A Year: Day to Day Men: 1st of May
Reaching Forward
On May 1, 1776, the Illuminati in Upper Bavaria was established by Jesuit-taught Adam Weishaupt.
Johann Adam Weishaupt was a German philosopher and professor of law at the University of Ingolstadt, Bavaria. He began his education at the age of seven at a Jesuit school. He later enrolled at the University of Ingolstadt and graduated in 1768 at age 20 with a doctorate of law. In 1772 he became a professor of law at that university.
After Pope Clement XIV’s suppression of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in 1773, Weishaupt became a professor of canon law, a position that was held exclusively by the Jesuits until that time. In 1775 Weishaupt was introduced to the empirical philosophy of Johann Georg Feder, a philosopher and author. Feder’s philosophy was based on the premise that knowledge was only deduced or inferred by one’s sense-based experience, from which one can then develop universal concepts.
Johann Adam Weishaupt founded the “Illuminati” in the Electorate of Bavaria on the first day of May in 1776. References vary on the goal of the Order: some saying the Order was not democratic internally, but sought to promote the doctrines of equality and freedom throughout society; others say the aim was to combat religion and superstition and foster rationalism in its place. Contrary to the the Enlightenment movement’s dictum that the passage of man out of his immaturity was done by using his own reason without the guidance of others, Weishaupt’s Order of Illuminati prescribed in detail everything which the members had to read and think.
Weishaupt’s radical rationalism and vocabulary did not succeed. Writings that were intercepted in 1784 were interpreted as seditious, and the Society was banned by the government of Karl Theodor, Elector of Bavaria, in 1784. Weishaupt lost his position at the University of Ingolstadt and fled Bavaria. After Weishaupt’s Order of Illuminati was banned and its members dispersed, it left behind no enduring traces of an influence, not even on its own members, who went on in the future to develop in quite different directions