Wisdom of the Illuminati

When I first heard about the Illuminati, I was fascinated with their story. A secret society wielding power to remake the world in their image. Pretty spooky. However, when you start investigating them, the story splits into two. On the one hand, you have the historical Bavarian Illuminati founded on May 1st, 1776, by Adam Weishaupt. His aim was to promote Enlightenment ideals and counter the influence of the Catholic Church.

On the other hand, you had the Illuminati of legend. Their story stretches back to the dawn of civilization. They believe they have an intergenerational mandate to guide humanity.

Most of the work done on the Illuminati has been literal; an attempt to separate fact from fiction. I’m going to take a different approach. I’m going to explore the legends from a psychological perspective to see what personal meaning we can take away from them. If you put down the literal interpretations for just a moment and look at the story psychologically, you can glean all sorts of insights.

Let’s begin.

So the legend goes…

There are thirteen bloodlines. The oldest families are said to trace their lineage back to Nimrod, the ancient king of Babylon. Some versions of the story claim they trace their lineages back to the gods themselves. Regardless, they see themselves as the carriers of a Divine Rite to rule. For them, this is the guiding mythos that propels them forward towards their utopian vision.

These families are the custodians of secret knowledge. They practice a form of magic that predates the great flood of the ancient world. For them, the ends justify the means. They see darkness as a tool to bring about light.

In this respect, human sacrifice originates from them. They taught cultures around the world how to feed on the life force from an innocent victim.

It’s here in the story that there’s a major point of contention. Some say they’ve made a conscious pact with the devil and serve evil willingly. The others argue that their egos are far too large to acknowledge anything more powerful than themselves, and that if they serve evil, it’s unwitting.

What the different versions agree on is that they believe they control the magic they wield.

The end goal is utopia, and they're at the finish line. Our interconnected age has made the world small again. Nation-states are nearing their end, and it’s only a matter of time before a global government takes form.

From there, they’ll depopulate the planet, enact a strict cast system, and merge with technology to extend their lives.

Pretty heavy.

With those themes in mind, let’s go through each part of the story and uncover its lessons to see what it reveals about ourselves.

A Mighty Lineage

Like all extraordinary origins, the Illuminati have a profound story. The gods chose them, and their lineage had thousands of years of history before the great flood. To top it off, they are destined to rule the planet.

We quickly notice that the Illuminati are prime examples of succumbing to fate in life. They lack essential autonomy; everything is predetermined, and their whole place in the world has already been decided.

This is different from a King and Queen. While they may be born to a role, and if they have the courage, they can eventually enact their vision. Whereas with the Illuminati, their ancestors decided their lives thousands of generations ago. They are slaves to people who have long since died.

Their goal is to complete a mission they didn't even come up with. The Illuminati are prisoners of their family's legacy. The entire mess is a tragedy.

Here we encounter the first key insight: Don't mistake what you've inherited for who you are. This lesson highlights the importance of distinguishing your true self from the roles and circumstances you inherit.

The Illuminati, for all their power, are objects. They've been robbed of personhood by the need to complete the family mission. It's a brutal act. They're raised to think that love, acceptance, and approval come from abandoning the self.

In essence, the Illuminati are cursed. Generation after generation has faced the same choice as Jesus in the wilderness: either discover yourself or receive all the earth's riches. Each succeeding generation has chosen the latter.

With this, we return to the other layer of the question: Is the vision you're living out yours, or has it been given to you by someone else?

As the story reminds us, to live, you must look past all you've inherited - all the immutable characteristics and circumstances, and face who you are. To do this, you must move through them and discover the self that lies behind it all.

To use the Illuminati, for example, they don't need to pretend they're not born into the family they are and that it didn't shape them. They fail because they stop here. For them, that's all there is. But the journey requires them to look past all this at what lies behind it.

The Hidden Hand

The Illuminati have stuffed down who they are and chosen to identify solely with what their family handed them. Which, of course, as we'll see, has consequences.

The next part of the myth describes how they bring about change in the world. Unlike others seeking power, the Illuminati hide in the dark. They pay off politicians, steer global events, manufacture tragedy, and exploit it.

On the surface, they can delude themselves with their ingenuity, and without a public face, it's harder for others to point the finger. While tactically, this makes sense, this isn't the only reason they choose this route; they are forced to.

They’re frauds. As we just explored, they have no authenticity. Without contact with the Self, manipulation is the only option. To say, "this is what I need or want," requires personhood. Since they unconsciously view themselves as objects of a historical process, they're bound to a game of shallow appearances.

Here is the second key insight: when caught in your shadow, your only remaining power is to manipulate events.

True power requires being seen.

The Illuminati are stuck in the narrative that 'imperfections reveal weakness.' As unpleasant as they can be, imperfections reveal your humanity, which frees you. You are not stuck playing pretend, and you get to be a real person.

The Benevolent Dictator

The Illuminati are working towards their vision of a Utopia. In their minds, humanity has only plundered and eroded the planet. What the world needs is leadership. By creating a world government, they can adequately manage the earth and steward nature.

Talk about a grandiose self-image.

The notion that humanity can't handle its freedom is central to their vision. They believe that if people are left to their own devices, they'll objectively make the world a worse place. Since they see this as a given, they have a 'convenient' responsibility to step in.

Here is the next layer of consequences from their symbolic deal with the devil to abandon themselves: They sold out their freedom, and now everyone else needs to (with the added pretentiousness that it's for their own good).

Therefore, the third key insight is: whatever we do, we invite the world to do. This idea underscores how our actions set examples that strongly influence others' behavior.

They have neglected their moral responsibility to face who they are, and the consequence is that they can only ask others to do what they cannot do themselves. Their demand: don't make any of your own decisions; let other 'chosen' people handle them for you.

Their whole vision of life is to see other people as objects, just as they are. While filled with images of their benevolence, they're encouraging people to join them in their personal hell.

We're reminded of the old saying, "practice what you preach." This isn't just because if not, you're a hypocrite, but because preaching means nothing without a living example to embody it. The Illuminati may be self-described saviors, but in reality, they are just trying to make peace with their decisions by demanding everyone else make the same one.

Culling The Population

The Illuminati have decided that to manage the population better, it must be reduced. This is accomplished in two ways: a soft approach, poisoning the sky, water, food, and medicine. And a hard approach by creating an economic, natural, or terrorist disaster, or even recreating concentration camps.

The mask comes off. Humanities' destruction is wrong because it is solely self-interested, whereas the Illuminati believe their imposed destruction serves a greater purpose and is, therefore, permissible.

We see this in our own lives when emotion boils over. We excuse our bad behavior because it serves a greater goal.

Since the Illuminati refuse to look at themselves, their actions are lost on them. Maybe, they're not just attempting to save the world; they simply enjoy killing people. Or, in our own lives, perhaps it's not just about our intention, but also about how good it feels to yell at someone or to stop listening and tune them out.

The fourth insight: mistaking your intention for your action.

For example, someone might say, "I'm friendly to people I don't know." Yet, you just watched them snub a cashier. If you bring this up, you may get the response, "I don't think so. I'm just tired and have a lot going on, and wasn't chatty." In their minds, the behavior is mainly unimportant; what is, is their conscious intention to be friendly to people they don't know.

By making their sole focus what they intend to do, they miss how it's enacted. Wisdom requires you to focus on both and keep an eye on how your intentions align with your actions.

Immortality

After a world government is established, the next step is immortality. By merging with machines, they'll conquer death and live forever.

This gives us an encouraging glimpse into human nature; they're chasing the transcendent. Despite objectifying themselves and others and ushering in hell on earth, they're still after something larger than themselves. There's a nobility that lies behind self-glorification despite their worst actions.

The soul is the true self. Cultures around the world have described the soul's immortality. Since the Illuminati are disconnected from it, the identity they mistake for themselves will perish with death; so, they're after a way of preserving it.

Playing God is futile, but that doesn't stop them from involving us all in their drama. They'll do whatever it takes to get what they want.

With this, we see the fifth insight into the shadow: defining your life by a problem.

The Illuminati have put their lives on hold until the other side of their mission. For them, once they complete it, they can truly live.

The human ability to solve problems has given us a wonderful world. On top of that, figuring something out provides us with a sense of meaning. Delayed gratification is a fundamental skill, and what we're talking about goes beyond that; it's self-mortification.

We rob ourselves when we put part of ourselves on the other side of an event. We decide they won't be happy till X happens. Or that we can't find peace until this specific thing changes.

Solving the problem becomes a requirement to get something you already possess, rather than adding something new. When we don't feel good enough, we deny ourselves things amid our problems, arguably when we need them most.

In this way, a problem prevents us from our fullest expression rather than being a mystery we're unfolding. In Viktor Frankl's book A Man's Search for Meaning, he showed that even in a concentration camp, someone could still live fully.

Black Magic

Saving the most exciting part for last, the myth tells us the Illuminati practice human sacrifice as they feed on people sexually, through pedophilia, as well as through murder itself.

This is where we face contention in the myth, which diverges into two. On the one hand, the Christianized version states they have a conscious working relationship with the Devil, and the sacrifices they commit are an offering to maintain this relationship.

In the non-Christian version, it's the polar opposite. A relationship with the devil would be a form of submission, which they are unwilling to do. Their acts are, therefore, in pure service to the self inherited at birth.

I once had the opportunity to pose this question to a shaman in South America, a reputed expert on sorcery. She told me a sorcerer wouldn't go near all sorts of dark forces. Control is their primary concern, and they avoid anything that could jeopardize that.

While the Christian version is exciting and indeed colorful, it's a reiteration of our first section. Namely, the ancestral curse. This time, though, they are living out the Devil's vision instead of living their ancestors' lives.

Therefore, we're going to take up the non-Christian version.

Sacrifice is the act of submission. Submission is often seen negatively, but it's fundamental to spiritual growth.

What revitalizes us is contact with our true selves. Since this isn't an option for the Illuminati, they attempt to get it elsewhere. To connect with our true self, we must sacrifice who we believe ourselves to be, so we can be refreshed and restored by who we actually are. The Illuminati, on the other hand, force someone to lose the innocence they lost as a way to release the pain of their dedication.

The sixth insight we gather from the Illuminati is that the path to wholeness requires submission.

Payment is required, and you must offer something big to get something big. That is, trading how you see yourself for who you actually are.

There is one more important thing to note here. The Illuminati have made a common mistake. They've confused the symbolic with the literal. Something needed to die, but it didn't have to be literal; it could have been symbolic. They need to kill a representation, not a literal person.

In conclusion, there's much more the myth can tell us about ourselves, but this is a good start. When I stumbled upon the Illuminati at 18, it frightened me. It seemed clear we were moving towards a one-world government, and I was scared of who might run in. In many respects, this helped me become a better person. I realized how short life is and took it more seriously. I conquered fears and grew as a direct result of their story. I hope that this piece offers insight into that process.