Part One: A Complete History of the Illuminati

I am. I am very excited about this person that I totally believe is a real person. Oh it is. It is because all of our faces were like, because y'all aren't y'all aren't pilled on Balls Mahoney. I honestly, I know very little about him other than that he's a wrestler, he died very young, and he has one of the funniest names I've ever heard. But the only photo of him he is bleeding from the forehead and both of his wrists have been duck covered in duck tape.

It's incredible. Um. Anyway, that was that was a little bit of fun for all of our wrestling fan listeners. You know, I've often said professional wrestling and ska are the only remaining forms of art in the world. I mean, they're they're they're actually there, actually is there is an argument for that that It's an argument I'll make. Ah, this is Behind the Bastards. It's a podcast about bad people and also balls. Mahoney, um, and about lying to

the audience. At the start of the introduction, Garrison, Margaret, how are you doing today? You know? I, um, I'm all right. I spent all morning plumbing and I haven't destroyed anything yet. That's good. I guess it's my turn to talk. Yeah, that's generally how it works in a conversation. Yeah, I'm doing great. I have my I have my oat milk coffee and ready ready to learn about some some

fascinating historical figures coffee. Yeah. I just don't know if we could have moved on if we didn't know what kind of milk you were using. Yeah, the wokest, so we would be judging you for any other milk. So how do y'all what do y'all What do y'all know about the Bavarian Illuminati. Oh, that's that's something I've mean, that's something I've heard been screamed about at like fascist

rallies before. That is most most of the time I've most of the time that I've heard the words the Bavarian Illuminati, it's coming from some unhinged woman who has choice opinions of the Jewish people. Um, yeah, yeah, generally people generally, the folks who feel strongest about the Bavarian Illuminati also have opinions about like the root races. Um.

That's not positive. No, no, um, Margaret, do you know much about the Bavarian Illuminati or just because I distinct for the regular Illuminati or is this uh it's the illuminate unless ilie. Yeah. I once read a book about the origins of the Illuminati as influencing the anarchist movement called the Occult Origins of Aim or something great book. Yeah, some of my knowledge is the book. Someone said that there's a through line. There is there is a through line.

We're gonna be talking about that today. This is going to be a bit of a weird one. I've been wanting to do this an episode on this matter kind of ever since we started the podcast. Last year, we did a live show that touched on the Discordians and Operation mind funk, which is kind of the endpoint of this story. But telling it all really properly requires Um well, it took me about sixteen thousand words. Um, so so dig right in. No, this will be a little more

than a two parter. But I think it's important, not because just by the way, in case you're listening here wondering, like has Robert gone crazy? Is it going to start telling us about how the Illuminati have put machines in our teeth that talk to us when we sleep. Um, obviously that's been done. We all have those machines in our teeth, but it has nothing to do with the Illuminati. Now, the Illuminati, the original Illuminati, are not particularly bad guys.

They are They are people who made some some choices that have wound up carrying down through the ages in an unexpected way, and a lot of that's been negative. We're getting behind the bastards in this one in that, like what we're all talking about today, the story that begins in Europe, and like the seventeen hundreds leads directly to Q and on right, it leads directly to every

aspect of modern conspiracy culture. Because the Illuminati are what create the first like uber conspiracy, you know, the first

conspiracy that loops in all of the other conspiracies. The way that it all works now, right, where if you believe that, like if you believe that, like the government is trying to keep you from drinking raw milk or force vaccines on you to poison you, or if you believe that there are lizards at the center of the world, or if you believe that, uh, you know, the the the the elite are drinking the blood of children, you can all of those can become part of the same

conspiracy and in fact generally are because of the way that how the syncretic nature of modern like uber conspiracies. And this all starts with the Illuminati. Um, they don't do it on purpose, but they do kind of cause

it by recklessness. And so we're gonna start by talking about the Illuminati, but actually we're gonna start a long as time earlier than that, Margaret uh and Garrison, because how long how long would you guess, like secret societies have been a major factor in like human civilization since

before civilization. I mean that is for a long, long, long time, Like, yeah, I was surprised looking at this how far back the research on this goes um because it's it's it's as Margaret said, it's it's pre civilization and in fact, a good example of like one of the first secret societies we have any kind of decent evidence of comes from the Chumash people who have lived on the California coast and around that area for about

fifteen thousand years or so. Obviously you're never gonna get an exact date on there, but at least like fifteen thousand years UM and starting it around six thousand BC, give or take a couple of centuries, they started making really good canoes, which came to be known as tumils, and these craft they like, you know, they got better and better at making canoes over time and kind of reached their most advanced, perfected form at around years ago.

And this was a really involved process. They have all of these different pieces that allow them to be like tumuls are generally considered to be maybe the best canoes that existed before like really modern materials, UM. And they're ingenious devices and obviously they took a lot of experimentation and development in order for people to like figure out how to make them the best way. They're made out

of redwoods. They're glued together with tar. They used shark skin as sand paper, which I didn't realize you could do but but but kind of makes but makes sense. Um. And because these were so good, the task of making one took about five days if you were like a skilled manufacturer, and it required specialized knowledge that's kind of like about on the level of what it would take

to be like a good auto mechanic. So that knowledge was valuable because as the people on the coast started making these tumuls and getting better at them, it became like hugely advantageous to have one, both in military terms, because they could allow you to raid your enemies really effectively, and they could allow you to fish into trade a

lot better. There was a lot of of you know, money or resources at least locked up and having access to these things, and the people who made them realize, like, we have this knowledge that's not widespread, and if we keep it secret just amongst ourselves, then we can build a lot of power and wealth for ourselves and our families. Um.

The term that yeah, exactly. The brotherhood of them of Tamal held a pretty more or less a monopoly over the creation and piloting of these craft for we I mean, we'll never know exactly how long, but for an extremely long time. Um And this allowed them to become quite comfortable themselves. A passage from the book First People's Populating

the Planet charts out how things went from there. A bear skin cape worn only by the elite of canoe owners and village chiefs marked the beginnings of class distinctions. Adds did burials, which were far more elaborate for the wealthy and their children than for commoners. Members of the Brotherhood of Tumul were often buried with parts of their canoes.

Perhaps most offensive to the egalitarian an independent Johuans, who were neighbors to the Chumash, would have been the emergence of a permanent and hereditary political elite among the Chumash. High ranking Chumash chiefs, who inherited their positions through the mail line, exercised control over number of communities, but each village also had its own chief, some of whom were women.

These political leaders, all of whom were also canoe owners, lead their people in war, presided over religious rituals, and regulated the flourishing trade that followed the invention of the tumul And I find that fascinating the idea that among this this society, class distinctions emerged as a result of the creation of this and and the kind of the sequestering of this knowledge among an elite chunk of the population. Um. I hadn't really thought about it occurring that way, but

it makes sense. Yeah, as as as as soon as you mentioned that that they that they specifically kept the information about how to make them secluded. I'm like, but on on one hand, like undeniably secret societies are kind of cool, like everybody wants to be in the in group,

everyone wants to have access to secret knowledge. On the other hand, just the existence of that will buy it self create like conditions of inequality and goes against like ideals of like open access to information should and how everyone should have the opportunity to learn anything that they can. And yeah, but that does create a very interesting, interesting dynamic.

And but yeah, I also use the same thing to keep information going that would otherwise be lost, especially people who don't don't have writing systems or have different types of writing systems like oral tradition stuff, being able to preserve information in it because because of your because of how sacred it is. Yeah. Yeah, I mean not just gate keeping, it's also preservation. Yeah yeah, and I don't want to be preserved. I'm not like saying the brothers

of Them is the first bass. Yeah, it's all obviously, this is all we're taking. These are these This is like a complicated thing, and it had positive and negative impacts. It's just it. It's fascinating to me, and it's gonna be interesting how many things from as far back as the existence of the Brotherhood of the Tumul carry through to like modern day secret societies and in weirdly specific ways. But I it's one of those things I kind of wonder.

Obviously we don't have a lot of written records from the people the Chumash people in like five thousand BC or whatever, four thousand, three thousand BC, But I kind of wonder, like where their conspiracy theories about the Canoe people in their secret society running things, like because that's

the thing people do you know? It's interesting and what because it's kind of like you could almost imagine people talking about this like people today talk about like the free energy suppression conspiracy theory, Like Donald Trump knows that like the someone's keeping free energy from American people for the like. Yeah, it's uh, I wanted to and we spend something, but with magnets, more more energy comes out that goes in. That's right, that's right. That's why I

throw magnets on the side of my car. Improved the gas mileage. One of these days it's going to work. So secret society people know how they work. Yeah, they are the secret gatekeepers of all of all knowledge. They're the brotherhood of the tumal of the modern era. Um. So. One of the things as I was reading about these guys that I found out that I hadn't realized is that there's actually like a really strong vein of research by anthropologists into the existence of secret societies across all

of Neolithic humanity. This is a thing we do everywhere there are people, um and it's it's a thing that occurs in societies when they hit what's often described as kind of a middle level of development between wandering bands of hunter gatherers and like we're talking bands here, not like large moving like tribes of people um and then like what we broadly call ancient like pre civilization, where you have some settled communities maybe but you at least

have much larger groups of people moving and interact, even even if they're still kind of nomadic um. And it's kind of in that that interstial period between sort of like groups of I don't know, ten people wandering around the wilderness to actually starting to make towns and cities that you see the development of of of ancient secrets societies.

In a lot of cases, like the American Pacific Northwest what is today the American Pacific Northwest, it was common for adults to pick societies based on their talents uh and most common vocation. And one of the things that this did is society's existed off in across tribal and

family lines. So in addition for being a way for people to kind of gate keep knowledge and and sort of build wealth between within communities and along like lines of family descent, they provided a backdoor method of diplomacy and allowed for different tribes that might have often been in conflict over stuff like hunting grounds and other resources to also have a way in times of disaster to cooperate on something that sort of approached the level that

a nation state could do it because you have, you know, maybe sometimes one tribe is fighting the other, but all of the people who know how to make this important thing have some sort of like occasionally will meet and engage in these secret religious observances together and talk shop and talk trade, and when a disaster hits, they're able to communicate with each other because they have this kind

of this kind of brotherhood. UM. Now, when anthropologists use the term secret to refer to these these secret societies, which are often called like guilds and groups, uh, that's because all of these societies tended to enforce the isolation of their members for periods of time. That's what they mean by secret. It's not that like no one knew

the Brotherhood of Tamal existed. It's that part of the way it worked is members would sequester themselves away from everyone else and have conversations and engage in rituals that other people were not allowed to see. Um. Some of these rituals would have been mystical, some of them would have been doggedly mechanical, like instruction on the best way to make canoes, but all of them were secret. Many

Neolithic people's also practiced matrilineal descent UM. So one way in which one very prominent way in which secret societies developed was because it was traditional for men to move in with the family of their partner um, which was not just an emotionally complex experience but also lad presumably to a lot of like frustration on behalf of some

of these men um. And so secret societies were often very male dominated and just like yeah, it's yeah, exactly exactly, so ever there to blow off steam, right, No, but in a pretty literal way, right, where like fraternal fraternal societies that became thoughts come out of all of this, and actually like mutual aid organizations and yeah, we are out of all of this, we will be building to that. It's just interesting to me, how deep? Yeah about it? Yeah,

that's why I want to do on this. So I want to quote read a quote now from an American anthropologist named Walter Goldschmidt. There was always a magical religious aspect to such groups. They are characterized by ritual induction or initiations, by secret rights and ceremonies, and by a system of mythological justification. Often they also have a power function uniting the senior men the adults are some especially selected group as against the women and children or all outsiders.

Occasionally there are counter veiling women's organization, and that's that's also it's interesting to be how deep, like you can see shades of this and like some of the weird in cell communities online and like fucking Andrew takes Little clubhouse. It's so weird to me how far back this ship goes. What is this perceived lack of power? Don't they're saying, yeah, yeah,

interesting huh. So many ancient societies were either made of high status individuals or became that over time as their coordination allowed them to martial resources more effectively than other segments of society. And so secret societies they drove stratification and created it, but they also kind of resulted from stratification. It's it's obviously it's this is a very complex topic.

So it's not just one or the other. Secret religious societies or cults were ubiquitous during the late period of the Roman Empire as well and the Early Empire. In this case, they offered places for the elite to socialize and organize out of public view. And in fact, our modern term for cult was initially applied two different like religious sects. Right, a cult was not you've you've fallen

in with some weird charismatic guy. It's like, yeah, we decided to worship this goddess from Egypt who it became suddenly hip like in Rome to worship this goddess, you know, she's foreign in different so like all the cool kids are in this cult now and it's like just the thing that we did together. Wow, they're just like me. Yeah, you would have you would have gotten on quite well. Um. Yeah,

it's interesting debate. In the long history of European secret societies, the most infamous before the Illuminati was probably the Order of the Temple of Solomon that are known today as the Knights Templar. Initially founded by veterans of the First Crusade, this was an organization of lay people who took monastic vows and like the first thing that they did was basically act to protect, as kind of in a policing manner,

pilgrim routes of the Levant. Right, So you've got these pilgrims heading forward to the newly reconquered Holy Land during the brief period that it was reconquered, and you know, there's bandits and ships. So the Knights Templar kind of volunteering to UM to aid the transit of pilgrims by by helping to protect them UM. They also had a regular army and would fight in battle at periods of time as a regular army. Over time and that way

that you do, the Crusades went less well. There was much less call for Templars out in the Holy Land, and so they got into banking and became deeply woven into life across much of Europe. This disturbed traditional elites like king French King Philip the Fourth, and in thirteen o seven the order was purged in a you know, you'd call it an orgy of violence. It was a

pretty pretty solid violence orgy um. And it was like about calling them Satanists or something because they, yeah, they're always saying for demons come from or something like that or something. There's I think that's a part of it. There's a lot of things happening at once that kind

of feed into it. But yeah, that the Templars get accused of devil worship and accused of plotting for the overthrow of governments and try aing to like make themselves the you know, the like overthrow kind of the settled power in Europe UM, because there's not really any evidence of Yeah, yeah, they're really just they're really just like the ancient Bank of America, maybe more like an ancient credit union, UM, but yeah, ISU credit union with like

a military. Yeah, they primarily anax like racist violence. I mean, modern banks, everyone, everyone, every everyone with a military primarily enax racist violence. In this period of time. They're not really different from the French in that regard. So during the mid sixteen hundreds, Europe experienced a rather sudden burst

of religious creativity. The overwhelming control of the Catholic Church splintered, and suddenly you get your Lutherans and your Calvinists and all these all these Protestants start popping up all over the place. This coincided with what's called the Age of Enlightenment, which by the seventeen hundreds is in full swing, bringing a newfound understanding of the scientific method and the value

of rationality over dogma. Obviously, broad terms like the Age of Enlightenment exists to describe complex periods and very simple and very broad terms. The so called Enlightenment was not evenly distributed, and it arrived I think a little later in Bavaria because Bavaria stays extremely Catholic, which is in contrast to much of the rest of what we now call Germany. But when it did hit the term that gets used in the area is auf kleung Um, which I think just means age of Enlightenment, but in in

that silly language people speak in Bavaria, Southern Germany, I believe. So, yeah, it's a it's like the most conservative and the most catholic part of Germany. Um, which is the part of south because I think it, Yeah, it borders Austria, because that's where Hitler finds when he leads his home in Austria. Yeah, east ends. I mean it is east a lot of South too, trying to position myself. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's like borders. So yeah, it's it borders like Liechtenstein

in Austria, all that good ship. Um yeah, and um, it's a it's an interesting, interesting part of Germany for that, and it's going to be a lot more conservative than than the rest of the area. So the Enlightenments going to hit it in kind of a more controversial way.

And I want to quote now from an Italian sociologist named Massimo introvin the Bavaria of the second half of the eighteenth century, a Catholic duchy, the duke's elector would take the title of kings only in eighteen o five, and a predominantly Protestant Germany was where in Europe the spirit of the Catholic Reformation and the Baroque Age was

best preserved. Education and culture were dominated by the Society of Jesus, and the former Jesuits remained influential even after the papal suppression of their order in seventeen seventy three. The Dukes resisted the reforms initiated in the neighboring Austria, although the latter was also Catholic and the influence of the Catholic Church remained pervasive. Trying to reserve this situation,

the Catholic Church erected a barrier against the Enlightenment. Many books by Enlightenment philosophers, which circulated freely in the rest of Germany, were banned. In Bavaria, the Protestant against the Catholic Church and the Dukes happened. The protest against the Catholic Church and the Dukes happened mostly in the universities, where a number of professors were sensitive to Enlightenment ideas.

In turn, students off and kept in contact, particularly through the college fraternities that at this time began to gain importance with their colleagues in the Protestant German states. So Bavarious kind of Florida, right, like they're very much horrifying centence thinking of the Florida Illuinati being like the next like like like fift years this conspiracy, this conspiracy, the Florida Illuinati terrifying. Yeah, and the Florida Illuminati is like

two guys with a single history textbook. Um, but that's that is very much kind of what's happening here, right There's this there's this progressive you know, left wing and right wing, those terms I think kind of useless when we're talking about the situation in Europe in this period of time. But it's certainly like a very progressive and secular waves sweeping a lot of the rest of Germany. But Bavaria is like rebelling against it. And one of the ways they do it is by banning books and

cracking down. And one of the ways in which educated elites fight back and push Enlightenment values is through these little fraternities, these secret societies. Now it is kind of worth noting because we've just talked about how it's sort of the Florida of Europe. Bavaria does produce some of the most creative thinkers of the whole Enlightenment, including Adam Leibnitz, who independently discovered calculus alongside Isaac Newton Um and then they had they had a little bit of a falling

out with each other. He's also a wizard, which is cool, but so is everybody who does anything. So is Isaac. They're both wizards. They're wizards who used to be friends and then fell out over calculus. It happens all the time. On February six, thirty two years after Leibnitz's discovery of calculus, a baby boy named Adam Weischop is born or comes into the world. Um, now, his parents, it's not actually come into the world. What do you Okay, you know

what I mean? Well, I mean, Garrison probably, Yeah, when two cabbages love each other very much. Yeah, I drew a diagram for you about this the other day. Um. Okay, yeah, you can, you can, you can, Garrison, you can. You can refer to that book of worm, impregnation, fetish pornography. I said you last night. That's that's most of the basics. Twitter can help you out with the rest. Got it

all right, we'll do. Um. So Adam Weischop comes into the world, Um is born ever uh and yeah, a little babe in his it's he's in an interesting situation. He comes from kind of the upper class. His family has a decent amount of money. His parents were had been born and raised as Orthodox Jews, um, but they had decided to convert to capitalists or to a Catholic Catholicism. It was a little bit of a slip of the

tongue there. Um. They become Catholics because like it's a lot easier to be Catholic in Bavaria than it is to be an Orthodox Jew. Right that that should not surprise anybody. Uh. And because they're kind of like we should probably make his clean a break from our past as possible. Adams and parents enrolled him in a school that was held like run by a monastery as soon

as he could walk, so he's taught by monks. Now he has a childhood that's I don't think that it's not an abnormal amount of turbulent for a kid in the mid seventeen hundreds. His dad dies when he's just five, and since single moms, that's not an encouraged thing, especially if you have any kind of like money in this period of time. His dad's co worker at the University of Ingolstadt where he was born moves Adam into his household and takes him out of the monastery school and

sends him to one run by Jesuits. And um, boy, howdy talking about Jesuits. That's gonna take a second, So why don't we first talk about some products and services. The Jesuit Society would like to appreciate you for listening to this podcast, and if you would like to join us, then you can find us at that's the Jesuit ad. The Jesuit had Stop and then the first thing that comes up is gets your gold. Yeah, there you go. We're back and we're we're thinking about the Jesuits. Now.

When I was a kid, there was a Jesuit school called Jesuit right next to my school, and it was where the rich kids went to school, or at least the rich kids who were Catholic old Jesuit it. Yeah, it's called Jesuit. The big one in Portland is also just called and it was I don't know if this is very that's very Jesuit and concept. Yes, now, I don't know if it's the same in other with other

Jesuit schools. But in the Dallas area, those were the kids you bought drugs from, right because they got they got the cash. Their parents are too busy to really pay any attention. The Jesuit boys were. You know, that's where you get your weed. It's where you get your acid, you know when you're when you're young. Um, it's probably where you get your fentnel. Today you gen z kids and your fentnel. Um. Anyway, at this point in time, I don't know if the Jesuits have access too much fentanyl.

But they are something of a secret society and they've been like there are all of these Jesuits are like kind of members of an order that's been banned. So they're technically officially not Jesuits anymore. Because it is cooler. There's a there's so many conspiracy theories out the fucking Jesuits. But like I think the best way to describe them as nerdy catholics. Like their job like the thing they're supposed to do is make more people Catholics and also

learn and teach. Um. So there's a lot of Jesuit schools. They are historically pretty good schools, um and yeah anyway, and they're also again at the center of quite a few conspiracy theories. So because he's got the benefit of this Jesuit education, Adam is going to learn at a level that's kind of a lot beyond what most boys in that place in time could expect. And he takes to it like a duck too, you know the thing that ducks do. Um um no, no, no, much worse

than that. Anyway. By the time, yes, exactly, Garrison, by the time he was an adolescent, he spoke German, Czech, and Hebrew fluently, and he quickly thereafter. Yeah, but he's yeah, he learns ancient Greek, Latin and Italian. Next yeah, he is in for um. He gets admitted to age to university at age fifteen, which is yeah, yeah, he's one of those kids pushed down the stairs a lot. I should have been school at age fifteen, but I don't go around bragging about it on podcasts. Yeah, you don't

speak in Greek either, Garrison. Yeah, I've learned. I'm trying because I need I need to get a lot better with my Greek for the Greek magical papyri stuff. And it's hard because all of the all of the all, like the consonants sound weird. But anyway, yes, they say, was how to say spanna copita hot td that's good Spana copita without cheese. That was all I needed to get buy in Greece or vegan span. Now here's a

question for you, Garrison. You're getting You're getting your PhD in magic ship right now from that from that online school that I have paid for among other magic things that Yet, sure, how close are you to that PhD? Buddy, I'll get it within the year. You get it within a year. Well, that's honest. I've I've I've had I've had other developments in my magical study that is slightly more impressive and reputable than that school. So we'll see,

we'll see. Yeah, Well, if you don't finish it within the next few months, Garrison, then you'll get your pH d much later than Adam y shopped because he gets his doctorate five years later at age twenty. So I can still get it by age twenty, I can, I can do it. Yeah, well you bet. You better move fast. So he spends his teenage years buried in books at the University of English dots massive library, which has forty two d books. Now, for a bit of perspective, I have,

that's more than all of Florida. Well it is, it is now after they banned all the books. Yes, yeah, that's that's what. Yeah, that's a lot of books for Florida. I just I find it interesting, like the difference in what a lot of books was in you know, this period of time, the late seventeen hundreds, kind of the start of the print era, and like, like, for example, today the Internet archive has two million modern books and more than thirty six million books and texts. Um. It's

just that's kind of neat. That's a neat achievement. Although a lot of those books are trash, so, but they were trash back then, probably too a lot of the time. Anyway, Adams a big reader, very smart kid. He becomes enthralled with a lot of Enlightenment ideas and a lot of Enlightenment philosophies as much as he can access while it's sort of banned in his area. Now he does very well at the school. He gets promoted as soon as he graduates, basically to assistant instructor to the Chair of

canon Law. Um. And while I don't really know what that job would entail and I don't care to learn, Adam was the first non Jesuit to hold it in a century. Um, this does not go over well with the Jesuits. They're not thrilled about this. And I'm gonna quote next from a book by the Charles River editors. This prompted a stir of furrowing browse with a the Jesuit community. Still, Adam's hot streak was anything but over.

In seventy five, when the seven year old was main dean of the Faculty of Law, the Jesuits sputtered their drinks and slammed their fists on their tables. The Jesuits had had enough. They barged into the university boardroom and demanded Adam's paycheck be withheld until he complied with the university's principles. So you know that's uh not gonna go well for them, um, Adam. They accused him of basically promoting off cloruing the the Enlightenment and teaching banned topics

that like different light enlightened philosopher exactly. Yeah, he's talking about secularism, the idea that maybe the Catholic Church shouldn't run everything they don't like this um and this pisces off Adam right, the fact that he's he's having to fight against these kind of regressive Jesuits and their attitudes

towards religion, it really pisces him off. And whenever he would come across a bump on the road, across like some sort of stumbling block that was put up by these these old timey monk type assholes, he would think back to the words of one of his favorite philosophers, Jean Jacques Rousseau. Um. One quote in particular stood out to him. The only practice that went not to teach children is that they said never should never submit, which is you know that's base. Yeah, yeah, you Adam by shock,

says youth liberation baith based based youth liberationist. Yeah, you should hear this guy's attitude on bedtime discourse. Boy. Some of Adam's colleagues who were too frightened to stand up for him against the Jesuits, but who were sympathetic to his Aims reached out to tell him like, hey, man, I know you're dealing with this secret society who are being real assholes. There's another secret society you might want to join because they can give you some some support

in your fight against the Jesuits. And that secret society was the Freemasons. Now, people talk a lot about the Freemasons, um they share to they were they will never stop. At its core, the Masons are exactly like the secret societies. We started this episode talking about these kind of neolithic organizations,

like it's like a guild. Yeah, yeah, it's a guilt right down to the fact that a big part one of the big things about the Brotherhood of the Tumul is that you you get these very nice, elaborate funerals. A big thing that the Mason's provided was like life insurance that came with burial benefits for Mason's, Like that was a major reason to join the Masons. There's also it was a big part of it is for all that like people talk about the rituals and and the

magic stuff. A huge part of it is like their members are mostly middle class and like upper middle class professionals, and if you're a Mason. You get like a ten percent discount at all Mason affiliated stores. So it's like it's just like, yeah, it's it's like it's a lot like Triple A. It's like Triple A and kind of like us A A where it's like you get discounted life insurance. That's a lot harder for people who aren't in this organization to get. Um, it's very must. Triple

are really cool too, Yes, they are. They are. I had to actually sacrifice a goat to get them to jump my car the other week. Um. Yeah, in five hundred years, this conspiracy is about Triple A group that's that's running the AI Dystophia in a hundred years will have forgotten the secret of electricity, so their ability to jump cars, which just seem like magic, your esoteric knowledge. Somebody, somebody finds like an old Triple A car that has

like the fucking maintenance handbook for a Toyota Corolla. Start to worship at the secrets, and once you passed down through the lineages, you rise to the order of unlock new passages of the manual. Just a thousand people sitting in front of an old Toyota and you do that thing where you like turn the key slightly and open the door so it starts making sound and they all

just help. That's the home of the future, meditates to the sound of the car back then they can figure how to navigate the bureaucracy from when they move from one region to another to join a different sect of the Triple A. So the Freemasons were not an old organization at the time Adam was advised to join them.

They had started in kind of and that we don't know exactly when they start because there's actually not ever going to be an exact date for when they started, because they emerge out of a bunch of different kind of independent groups that are all sort of similar. In the early seventeen hundreds and by the very organic it wasn't yes, yes, yes, there's all these independent groups doing

the same thing. And I think in seventeen fifteen, and like I believe it was Scotland is the first time like a bunch of them all kind of merged together and say like, hey, we're going to be the Freemasons. But yeah, it's a it's a very as you said, it's a very organic process. Um And by the late seventeen hundreds, they'd spread from the Aisles down to Bavaria, and Adam decides, Okay, I'll dip my toes in masonry. I would like some back up against these weirdo jesuit

fox um. And he he does a little bit of Mason stuff, but he's kind of turned off by all the all their weirdo occult rituals. He is like, I want to share in trade in band knowledge, and you guys are like dressing like Sultan's and tapping each other with toy swords on the shoulder. Um. Like a lot of Mason rituals are like racist costumes and silly little plates. Um. You can go to music, you can go to Mason museums. There's one in Los Angeles that's really interesting, and you

can see they're silly little outfits. It's like high school theater grade level of construction. And I assume it was not much different back at the seventeen hundreds. Try to buy old swords. Some of the only swords from the nineteenth century that are available are some of the Mason swords, and they look like fucking runfair garbage. Yeah, they look like shit, terrible swords from the fucking Mason's for all this Mason slander. If any since they're out there, feel

free to hit me up. Yes, I will join. Oh I could have joined at one point. My grandpa was a Mazon, but it seemed like a complete waste of time. Um I don't know. Yeah, hit us up, Mason's. Um, hit us up. Grand Masonic Conspiracy. Have swords and we can talk. Yeah. I'm already a member of multiple secret societies. I will be happy to add another one to the roster. Yeah.

Um great. So these rituals, in addition to being cringe e, existed to provide the men there with a sense that what they were doing was hidden and separate from the regular world. And I want to read a quote from an anthropologist Janet Burke describing them. There is no question that the adoption lodge initiation rituals were designed to heighten dramatically the sense of friendship based on virtue among members. They contained all the consciousness changing elements of traditional rites

of passage found in many cultures throughout history. Each ceremony began with seclusion of the candidate in a reflection chamber. The main part of the initialation revolved around the imparting of knowledge, and it closed with integration into the larger group as a full fledged member. Knowledgeable leaders imparted secrets, extracted oaths, and demanded humility. They employed strong symbol laden

words and instruments and authority from a distant past. Candidates were required to pass through a series of degrees and master each before moving on towards the font of final knowledge, the perfection promised by the organization, which was again a ten percent discount at certain restaurants. It's amazing, It is really funny. It's like when I go to the Army's gonna flash my basin car. This is this is what

the elite ofment is really for. If you want free meals, wear a circle A and then go to where go to one of those towns where every service class working person is an anarchist and I have I have joined a secret society that rules the world and as the result, every fifth trip that I take to the Sizzler is free. So funny. Now, if you want to get free trips to the Sizzler, maybe that's what is being advertised next on our podcast. You don't know, it might be listen

in Sizzler Heads Garrison. Have you ever been to the Sizzler. No second question related. What's the most shrimp you've ever vomited up? Probably not much, maybe like maybe five or six shrimps. Okay, Sophie, we're taking a work trip to the Sizzler. Gotta gotta pill Garrison on eating rancid shrimp at the Sizzler buffet. Oh boy, all right, the rest of you pill yourself on these ads. Ah, we're back. We're talking about times that we and our loved ones

have all vomited at the Sizzler. Nothing like a Sizzler parking lot for puking in front of like some family four and like having these little kids just watch you hurl, and it's it's such a good time. There's nothing I love more than stranger's children seeing the vomit out in public. It's it's a beautiful experience. See, I'm surprised you didn't go for the outback with this bit. Oh. I vomited in many an outback parking lot. You see. Puking is kind of my magic, and I'm very much exoteric with

that sort of thing. A vomit mate, Uh, good stuff, I am. I am not invited you to you cannot afford the cleaning bill. That is a constant problem with secret societies. So Adam goes through this initiation ritual and he thinks it's kind of stupid. Um, I have no idea what he's gonna wind up doing. But his his issues are like number one, he's like, these fucking Freemasons

are too new. They pretend to be an ancient society, but they're not even a hundred years old, like, and it's there's making me spend a bunch of money on stupid costumes for this like bullshit. The other problem he has is that it feels like it's too accessible to the public. A lot of like regular people are Masons, like normal, you know, not like super poor generally, but like pretty normal dudes. And he's like, I want to try again, I want to trade and like forbidden knowledge.

I don't. I don't want to be hanging out with the butcher that lives like four doors down. That's not a good secret society. So he starts sketching out what he wants to do, and he makes a plan to

create a better secret society, a perfect secret society. And his plan is basically he wants to make an invisible web of what he calls wisdom schools that will promote the molding of morals, scientific and human progress, and like this, uh, this belief he's come He's come to that the sort of acceptance of the scientific method over religious dogma is the path to happiness for the human race. That's that's what he wants to spread, and he wants to spread

it through this like network of secret wisdom schools. So on May one, seventeen seventy six, twenty eight year old Adam White Shop founded the Covenant of Perfectability. And again he's he's calling it that because the idea is we're going to perfect the human race through knowledge. There's some time happened in seventeen seventy six. Yeah, yeah, that's that.

That's it's famously the year where nothing occurred. Um. By the fact that this happens in seventeen seventy six is going to become the core of about a million stupid conspiracy. What what horrible, horrible timing, Adam, motherfucker pick a different year. Um. So he decides, after a brief period of time that the Covenant of perfect Ability kind of a dogshit name. Stupid stupid name. So he renames the society the Order

Illuminati Bavarians or in English, the Order of the Bavarian Illuminati. Yeah, much better name. You gotta give it to him. This is why we do a b testing doesn't Doesn't the Illuminati mean like the enlightened ones are something we are? Yeah, we're talking about what we'll talk about that kind of There's a couple of debates, so Adams specifically picks it because of there was a Spanish organization called the illumbrados Um, which also means illuminated ones um. He also likes the

French term illuminaise. There had been a number of little secret societies that had versions of that in their name, but the Latin his was Latin, and part of why they're all using variants of illuminate of illuminated is that kind of in the Latin it means more like spiritual and mental than it does like literally illuminating a space with light. Um. Yeah um. And he he wants his his interest here is not to create an mystic society. He is not super into like the weirdo ritual stuff.

But he comes to the conclusion just based on his low opinion of the people around him. That quote of all the means I know to lead men, the most effectual is a concealed mystery. So he decides he's going to wrap this network of schools and like a skin of the skin of a mystic organization, because he thinks that will draw in more people and people who can

fund what he's doing. From the beginning, he recognized that mostly men want a way to feel like they're special, somehow separate from the rest of their peers in the greater mass of humanity. Secret societies have always offered versions of this, but in the new modern age that was being built, a sense of connection to the mystic was more valued than ever. Adam's goal was to free society from the domination of cults like the Jesuits. But to do it, he was going to have to create a

cult himself. The only way to stop a bad cult with a weird religio political hierarchy as a good cult. Um, Yeah,

it's not gonna work great. So Adam starts talking with his colleagues at the University of ingles Dot about his plans, and they all are on board, because again, not much is happening in the late seventeen hundreds, The first one of the first people who kind of buys into his idea is an eighteen year old student named Anton von Massenhausen, and Anton suggests that he modeled the structure of his

secret society off of college fraternities. Now, these are not the frats of the modern era entirely, which are based more around partying than other things. Um, but fraternity is kind of an Enlightenment concept. It actually means something very important in this period of time. It's a codification effectively of the systems of mutual aid that had existed within secret societies forever. Like this concept of fraternity is like

a buzzword that's going around at the time. Um, and it kind of goes beyond just like simple concepts of community mutual aid. Famed sociology just E J. Hobbs Bomb noted that society is like the Mason's elicited a sense of fraternity in part due to the heightened alternate reality

of secret religious ceremonies that they carried out. So basically, some of the there's this sense of fraternity, and part of how you inculcate that is by making people feel like they're they're privy to a like secret understanding of the world that everyone else doesn't have. The first totally not how radical politics work. It's totally. It's separate than when someone comes an anarchist or a communist or different or a fascist for that matter, not the same thing.

Oh maybe fascists do it, but definitely not the left. Yeah, definitely not no one else, no one else. Um. This is not effectively the same thought process that has made Twitter so fucking insufferable. Um, completely different. So the first official meeting of the Illuminati consisted of Adam Bishop and four other dudes, all young students of law that Bishop had either tutored or just to say, did, were good

kids that he could kind of manipulate. Their first order of business was to create their own special symbol, a wreathed medallion featuring a wide eyed owl. By the way, this is why there's a big owl at uh the fucking the what is it that gathering in the woods in northern California that all the rich people go to? Um? Burning met No way, that's no, no, no, oh, the one that I don't actually know much about because I'm yeah, you could not call burning Man a secret society, um,

although there's elements of this here. No, the fucking um. I think I learned about it from your podcast. Honestly, I can't believe I've forgotten. Yeah, Bohemian growth, Bohemian grove. Yeah, but Bohemia is not that far away from Bavaria. No, Um, it sure isn't. It's very far away from California, not

not Yeah, probably so. Yeah, it's so. One of the things that they do at the end of every Bohemian Grove, which is like all of the rich people, rich and powerful people go and party with Henry Kissinger for like a week and they stage ridiculous little plays and they carry out a ritual and kind of the crowning moment of it all is the cremation of care where they

burn a forty ft tall owl um. Anyway, interesting, how how how and again this is part of where the conspiracies come from, is that like a lot of this ship gets passed down for whatever reason, this kind of image of an owl um becomes, you know, as iconic as the Mason's eye, uh glyphs that they would put in ship that like winds up on the US dollar

and stuff. Um. Now, in that first meeting, the at this point five member Illuminati listed their objectives as to stimulate a human and sociable vision, support virtue where it may be threatened or oppressed by vice, to promote the progress of all people, and foster and benefit those deprived of education. Now that sounds pretty nice. That's not a

bad not a bad list of things to do. Um. Adam additionally promised that he would protect his followers from persecution or oppression, and that he would tie the hands of any kind of despotism UM by building a society that was capable of working between national lines. Yeah, his goal is to get as many intelligent and influential people to secretly join his Illuminati as possible so that they can kind of take over and manipulate the levers of

power in Europe. UM. At the time he starts the Illuminati, Adam has moved beyond his simple desire to like support these Enlightenment attitudes that were pro science and pro religion,

and he's gotten increasingly radical. He started toying with deism and he kind of gets pilled on atheism and starts to believe that, like, not only is atheism a more rational way to look at the world, but we should we should push people in power in Europe who are atheists to kind of take more power away from the Church. And you know what, it actually seems like this whole monarchy thing that we're doing across Europe is a bad

idea and maybe everything should be a republic. So he this is when I talk about like he's trying to push these secret values. What he's trying to push is like secularism and the idea that people get to vote. Um. Now this is it is some seventy seventeen seventies six shiit um. So obviously it's illegal for him to talk about this where he is living. Other parts of you know, what becomes Germany, you can talk about this, but he

cannot in Bavaria. So he borrows from the Masons and he creates a strictly tiered ranking system for the Illuminati.

I'm gonna quote from Massimo introviing here again. Although it counted only five members, the Order was already divided into an areopagus consisting of Vai Shopped Massenhausen and another student, Max Mers, whose members knew the Order was a brand new creation, and a circle of novices who were left to believe that the Illuminati had instead centuries of history existed outside of Ingolstadt and had mysterious leaders above the

Professor of law. So well, the first decision he makes is, we have to pretend we're like a thousand years old and across the world and secretly rule the world. That is where it starts, Like the Illuminati creates the Illuminati conspiracy theory so people won't think they're silly. That's a good way to improve that you're not silly. This is

where it all begins. Vaishaft felt a need to hide the truth from his followers, which eventually extended to pretending the Lawyer was much larger than it needed to be. Um Now, this was justified by the needs of secrecy, but mainly by the fact that what Adams trying to push is extremely boring. The actual center levels of the Illuminati. When you like get through all of the not all of the initiations and gain all of the rank, there's

no more rituals. He just hands you a couple of illegal books about like maybe it would be cool if the Catholic Church didn't run things like that's the center of You get to the center of it, and it's like, you know, would be neat voting like that that's literally the core of the Illuminatis teaching. Yeah, but it's like it's like it's like build it's like building this onion of protection exactly, secrecy around that because it actually is illegal. Yeah, exactly.

And I feel like people might actually take a few notes here as not only more information gets made illegal, like certain books or not being allowed to be shared in schools, but also stuff like HRT and stuff like

uh like access access to abortion stuff. Right, as all these things get more and more legal, these types of secret society tactics get used again because they've been stuff that they've they've been things that we've been doing for a long long time, depending on the circumstances, although in this case you might want to learn from some mistakes

that they're about to make. Roma. So um, lower level members members are promised that all of these rituals they're doing, all of this magic has this like central explanation that's revealed the higher level, higher level members. But Adam has no no like prep plans of actually letting most people

in on us, because again it's really risky. Um. So most of the plan is to kind of keep people, string them along doing the silly rituals and hoping that that keeps enough of them happy that like the cream will rise to the top, so to speak. I love the hypocrisy of that is sending enlightenment and teaching people, so we have to lie to these guys. Yeah. Um, it's also one of the reasons why they do this, which is very practical and and smart, but extremely funny,

is um. I'm actually just gonna quote again from Introphing. Here, the order counted on Bavarian provincial notables, indispensable for the dues they paid, but who had affiliated themselves thinking of joining a kind of freemasonry in small towns where either there was no Masonic lodge or they did not know where to find them. They had vaguely heard of alchemy and secret rights and hoped that they would be revealed

to them. While they would not be particularly interested and bear into old whole box anti religious philosophy, even if it were revealed to them, which had of prudence, it was not by shops quasi Masonic imitations were pedantic and uninspired. The answer he invariably gave to the disappointed was that, as in Freemasonry and the Illuminati, the first three degrees were preparatory to further initiations where the true ritual mysteries

would be revealed. So a big part of this is I need rich people's money, and they want to pretend that. They want to feel like they're alchemists, so I've gotta like, I've gotta fake that so we can fund the illegal book trade. Like he's conning rich people out of money by convincing them they've become wizards in order to buy illegal books and trade them around Europe. I mean, alright, alright, that sounds all right. That is also that's kind of cool.

That's also been a cork component of wizardry for a long time. A big part of being a wizard is lying about alchemy and taking rich people's money. It's that and that's the real magic. It's it's that that also getting sick and dying off of metal fumes being being boiled in like an eventilated room. Those are the those the two main comple doing alchemy at least witchcraft. They

just sell us crystals. H See. I want to go back to my favorite meme, the two guys from Predators shaking hands and have it be wizards rednecks in the South with a backyard workshop inhaling metal fumes and getting a metal flume fever, Margaret, you got anything to plug? Yes, if you inhale books illegal books, that only the secret. If you can find where to purchase Escape from Insul Island, then you're on the in crowd. And I'll give you a hint. There's a code Tangled Wilderness dot org or

wherever you purchase books. That's my most recent book. You can get it there. Or you can actually listen to several of us um enact Escape from Insul Island. If you listen to the strangers in the Tangled Wilderness podcast, there's a live play of a role playing game based on UM based on my book Escape from Insul Island. That's what I got. We all played it. It was

really good. You also have a podcast on this very network, oh ship I do if you like cool people who did cool stuff, and then you can find where to It's called Cool People Did Cool Stuff. It's on cool Zonne Media. It comes out every Monday and Wednesday. It's sort of the inverse behind the Bastards. Not that I would ever do anything on original or derivative. Now, if you really want to be a cool person, who does cool stuff. What you should do is weld galvanized steel

without wearing any kind of mask or respirator. Cool. Yes, like the wizards to Yeah, zinc is really positive. M Well, you know I I see it at the grocery store, zinc pills. So clearly the most effective way to get zinc is a Welsh calvinized steel without a mass. When I used to be like really anxious and I was doing jewelry work, I would like start freaking out and calling like my doctor friend as soon as I, like, I like soldered something that had some galvanized on it,

and I was like, I'm about to die. Um. But then had one of my metalworker friends did almost die from accident galvanized so and that means he's in the coolest secret society of all the ancient order of nearly killed my lungs by welding galvinized steel. Yeah, mm hmm. Gare do you have anything you'd like to plug? Yeah? Sure. I recently wrapped up a four part series on the Defend the Atlanta Forest and Stop Cops City movement in Atlanta, Georgia. I could be that can be found on the It

could happen here. Podcast feed. Um yeah, it's it's it's four episodes at this point, could probably rely binge all of them all in a row. Uh yeah. It covered is a lot of the stuff from the past, the past few months and the recent killing of a of a of a force defender by the Georgia State Patrol. So it's a kind of some kind of some heavy stuff, but also talking about I think things that are important you get to hear from people that are on the

ground throughout the series. That is the that is the most recent kind of large project that I have that I've finished. Hell yeah, very cool, almost as cool as inhaling metal fumes. So I will say, um, near like a few blocks away from the Anarchist Community Center inside inside Atlanta, there is a free miess In building just like right right down the streets. So there is one of the front for the other possibly possibly almost certainly.

All right, everybody, come back next time when we will hear the exciting conclusion of the story of the Bavarian Illuminati. Uh and eventually all of the other illuminaties that that come after it, leading to Q and on and the probable destruction of Western civilization. Anyway, have a good, have a nice day. Behind the Bastards is a production of

cool zone Media. For more from cool zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.