On the Order of the Illuminati

...others who came into contact with Willermoz, St. Martin, and their followers, who called themselves Philalethes literally "Lovers of Truth," a Masonic rite founded in Paris in 1773 that focused on theosophy and occultism. These individuals considered the Gnostic and Kabbalistic-magical enthusiastic fantasies original: "Schwärmereyen"; in this context, it refers to excessive or ungrounded religious fervor contained in books such as Of Errors and of Truth original: "des Erreurs et de la Verité" by Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, Natural Picture original: "Tableau naturelle"; likely referring to Saint-Martin's "Natural Picture of the Relationships between God, Man, and the Universe", Diadem of the Sages original: "Diademe des Sages", and similar works to be the absolute pinnacle of Masonic wisdom. They also sought to connect this system with Freemasonry under the name of the Beneficent Knights original: "wohlthätigen Ritter"; specifically the Chevaliers Bienfaisants de la Cité Sainte, a degree system reformed by Jean-Baptiste Willermoz at a convention held in 1781 at Wilhelmsbad, near Hanau.

However, all these various parties among the Freemasons—neither the original Scottish and English Freemasons, nor the French with their newly invented degrees, neither the Masons of the Strict Observance, nor the Swedish Freemasons, neither the Rosicrucians nor the Philalethes—contained anything that agreed in the slightest with Illuminatism The Order of the Illuminati, a secret society founded in Bavaria in 1776 by Adam Weishaupt, which aimed to replace religious influence with Enlightenment rationalism in terms of principles, rules, or purposes. To be sure, some degrees and some explanations of hieroglyphics (which, moreover, were left to the discretion of the orators) might not have been able to withstand the strict criticism of a learned and orthodox theologian. Yet, on one hand, such degrees were not a universal system, and on the other, the explanations of the orators were not viewed as reliable mandates or authentic interpretations; and there is no doubt that if a...