Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, ghosts, myths, strange facts or just plain weird, weird goings-on.

This week: Secret Societies

The Illuminati are an extremely secret organisation that are said to stand behind the scenes of almost every important world event that has ever taken place, since their inception anyway.

It’s hard to get a grasp on what or who exactly the Illuminati are, this seems to make a good deal of sense though, as they are a "secret society". There are loads of theories on them, some claiming their members include the most powerful politicians and brilliant minds from every time period, while other theories go as far as saying they are a group of witches trying to lead humanity into a so called "golden age". 

As always, hecklerspray has taken the time to dig up their dirt, and their dirt is extremely interesting.

The term Illuminati actually means Enlightened Ones in
Latin. More than one group through the years has claimed to be the
Illuminati, usually due to their possession or rare texts, or some
other hard-to-come-by knowledge of one sort or another. 

The Bavarian Illuminati have been the most prevalent
incarnation of the group. They were founded on May 1st, 1776 – just
months before the US gained it’s independence. Their founder was a man
named Adam Weishaupt, a highly educated German. 

Weishaupt had been taught by Jesuits, and had been a member of the Society of Jesus.
After taking the position of Professor of Canon Law, his Jesuit mentors
were somehow offended, and all ties with them were cut. After the
sever, Weishaupt’s religious and political views became more liberal,
leaning towards Deism – an assumption that belief in God should be based on reason rather than revelation or tradition. This eventually lead to his forming the Order of Perfectibilists with Adolf Freiherr Knigge. The organisation’s name eventually changed to The Illuminati. 

The traditional enemies of the Illuminati pegged them as several
factions of spies that reported to unknown superiors, leading to much
of the mystery surrounding them today – if it’s own members were
unclear who is in the upper echelons, how could an outsider know?
Regarding his followers Weishaupt said:

"The most wonderful thing of
all is that the distinguished Lutheran and Calvinist theologians who
belong to our order really believe that they see in it (Illuminati) the
true and genuine sense of Christian Religion. Oh mortal man, is there
anything you cannot be made to believe?"

In the world today there are several people coming up with their own
theories as to what the Illuminati are filling their time with, and who
are their power-players. One of the more interesting theories comes
from former professional football player and frequent Coast to Coast AM guest David Icke.
He believes them to be an actual hidden government working in secret to
accomplish their goals. In this theory public manipulation is key, and
massive catastrophes are their way to accomplish it. 

According to Icke’s mind-set, the Holocaust, the bombing of Pan Am
Flight 103, the war in Bosnia, and the September 11 attacks are some
examples of the well orchestrated evil used to sway the world’s minds.

The most fascinating part of Icke’s theory is that this New World
Order (The Illuminati) that control the world are reptilian humanoids
with the ability to shape-shift. This reptilian blood line has been
here for generations. Icke apparently did some genealogy of world
leadership and found that there are familial relations among them, in
other words – many of the most powerful people in the world are
related. 

George H.W. Bush, Hillary Clinton and Tony Blair are all said to be
part of this reptilian clan. There are hosts of others said to be part
of them as well. Icke says:

"The Rothschilds, Rockefellers, the
British royal family, and the ruling political and economic families of
the U.S. and the rest of the world come from these SAME bloodlines. It
is not because of snobbery, it is to hold as best they can a genetic
structure — the reptilian-mammalian DNA combination which allows them
to ‘shape-shift’."

It’s out there, we know – but extremely interesting. A full detail
of the Illuminati, be it factual or complicated allegations, could
stretch well into a year’s worth of reading. The basic summary, as
we’ve already given you, is that no-one knows much about them. Whether
the group actually exists to pull some very important strings from
behind an invisible curtain, or it’s all the end result of paranoia and
a feeling of helplessness, it’s a fascinating topic. 

hecklerspray has never hungered for anything more than world domination. As such, we’ve applications out with The Illuminati, Skull and Bones, the Freemasons, and the 4-H club,
but to no avail – we’ve not heard back from any of them. We’ll just
have to gain ultimate power the old fashioned way. If someone could
tell us what the old fashioned way was, we’d really appreciate it.

Invisible power brokers and shape shifting aliens leads us to categorise the Illuminati topic as being Awesome. We could read on them for hours.

Read more:

Illuminati – Wikipedia 

[story by Shawn Lindseth]