Conspiracy: History’s Greatest Plots, Collusions and Cover-Ups (7 page)

The Illuminati managed to start branches in most European countries in the first few years of its existence, with many influential intellectuals and progressive politicians counting themselves as members – among them such luminaries as the great German writer Goethe and the dukes of Gotha and Weimar. The total membership of the group at this point has been estimated at 2,000.

However, the association's radical ideas soon attracted the dislike of the powerful Catholic Church which, in 1784, persuaded the Bavarian Government to pass a law banning all secret societies, including the Illuminati and the Freemasons. According to all the official accounts this resulted in the disappearance of the Illuminati. The order was already suffering from internal schisms and it was finally wound up in 1790.

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No sooner had the Illuminati come to an official end than the conspiracy theories began. Just seven years later, in 1797, a French cleric called Abbé Augustin Barruél published a book called
Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism
, in which he set out a conspiracy theory involving the Illuminati, along with the Knights Templar, the Rosicrucians and, as his book title suggests, the Jacobins. In the following year a Scottish professor of natural history named John Robison published the first part of a book with the unwieldy title of
Proofs of a Conspiracy Against all the Religions and Governments of Europe, Carried on in the Secret Meetings of Free Masons, Illuminati, and Reading Societies, Collected from Good Authorities
. Robison's thesis was that an Illuminati conspiracy was planning to replace all religions with humanism and nation states with a single world government.

This linking of the Illuminati with Freemasonry and the further linking of the combined institutions with the sinister manipulation of society began to gain credence. However, not everyone was convinced. No less a person than Thomas Jefferson declared that he could quite understand why the Illuminati had been driven to secrecy:

As Weishaupt lived under the tyranny of a despot and priests, he knew that caution was necessary even in spreading information, and the principles of pure morality... If Weishaupt had written here, where no secrecy is necessary in our endeavours to render men wise and virtuous, he would not have thought of any secret machinery for that purpose.

Of course the conspiracy theorists saw this as proof that Jefferson himself was one of the Illuminati. And, indeed, it was not long before rumours of Illuminati involvement in American affairs began to circulate. The symbol of the all-seeing pyramid in the Great Seal of the United States was cited as being a secret sign, painted by high-ranking members of the Illuminati whose intention was to show how the Illuminati's ever-present watchful eye surveyed the Americans. It has also been suggested that the Yale-based secret society Skull and Bones was founded as the American branch of the Illuminati.

In recent times, conspiracy theories involving the Illuminati have become ever more bizarre. Books and internet sites explain that the Illuminati are responsible for almost everything, whether it be the assassination of President Kennedy or the foundation of the Jehovah's Witnesses. The fact that there is no evidence of the group is always presented as conclusive proof of its secret existence.

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XTRA-TERRESTRIAL REPTILES
Perhaps the most extraordinary of all the Illuminati-linked theories is that put forward by a former British soccer player and sports commentator named David Icke. According to Icke the Illuminati are indeed the secret rulers of the world but they date back a lot further than the Bavaria of the 1780s. In fact, says Icke, the Illuminati are reptilian extra-terrestrials who have controlled the world for thousands of years, and have been operating from the fourth dimension (which explains why we have not noticed them yet).

While Icke's theory has not attracted a huge following, but there are still many who believe that the Illuminati – while not reptilian aliens – do exist. And it may well be true that the world's powerful people do talk discreetly to each other within secret organizations. However, the suggestion that they are linked by membership of the Illuminati, a quasi-Masonic group that is devoted to republican freethinking, seems more than a little unlikely. Or is that just what our reptilian overlords want us to believe...

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The Christian Church has been a natural target for conspiracy theorists throughout almost the whole of its existence. In centuries past, these theorists would have been called heretics and burnt at the stake. In these more enlightened days they post their ideas on the internet and write bestselling novels.

Two subjects that appeal to conspiracy theorists are the Knights Templar and the Holy Grail. The Knights Templar were an order of warrior monks who were based in Jerusalem during the time of the Crusades. They were believed to be fabulously wealthy and they became so powerful that in 1307 Philip IV of France led a campaign against them. Members of the order were arrested and tortured until they confessed to heresy. Their influence lingered on for many years, especially in Portugal and Scotland, but they gradually disappeared from view. However, many theorists believe that the order actually went underground instead of dying out and that it is still in existence.

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Even more mysterious than the Knights Templar is the Holy Grail, one of the great myths of Christianity. The Holy Grail was supposedly the cup that caught the blood of Jesus during his crucifixion. The story goes that the cup was kept by a friend of Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea, who might have taken it to France, or perhaps even Glastonbury in England. Some believe that it was taken to Jerusalem in the Holy Land: others claim that it has been kept in Genoa, Valencia or Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland. According to some accounts, it might even have fallen into the hands of the Knights Templar. Wherever it landed up, it became a mythical object over time and it was credited with extraordinary magical powers.

Stories have circulated about the Holy Grail and the Knights Templar for centuries, but a modern bestseller
Holy Blood, Holy Grail
, published in 1982, suggested that behind these mysteries lay an even greater one – one that went to the very heart of the Christian faith. According to the authors of the book, the Holy Grail was not a cup at all: that was the result of a mistake in translation. The real Christian treasure was not the Holy Grail but the Holy Blood. That is, the true secret was not the existence of a mere cup but of a bloodline of the descendants of Jesus.

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According to this theory, Jesus had two children, the products of a clandestine marriage to Mary Magdalene. These children, so the story goes, were brought to France by Mary Magdalene and Joseph of Arimathea. The oldest child died but the second son went on to have children whose descendants would become the (real) Merovingian Kings of France between the fifth and eighth centuries AD. After the Merovingian Kings were overthrown, their legacy was protected by the Knights Templar and their great secret – together with the evidence to back it up – was hidden away. Its existence was only hinted at by obscure codes.

With the end of the Knights Templar, so this theory goes, all evidence of the bloodline of Jesus disappeared from view for over 500 years. It was only in 1885 that someone began to penetrate the mystery, a young priest named François Bérenger Saunière, who was assigned to the parish at Rennes-le-Chateau, an ancient walled town in the French Pyrenees.

Saunière began to restore the town's sixth-century church. As he did so, he found a series of parchments hidden inside a hollow pillar. These parchments included some genealogical information and a collection of ciphers and codes. Allegedly the secrets of these codes made Saunière a wealthy man and he later spent much of his money on commissioning strange new artefacts for the church.