty there were four more

(22:10):
chapters of the Bavarian Illuminati in Munich, Regentsburg, Frising, and Extent.
But as the group grew and more and more people
were needed to manage to downstream members, the same thing
happened as happens in any large group. There were disagreements
and dissent. It's hard to keep lots of people a

(22:32):
big group on the same page in any group, and
when you're part of a secret society, there are also
fears that if somebody is unhappy and dissatisfied, they're going
to blab the secrets of that society. So a lot
of the meetings started to be less and less about
scholarship and planning as Wishobphead originally intended, and it became

(22:54):
more about settling disputes among the increasingly large membership. The
Illuminati was not a group that was flush with cash,
even though they had specifically targeted people who were wealthy.
There had been this purposeful decision to keep money out
of any of the planning or written materials as a
way to keep everything on the down low. If money

(23:16):
had started changing hands with no explanation in eighteenth century Bavaria,
it could have raised some questions. And it wasn't as
though they could fundraise without inviting attention. So it seems
like the presumption was that the dedication of these wealthy
members would maybe lead them to financially support any plans
that the group came up with. But that did not materialize,

(23:38):
and eventually dues were implemented to members who signed up
because they believed the rhetoric that this group was going
to change the world through intellectualism. It's probably started to
feel a lot less cool right around then. There is
some good news coming for Wysaptonist followers, but before we
get to it, we will pause for a word from

(24:00):
our sponsors. The Bavarian Illuminati may have started to splinter
at that point had it not been for the recruitment
of a man named Adolf frere Keiniga. We're gonna call

(24:21):
him Adolf because I feel like saying his last name
is fraught and sounds like other things I don't want
to say. Adolf was several years younger than Wiseaupt, and
he was born to Landed gentry, although his parents had
accumulated a large amount of debt before they died, which
happened when Adolf was still a child. He went to
law school, and he also became a writer and a Mason,

(24:43):
and his status as a noble brought a level of
social influence to the Illuminati that it had been lacking.
He had held a number of governmental positions in Hesse
Cassel in his career, but he had retired in seventeen
seventy seven, which offered him plenty of time to cultivate
a life in Weishaupt's Illuminati. His involvement opened the door

(25:06):
for a relationship between the Illuminati and the Masons. Adolf
was also given a lot of responsibility right out of
the gate. He was tasked with refining and formalizing the
Illuminatis rules and structures, because that messy start had been
an ongoing problem. Clearly Wisouts was just not good at

(25:26):
this The three original levels of members were completely restructured
and what emerged was much more complex, but it also
clarified things. For example, instead of the second Mineerval grade
on its own, Adolf broke that into three sub levels,
so there was room for promotion to higher positions without
jumping right to the highest level. Ultimately there were three

(25:50):
classes of members still, but there was a total of
thirteen different degrees within those three classes. There was also
testing for members to achieve the higher way ranking levels
instead of just going on vibes. There was also a
formalized system of rituals, like when people were promoted, there
was a ritual to acknowledge that. Unfortunately, the ritual scenarios

(26:14):
were all lost, so we don't know what those entailed.
Code names were also introduced at this time, with each
member being given one that was kind of based in
antiquity and historical studies. Wisout for example, was called Spartacus,
and there was also a coded way for all of
the members to communicate that was introduced. The biggest change

(26:35):
was in the target age group for recruiting and wisap's
original scheme. They were focused on boys and men between
the ages of fifteen and twenty because they were malleable,
but Adolph's ideology was that more mature and experienced men
were needed to fully round out the membership and also
optimize the chances of affecting change. And all of this

(26:59):
work that Adolph did was a boon to the organization.
A lot of people in Bavaria and surrounding areas at
the time, as we said at the top of the show,
were frustrated with the level of power held by the church,
and many self professed freethinkers were really eager to connect
with others who shared their views. Soon, very respected men

(27:21):
from a variety of fields and professions had become part
of the group, and it is estimated that the numbers
of the Illuminati swelled to somewhere between two thousand and
three thousand members by the mid seventeen eighties. A group
that grows from five people to at least a couple
thousand and eight years was naturally going to gain attention,

(27:43):
even though its members were sworn to secrecy, in part
because you can't contain it once a group expands like this,
but also because once again, fracturing happens when you get
large groups of people to try to come together on
things man, and in the case of the Illuminati, Wyshapt
and Adolf were increasingly at odds with each other. Their

(28:06):
conflict began in seventeen eighty three as Wyshap started to
evidence more and more of a very domineering personality, and
the two men's visions for the future of the society
became increasingly more divergent. By the summer of seventeen eighty four,
Adolf had left the organization and another man, Joseph Uschneider,

(28:27):
had also left in frustration that happened in seventeen eighty three,
and he had taken several members with him, and it
appears he outed the society in a letter to the
Bavarian Electress Elizabeth Augusta of Sulzbach. Than this letter, u
Schneider made a lot of claims that were not true

(28:47):
about controversial beliefs of the members of the Order, and
also hinted that this group was in league with Austria
to bring down Bavaria. Yeah, he included some of the
things that they were doing that were real, but it
seems like he kind of added some additional flavor to
make them sound really, really dangerous. And this was a

(29:08):
time when Bavaria and Austria were deeply at odds, and
Elizabeth naturally brought this letter to her husband, Duke Elector
Charles Deodor. His response was to ban any society that
was not sanctioned by the Bavarian government wise, Hout didn't
seem too concerned, and things initially continued more or less

(29:28):
as they had before the edict, although still with the
same internal problems of the organization. But then the following year,
the Bavarian Illuminati was named, specifically in an edict that
banned the group. At this point things got quite serious.
Wisout was fired from the university, members of the group
were outed and subsequently arrested, and materials that the government

(29:52):
found in the raids of members' homes only damned the group.
More topics like atheism, abortion, and insurrection were rumored to
have been in the documents that were seized. I know,
I find myself wondering with all of these scholarly papers
they were writing, how many of these were kind of
examinations of these topics rather than saying like we should

(30:12):
be doing these things. But it was enough to get
the Bavarian government very upset. The Illuminati at this point
was completely vilified, and in seventeen eighty seven a third
edict was issued that made it punishable by death to
be a part of it. Wysopt fled to Gota, and
there he was under the protection of Ernest the second

(30:34):
Duke of Saxe Gota Altenburg, who had been a member
of the Illuminati. Wisapt was given a teaching position at
the University of Guttingen, and it was believed by most
that the Bavarian Illuminati was disbanded once Weishaft left Engelstadt,
but recent scholarship indicates that he did try to start

(30:54):
a new branch while he was in Gota, called Ionia.
Comprehend of paper detailing this new information is expected to
be published in twenty twenty seven. Adam Weishaupt lived out
the rest of his life in Gota, and he died
there on November eighteenth of eighteen thirty. So how did

(31:14):
the Illuminati become this organizational boogeyman that sparks endless conspiracy theories? Well,
that actually started relatively soon after it was disbanded. In
seventeen ninety eight, Scottish scientist John Robison published Proofs of
a Conspiracy against all the religions and governments of Europe,
carried on in the secret meetings of Freemasons, Illuminati, and

(31:38):
Reading societies, in which he alleged that the Illuminati and
Freemasons had conspired to bring about the French Revolution as
part of a larger effort to destabilize Europe and make
it fertile ground for the Enlightenment to move in in
more modern years. There's another explanation. In twenty twenty, journalist
Sophia Smith Gaylor, writing for the BBC, pointed to a

(32:02):
nineteen sixty three book written by Gregory Hill and Carrie Thornley.
This was originally published as photocopies, not as a printed book,
but it was called Princeshipia Discordia, and that was the
start of a hoax disinformation campaign that seems to have

(32:22):
seeded a lot of the modern mythology of the Illuminati.
Discordia was a chaos based belief system that these two
men came up with to try to shake up a
world that they thought was too rigid and controlled. These
were two people that had grown up together. Uh. This
work was very jokey. It's surrealist and absurd, and it's

(32:44):
been rumored to have been written while one or both
of the authors were on an acid trip. It outlines
the workings of the Discordian religion, which appears to be
from another world, and it references the Bavarian Illuminati sort of.
It features an advertisement placed by the Bavarian Illuminati that
invited new members, touting quote, if your IQ is over

(33:07):
one fifty and you have three one hundred and twenty
five dollars plus handling, you might be eligible for a
trial membership in AISB Ancient Illuminated Seers of Bavaria. If
you think you qualify, put the money in a cigar
box and bury it in your backyard. One of our
underground agents will contact you shortly. I dare you tell

(33:29):
no one? Accidents have a strange way of happening to
people who talk too much about the Bavarian Illuminati. This
was originally just a few by which I mean five
copies that got passed around in counterculture circles, but the
authors and their friends wanted to continue to drop misinformation
anywhere it might be picked up as a way to

(33:51):
generate the chaos that they were after. The idea was
that if you were given something that made you look
at the world in an absurd way, you might start
thinking about all of the very normal things that are
actually absurd in our lives. One of the avenues they
used to do this was the Letters from Readers section
of Playboy magazine. In the nineteen sixties, Carrie Thornley's friend,

(34:14):
Robert Anton Wilson was working at Playboy. I think he
was an associate editor, but I'm not positive, and he
and Thornley came up with this idea that they would
plant fake reader letters in the magazine that talked about
the Illuminati as a global control society, and then they
would send in fake replies to those original letters. That

(34:34):
started a debate about it, and this actually got people
talking wondering what the heck the Illuminati was. Today, we
call this astroturfing. Yeah, So then Wilson and his friend
Robert Shay wrote three books known as the Illuminatus Trilogy.
They had the titles I in the Pyramid, Golden Apple,

(34:55):
and Leviathan. These are satirical novels. They are fiction, but
it was in these books that they started a variety
of rumors that still persist in some circles today. Man
very disjointed plots, but there's a battle between the Discordians
and the Illuminati, and the Illuminati are linked to the
American Medical Association and Hitler and the Kennedy assassination. And

(35:20):
over the years, a lot of these ideas have really
gotten traction and then been repeated over and over without
any sourcing, so unless you really go digging, it can
be hard to trace the origins. As for why these
ideas are so alluring, journalist Galor put it pretty perfectly, stating, quote,
the idea of an untouchable, secretive elite must resonate with

(35:40):
people that feel left behind and powerless. Yeah, those are
not the only, uh conspiratorial things that they linked the
Illuminati with, but that is just a sampling to give
you an idea. If you have spent any time in
conspiracy theory spaces, you've heard all of those things repeated
as though they are truths. I just find it funny

(36:02):
that this campaign of like, let's do something so silly
and satirical that it will make people kind of wake
up and rethink everything they're doing critically, and instead it
had the opposite effect in a lot of cases. Today,
there is a historical marker plaque on Wysoup's home in
Englishtot noting that it was an Illuminati meeting place in

(36:22):
twenty seventeen. Michael Klarner, who at the time was leading
history tours in Englishtot that were Illuminati themed. I don't
know if he still does those. But he told the
BBC quote, of course we get some conspiracy theorists on
the tours I do, but we can educate them to
what is the real truth and what is conspiracy. Just
in case you're a tempted to start thinking about a

(36:44):
new world order controlling everything that happens here on planet Earth,
it is worth remembering that, in spite of starting out
with the relatively noble idea of getting out from under
a very rigid educational system that didn't allow free thought,
the very an Illuminati was actually a pretty small, poorly
organized group that fell victim to the same kind of

(37:06):
infighting that plagues pretty much every group. Was also led
by a man with ego issues, and it could not
hold itself together or keep the secret of its own existence.
So not an organization that is likely to have pulled
off any world domination. Yeah. Yeah, when you look at it,

(37:26):
it's like, oh, these are a bunch of messy kids.
They're not all kids in the sense of being youths,
but you know what I mean, sure you messy children. Yeah.
I just find that funny. So anytime someone references the
Illuminati as like a thing, I'm always like cute. Let

(37:47):
me tell you about Adam Weissout. He's the guy that
everyone at the party is saying, I wish this guy
would leave. I promise it, I promise it. I have
a fun little listener mail about our recent episode on
my beloved Huxley. This is from our listener Lauren, who writes, Hi,

(38:11):
Holly and Tracy. I've been a listener since twenty thirteen,
when I was looking for ways to jazz up a long,
boring commute to my summer internship. I've never felt compelled
to write in until now, but your recent episode on
Thomas Huxley. Maybe you want to share a quirky bit
of family history. I have an ancestor named Darwin Huxley McLaughlin.
That Darwin is self explanatory, but I never knew much

(38:32):
about the Huxley part of his name other than Huxley
was a scientist, and I had a vague sense he
was related to Aldous Huxley. I was therefore delighted when
I saw you'd done an episode on Thomas Huxley. The
family law is that Darwin Huxley's father named him Busley
because he was really interested in science. But after listening
to the Huxley episode. It sure seems like he was
interested in evolution specifically. Darwin Huxley was born in eighteen

(38:57):
seventy two, the youngest of eleven children, in absolutely the
middle of nowhere, Kansas. His father, William, who chose the name,
was born in absolutely the middle of nowhere, Kentucky and
received only a rudimentary education. William spent his adult life
as a farmer in Kansas, but clearly he was well
read not to mention unconventional enough to name his son

(39:18):
after Darwin and Huxley only thirteen years after On the
Origin of Species was first published. I think he must
have been a fascinating person. I do too. According to
his obituary, he wrote a series of articles on the
birds of Kansas for the local newspaper. I wish I
knew if he referenced their evolution. I have attached photos
of William McLaughlin and Darwin Huxley MacLaughlin with their wives.

(39:40):
William is the one who appears to have been a
victim of early photoshop techniques that often happens with old
pictures for pet tax I also enclose photos of our
three cats, the twins Copernicus and Galileo and our void girl,
Ricky Ticky Tavy. You can tell Copernicus and Galileo apart,
because Galileo has pointy ears and Copernicus has rounded ears,

(40:01):
and like, maybe that was true of the ben they're
named for. Probably if you are looking for a possible
episode topic, I recently ran across some reference to the
medieval tradition of officially sanctioned relic stealing, and it was
surprisingly swashbuckling wild ride. Apparently, Thou Shalt Not Steal had
a well understood exception when it came to bits of
saints that were housed in other cities churches. We talked

(40:24):
about this a little bit when we talked about the
catacombs a room, not in this specific sense, but people
wanting to go steal things to be part of of
their own religions. Lauren continues. They shrugged it off by saying,
if the saint didn't want their corpse stolen, the saint
would have done something to prevent the large group of
armed men from making off with it. Keep up the

(40:45):
good fight, educating the world. I love this letter for
so many reasons. I mean, there are fabulous pictures. These
older photos are spectacular I love them and the kiddies listen.
Galle and Copernicus are big fluffy. They look like double
coated gray cats, which is near and dear to my heart.

(41:11):
Also Ricky, Ticky, Tabby beautiful. We all love avoid here
that's stuffy missed in history class. Avoids in our families.
Tracy has two. I have but one, but minus extra fluffy.
I guess to make up for the gap and fur.
I don't know. I don't know, but I love it.
This is so very cool. I love the idea of this,
not only just because it's fun family trivia, but it

(41:34):
is one of those things that I always want to
highlight as a very real and it's also near to
my heart thing, which is like the autodidacts of the world.
There are so many people that did not grow up
with a formalized education or the opportunities to learn in
the ways that others have, who are smarter than the

(41:55):
rest of us put together in many cases and choose
to follow their curiosity to really become incredibly knowledgeable. And
this is clearly one of those people. So you have
a winner in your family tree, probably many, but he
specifically wins my heart for today. If you would like
to write to us and tell us about your family
and it's delightful naming schemes for children, animiles, or cats

(42:19):
for that matter. You can do that at History podcast
at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also find the show
notes for today's episode or any episode we do at
mystinhistory dot com. You just click into any episode. You
will see all of the references that we used, and
I hope you do and enjoy those. You can also
subscribe to the show It's Easiest Pie. You can do

(42:41):
that on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to
your favorite podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Adam Weishaupt and the Bavarian Illuminati