What is the Illuminati?

The Illuminati were a secret society of forward-thinkers in Europe many hundreds of years ago. They were scientists, artists, philosophers, and as that sort of this was banned by the church (which controlled most governments) as heresy, they had to meet in secret. That’s really all it meant.

They no longer exist, but due to the novel ‘The Da Vinci Code’ by Dan Browne, lots of people started believing it. It’s a bit like teenagers believing that vampires exist after reading Twilight.

The real Illuminati, sometimes called the Bavarian Illuminati by historians, were a secret society (similar to the Masons) formed among intellectuals in late 18th century Bavaria, Germany. College professor Adam Weishaupt formed the group in 1776 and they debated issues and published pamphlets arguing against superstition, ignorance, and abusive governments. The group was eventually banned by the Bavarian government. Since then, conspiracy theories have argued that the Illuminati continued to exist behind the scenes, exercising immense power to shape world events. This mythical version of the Illuminati are not a small circle of Bavarian intellectuals, but rather a large world spanning conspiracy made up of some of the most powerful people in the world. Conspiracy theorists see them as existing down to the present time and influencing or causing all major world events.

During the Dark Ages, when the chiurch in Rome held authoritative and forceful control over morality, thinks like science and logic were bad. People who questioned God were just arrested or straight up killed.

The orginal Illuminati were a secret society of freethinkers who would simply meet in secret to discuss scientific discovery, and to question the enforced rules of the church. Thats all they were really. Just a social club which was banned because they questioned religious rule over Europe.

In order to discredit them, the church would spin tales of them being essentially terrorists, claiming they were secretly trying to take over the world and manipulate world leaders, and over the years this warped into a bizarre urban legend of an organization which actually was secretly controlling every nation on Earth.

The actual Illuminati has not existed for centuries.