As far as I am aware, while they tried to distance themselves, they are the same or closely aligned and/or worked together. Lon Milo Duquette and Manly Palmer Hall have shed a little light on the affiliations, and so called Egypt and Babylon, etc. (Mozart’s Magic Flute being a particularly delightful backstory).
It’s also interesting that so many worshipped in churches while also bringing to AA, OTO, Golden Dawn, which I’m not particularly adverse to, since I’ve learned to properly understand religions as esoteric rather than exoteric, and I’m not even against Masons or illuminati, per se, but a lot of these people got lost in the sauce and let power go to their heads.
That said, Freemasonry probably has farther reach. I can’t really provide more links, since this work was just a personal interest that I looked into for a few decades and didn’t really keep a running file.
Lon Milo Duquette the Thelemist occultist? I imagine he’d have incentives for taking maximalist interpretations, even if it involves taking leaps of faith. And doesn’t most of the “evidence” of the Illuminati existing beyond Weishaupt’s group come from hysterical anti-Masonic conspiracy theorists like Abbé Barruel (who blamed the horrors of the French Revolution on Masonry and Illuminism, which he conflated into a Satanic plot), and from other anti-Masonic conspiracy theorists who drew on his work?
Not that there weren’t groups claiming descent from the Illuminati, but along the same lines, for a long time you could join the Rosicrucians by sending a check to a PO box advertised in a magazine.
I’ve not read ( indeed haven’t heard of him until your post) Barruel and tend to dismiss satanic panic types out of hand, in general.
Yes, that Duquette, and I’m not familiar with him exaggerating, but I’m definitely interested in any material about that you care to provide. He does make a living on book sales, after all, so there’s definitely room for incentive. I stumbled across both him and Hall quite accidentally and incidentally, in my wanderings. He’s funny and entertaining.
Hall is definitely… interesting, with an interesting backstory. He also made a living selling books, so he also had incentive to exaggerate and take liberties.
Still, in looking into what the two I mentioned had to say on the subject, I couldn’t disprove it. I’m interested in anything you can point me toward, and grateful for it.
I feel pretty certain that masonry has further reach. But that could be because they operate more above board, you can probably find a lodge somewhere near you if you look.
Masonry was the prototype for such movements. Historians have it emerging from stonemasons’ guilds accepting (and becoming fashionable to) aristocratic/bourgeois patrons in the 17th century, and then riding a number of historical waves (enlightenment-era coffee-house culture, the rise of nationalism in the romantic era in Europe, Napoleon, the British Empire, and so on). Others drew on it. The Bavarian Illuminati were probably the best known, but by no means only, esoteric secret society modelled on Masonry. In the other direction, Rotary was essentially Masonry without the woo. Various nationalist, royalist and sectarian secret societies (like the Carbonari in Italy and unionists in Northern Ireland) modelled themselves on Masonry, and Cuba is the only Communist country to not ban Freemasonry because a lot of the revolutionaries there were Masons. So yes, Freemasonry was more of a moment than a coherent thing.
As far as I am aware, while they tried to distance themselves, they are the same or closely aligned and/or worked together. Lon Milo Duquette and Manly Palmer Hall have shed a little light on the affiliations, and so called Egypt and Babylon, etc. (Mozart’s Magic Flute being a particularly delightful backstory).
It’s also interesting that so many worshipped in churches while also bringing to AA, OTO, Golden Dawn, which I’m not particularly adverse to, since I’ve learned to properly understand religions as esoteric rather than exoteric, and I’m not even against Masons or illuminati, per se, but a lot of these people got lost in the sauce and let power go to their heads.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bavarian-illuminati
That said, Freemasonry probably has farther reach. I can’t really provide more links, since this work was just a personal interest that I looked into for a few decades and didn’t really keep a running file.
Lon Milo Duquette the Thelemist occultist? I imagine he’d have incentives for taking maximalist interpretations, even if it involves taking leaps of faith. And doesn’t most of the “evidence” of the Illuminati existing beyond Weishaupt’s group come from hysterical anti-Masonic conspiracy theorists like Abbé Barruel (who blamed the horrors of the French Revolution on Masonry and Illuminism, which he conflated into a Satanic plot), and from other anti-Masonic conspiracy theorists who drew on his work?
Not that there weren’t groups claiming descent from the Illuminati, but along the same lines, for a long time you could join the Rosicrucians by sending a check to a PO box advertised in a magazine.
I’ve not read ( indeed haven’t heard of him until your post) Barruel and tend to dismiss satanic panic types out of hand, in general.
Yes, that Duquette, and I’m not familiar with him exaggerating, but I’m definitely interested in any material about that you care to provide. He does make a living on book sales, after all, so there’s definitely room for incentive. I stumbled across both him and Hall quite accidentally and incidentally, in my wanderings. He’s funny and entertaining.
Hall is definitely… interesting, with an interesting backstory. He also made a living selling books, so he also had incentive to exaggerate and take liberties.
Still, in looking into what the two I mentioned had to say on the subject, I couldn’t disprove it. I’m interested in anything you can point me toward, and grateful for it.
I feel pretty certain that masonry has further reach. But that could be because they operate more above board, you can probably find a lodge somewhere near you if you look.
Masonry was the prototype for such movements. Historians have it emerging from stonemasons’ guilds accepting (and becoming fashionable to) aristocratic/bourgeois patrons in the 17th century, and then riding a number of historical waves (enlightenment-era coffee-house culture, the rise of nationalism in the romantic era in Europe, Napoleon, the British Empire, and so on). Others drew on it. The Bavarian Illuminati were probably the best known, but by no means only, esoteric secret society modelled on Masonry. In the other direction, Rotary was essentially Masonry without the woo. Various nationalist, royalist and sectarian secret societies (like the Carbonari in Italy and unionists in Northern Ireland) modelled themselves on Masonry, and Cuba is the only Communist country to not ban Freemasonry because a lot of the revolutionaries there were Masons. So yes, Freemasonry was more of a moment than a coherent thing.