The myths of the Illuminati
http://www.gurdjieff-con.net/2015/04/30/the-illuminatus-trilogy-wikipedia-the-free-encyclopedia/
Wilson’s book are fiction (novels), of course…
The issue of the Illuminati is one of the most notorious zones of wrong scholarship and right wing paranoia. This is a hard subject to deal with but, as we have noted before, most of the claims of conspiracy are made up or confused with something else.
If you try to deal with this subject you should sit down and study the analysis of World History and the Eonic Effect carefully. The idea that the French Revolution, leftist revolutionary projects, and for fanatic antimodernists, modernity itself, were the result of occult action by the Illuminati and/or other masonic-type organizations is exceedingly doubtful.
The strong correlation of these with the analysis of the macro effect in WHEE is far more convincing, although this doesn’t complete our understanding fully.
Look at the public record of occultists. Its members are uniquely idiotic in their thinking on almost all questions.
One way to see the wrongheaded nature of the accusations the French Revolution was an occult conspiracy is to see that the emergence of modern revolution and its themes of democracy and freedom have a far larger context than that of the action of those who started it (unwittingly in most cases: the spontaneity of the first phase of the FR is notable.) That context is the ‘modern transition’ as a whole and this clearly appears to include a host of events appearing in tandem. Look at the ‘divide’ so-called in WHEE: the period around 1800 includes a whole series of interlinked ultra-complex mega-events like the suspected correlation with German Classical philosophy. You can’t ascribe this field to conspiratorial action, and yet its influence on the emergence of liberalism was crucial. The Illuminati were inside this phenomenon and could not have caused it. Noone human is smart enough for any of this. Consider an amusing example: Kant’s transcendental deduction, one of the most complicated innovations in modern philosophy. Do you seriously think that this distantly connected event could be induced by someone at the level of masonic intelligence? We can’t argue that some occultist would induce Kant’s thinking on liberalism, but not the core issues, like the transcendental deduction, the interconnections of this type are endless). The point here is that historical induction does exist but it requires at a minimum a higher intelligence than the highest achievements of men in such a social context.
Sit down and figure out the transcendental deduction and ask how you would use mental telepathy to induce another to make this discovery. Absurdly put, on reflection, but a step to a larger question’ what can induce larger transformations in history (beyond the direct ‘semi-causal’ flow of successive events)? There are many jokers in the deck here that make masonic individuals look like clowns.
Thus the whole complex of events associated with the French Revolution is like this, and far vaster and sweeps up a whole cascade of unrelated events like Kant’s famous deduction. A similar argument applies to the birth of modern science. One of the important influences on the French Revolution was the American, thence the English Civil War and beyond going backwards. Pretty soon the issue is the generation of modernity itself.
The emergence of occult organizations and individuals related to modern politics is entirely possible but we have very little evidence in public apart from the crackpot literature here.
I have addressed this question in the Preface to Last and First Men. There probably is an ‘esoteric left’ (there is certainly an esoteric right of muddle heads) but the nature of this is a complete mystery. Occult scholars often stumble on this point, but confused the explanation. We can see their claims of a ‘conspiracy across world history’ is a debased version of the clear perception that some directional process stands behind emergent civilization itself. WHEE clearly shows this to be the case, but no individual or occult group could accomplish this.
Ironically, we have an example of real occultist at the level of the typical mason, but probably much better: Gurdjieff. He noted that fifty ‘conscious’ men could change the course of history. A vain boast if we consider the complete idiocy of most occultists on political questions: they have never been able to grasp modernity and denounce it as an aberration, a clear sign of their total ignorance of real macrohistorical change. His own intellect was very limited as he knew well and he had to try and capture smart intellectuals like Ouspensky to further his aims.
And here we must consider that there have been rightwing conspiracies on the right. What about Hitler and the Holocaust? We can certainly suspect a set of rightwing conspiracies based on German occultism and their emergence as fascism in the context of nineteenth century Germany (and Europe). The connection of these to Hitler is not clear. But there is obvious evidence that what started as socialism (consider Mussolini) turned into fascism. Occult influence? we can hardly be sure of anything.
(We have discussed this before here with reference to occult fascist buddhism, but we can’t resolve that issue) Note that all these groups can only destroy modernity, they can’t replace it with something better or with anything at all. Hitler was clear about his intention to destroy modernity (along with Jews and Christians). The only significant venue for occult malevolence given the hypercomplexity of the macro effect (which was latent throughout here) is the mindcontrol of a ‘zombie politician’. And we see the almost endless rumors of ‘mindcontrol’ actions and research, down to the era of the American CIA.
People who think covert agencies can act at the level of world history should study the American CIA. Since its creation in the era of Truman this cancer has almost destroyed american democracy and has set a whole civilization on a downward course.
New Man, New Age, New Socialism 