Memos
ILLUMINATI PROJECT: MEMO #1
7/23
J.M.:
The first reference I've found is in Violence by Jacques Ellul (Seabury Press, New York,
1969). He says (pages 18-19) that the Illuminated Ones were founded by Joachim of
Floris in the llth century and originally taught a primitive Christian doctrine of poverty
and equality, but later under the leadership of Fra Dolcino in the 15th century they
became violent, plundered the rich and announced the imminent reign of the Spirit. "In
1507," he concludes, "they were vanquished by the 'forces of order'-that is, an army
commanded by the Bishop of Vercueil." He makes no mention of any Illuminati
movement in earlier centuries or in more recent times. I'll have more later today.
Pat
P.S. I found a little more about Joachim of Floris in the back files of the National
Review, William Buckley and his cronies think Joachim is responsible for modern
liberalism, socialism and communism; they've condemned him in fine theological
language. He committed the heresy, they say, of "immanentizing the Christian
Eschaton." Do you want me to look that up in a technical treatise on Thomism? I think
it means bringing the end of the world closer, sort of.
ILLUMINATI PROJECT: MEMO #2
7/23
J.M.:
My second source was more helpful: Akron Daraul, A History of Secret Societies
(Citadel Press, New York, 1961).
Daraul traces the Illuminati back to the 11th century also, but not to Joachim of Floris.
He sees the origin in the Ishmaelian sect of Islam, also known as the Order of Assassins.
They were vanquished in the 13th century, but later made a comeback with a new, lessviolent
Philosophy and eventually became the Ishmaelian sect of today, led by the Aga Khan. However, in
the 16th century, in Afghanistan, the Illuminated Ones (Roshinaya) picked up the
original tactics of the Order of Assassins. They were wiped out by an alliance of the
Moguls and Persians (pages 220-223). But, "The beginning of the seventeenth century
saw the foundation of the Illuminated Ones of Spain-the Allumbrados, condemned by
an edict of the Grand Inquisition in 1623. In 1654, the 'illuminated' Guerinets came into
public notice in France." And, finally-the part you're most interested in- the Bavarian IIluminati
was founded on May Day, 1776, in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, by Adam Weishaupt, a
former Jesuit. "Documents still extant show several points of resemblance between the
German and Central Asian I'himi-nists: points that are hard to account for on grounds of
pure coincidence" (page 255). Weishaupt's Illuminati were suppressed by the Bavarian
government in 1785; Daraul also mentions the Illuminati of Paris in the 1880s, but
suggests it was simply a passing fad. He does not accept the notion that the Illuminati
still exist today.
This is beginning to look big. Why are we keeping the details from George?
Pat
ILLUMINATI PROJECT: MEMO #3
7/24
J.M.:
The Encyclopedia Britannica has little to say on the subject (1966 edition, Volume 11,
"Halicar to Impala," page 1094):
Illuminati, a short-lived movement of republican free thought founded on May Day
1776 by Adam Weishaupt, professor of canon law at Ingolstadt and a former Jesuit. . . .
From 1778 onward they began to make contact with various Masonic lodges where,
under the impulse of A. Knigge (q.v.) one of their chief converts, they often managed to
gain a commanding position. . . .
The scheme itself had its attractions for literary men like Goethe and Herder, and even
for the reigning dukes of Gotha and Weimar....
The movement suffered from internal dissention and was ultimately banned by an edict
of the Bavarian government in 1785.
Pat
ILLUMINATI PROJECT: MEMO #4
7/24
J.M.:
Here's a letter that appeared in Playboy a few years ago ('The Playboy Advisor,"
Playboy, April, 1969, pages 62-64):
I recently heard an old man of right-wing views-a friend of my grandparents-assert that
the current wave of assassinations in America is the work of a secret society called the
Illuminati. He said that the Illuminati have existed throughout history, own the
international banking cartels, have all been 32nd-degree Masons and were known to lan
Fleming, who portrayed them as Spectre in his James Bond books-for which the
Illuminati did away with Mr. Fleming. At first all this seemed like a paranoid delusion
to me. Then I read in The New Yorker that Allan Chapman, one of Jim Garrison's
investigators in the New Orleans probe of the John Kennedy assassination, believes that
the Illuminati really exist....
Playboy, of course, puts down the whole idea as ridiculous and gives the standard
Encyclopedia Britannica story that the Illuminati went out of business in 1785.
Pat
ILLUMINATI PROJECT: MEMO #5
7/26
J.M.:
Sometimes you find things in the damnedest places. The following is from a girl's
magazine ('The Conspiracy" by Sandra Glass, Teenset, March 1969, pages 34-40).
Simon proceeded to tell me about the Bavarian Illuminati. The nightmarish story begins
in 1090 A.D. in the Middle East when Hassan i Sabbah founded the Ismaelian Sect, or
Hashishim, so called because of their use of hashish, a deadly drug derived from the
hemp plant which is better known as the killer weed marijuana. . . . The cult terrorized
the Moslem world until Genghis Khan's Mongols brought law and order to the area.
Cornered in their mountain hideaway, the Hashishim dope fiends proved no match for
the clean-living Mongol warriors, their fortress was destroyed, and their dancing girls
shipped to Mongolia for rehabilitation. The heads of the cult fled westward. . . .
"The Illuminati surfaced next in Bavaria in 1776," Simon told me. . . . "Adam
Weishaupt, a student of the occult, studied the teachings of Hassan i Sabbah and grew
hemp in his backyard. On February 2, 1776, Weishaupt achieved illumination.
Weishaupt officially founded the Ancient Illuminated Seers of Bavaria on May 1st,
1776. Their slogan was 'Ewige Blumenkraft.' . . . They attracted many illustrious
members such as Goethe and Beethoven. Beethoven tacked up an Ewige Blumenkraft
poster on the top of the piano on which he composed all nine of his symphonies."
The last paragraph of the article is, however, the most interesting of all:
Recently I saw a documentary film on the Democratic Convention of 1968, and I was
struck by the scene in which Senator Abraham Ribicoff made a critical remark
provoking the anger of the Mayor of Chicago. In the ensuing tumult it was impossible
to hear the Mayor's shouted retort, and there has been much speculation about what he
actually said. To me it seemed his lips were forming the words that by this time become
frighteningly familiar: "Ewige Blumenkraft!"
The further I dig, the wilder the whole picture looks. When are we going to tell George
about it?
Pat
ILLUMINATI PROJECT: MEMO #6
7/26
J.M.:
The John Birch Society has looked into the subject and they have a theory of their own.
The first source I've found on this is a pamphlet "CFR: Conspiracy to Rule the World"
by Gary Alien, associate editor of the Birchers' magazine, American Opinion. Alien's
thesis is that Cecil Rhodes created a secret society to establish English domination of
the world in 1888. This society acts through Oxford University, the Rhodes
Scholarships and-hold your breath-the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonprofit
foundation for the study of International Affairs headquartered right here on Sixtyeighth
Street in New York. Seven out of nine of our last Secretaries of State were
recruited from the CFR, Alien points out, and dozens of other leading politicians as
well-including Richard Nixon. It is also implied, but not directly stated, that William
Buckley, Jr. (an old enemy of the Birchers) is another tool of the CFR; and the Morgan
and Rothschild banking interests are supposed to be financing the whole thing.
How does this tie in with the Illuminati? Mr. Alien merely drops hints, linking Rhodes
to John Ruskin, and Ruskin to earlier internationalists, and finally stating that "the
originator on the profane level of this type of secret society" was Adam Weishaupt,
whom he calls "the monster who founded the Order of the Illuminati on May 1, 1776."
Pat
ILLUMINATI PROJECT: MEMO #7
7/27
J.M.:
This is from a small left-wing newspaper in Chicago (The RogerSPARK Chicago, July
1969, Vol. 2, No. 9: "Daley Linked With Illuminati," no author's name given):
No historian knows what happened to Adam Weishaupt after he was exiled from
Bavaria in 1785, and entries in "Washington's" diary after that date frequently refer to
the hemp crop at Mount Vernon.
The possibility that Adam Weishaupt killed George Washington and took his place,
serving as our first President for two terms, is now confirmed. . . . The two main colors
of the American flag are, excluding a small patch of blue in one corner, red and white:
these are also the official colors of the Hashishim. The flag and the Illuminati pyramid
both have thirteen horizontal divisions: thirteen is, of course, the traditional code for
marijuana . . . and is still used in that sense by Hell's Angels among others.
Now, "Washington" formed the Federalist party.
The other major party in those days, The Democratic Republicans, was formed by
Thomas Jefferson [and] there are grounds for accepting the testimony of the Reverend
Jedediah Morse of Charleston, who accused Jefferson of being an Illuminati agent.
Thus, even at the dawn of our government, both parties were IIluminati fronts. ...
This story later repeats the Teenset report that Mayor Daley used the phrase "Ewige
Blumenkraft" during his incoherent diatribe against Abe Ribicoff.
Pat
ILLUMINATI PROJECT: MEMO #8
7/27
J.M.: More on the Washington-Weishaupt theory:
In spite of the fact that his face appears on billions of stamps and dollar bills, and his
portrait hangs in every public building in the country, no one is quite sure what
Washington looks like. A "Project 20" script, "Meet George Washington" will be seen
tonight at 7:30 on Channel (fill in by local stations). The program offers contemporary
portraits of the first President, some of which do not even seem to be the same man.
This is a press release sent out by NEC on April 24, 1969. Some of the portraits can be
found in Encyclopedia Britannica and the resemblance to portraits of Weishaupt is
undeniable.
Incidentally, Barbara called my attention to this: the letter in Playboy asking about the
Illuminati was signed "R.S., Kansas City, Missouri." According to the Kansas City
newspapers, a Robert Stanton of that city was found dead on March 17, 1969 (about a
week after the April Playboy appeared on the newsstands) with his throat torn as if by
the talons of some enormous beast. No animal was reported missing from any of the
local zoos.
Pat
ILLUMINATI PROJECT: MEMO #9
7/28
J.M.:
The following chart appeared in the East Village Other, June 11, 1969, with the label
"Current Structure of the Bavarian Illuminati Conspiracy and the Law of Fives":
The chart hangs at the top of the page, the rest of which is empty space—as if the
editors originally intended to publish an article explaining it, but decided (or were
persuaded) to suppress all but the diagram itself.
Pat
ILLUMINATI PROJECT: MEMO #10
7/28
J.M.:
On the origin of the pyramid-and-eye symbol, test your credulity on the following yarn
from Flying Saucers in the • Bible by Virginia Brasington (Saucerian Books, 1963, page
43.):
The Continental Congress had asked Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and John
Adams to arrange for a seal for the United States of America. . . . None of the designs
they created or which were submitted to them, were suitable. . . .
Fairly late at night, after working on the project all day, Jefferson walked out into the
cool night air of the garden to clear his mind. In a few minutes he rushed back into the
room, crying, jubilantly: "I have it! I have it!" Indeed, he did have some plans in his
hands. They were the plans showing the Great Seal as we know it today.
Asked how he got the plans, Jefferson told a strange story. A man approached him
wearing a black cloak that practically covered him, face and all, and told him that he
(the stranger) knew they were trying to devise a Seal, and that he had a design which
was appropriate and meaningful. . . .
After the excitement died down, the three went into the garden to find the stranger, but
he was gone. Thus, neither these Founding Fathers, nor anybody else, ever knew who
really designed the Great Seal of the United States!
Pat
ILLUMINATI PROJECT: MEMO
7/29
J.M.:
The latest I've found on the eye-and-pyramid is in a San Francisco underground paper
(Planet, San Francisco, July 1969, Vol. I, No.4.), suggesting it as a symbol for Timothy
Leary's political party when he was running for governor of California instead of just
running:
The emblem is a tentative design for the Party's campaign button. One wag suggests that
everyone cut out the circle from the back of a dollar bill and send the wholly dollar to
Governor Leary so he can wallpaper his office with them. Then paste the emblem on
your front door to signify your membership in the party.
Translations: The year of the beginning New Secular Order
Both translations are wrong, of course. Annuit Coeptis means "he blesses our
beginning" and Novus Ordo Se~ clorem means "a new order of the ages." Oh, well,
scholarship was never the hippies' strong point. But — Tim Leary an Illuminatus?
And pasting the Eye on the door — I can't help but think of the Hebrews marking their
doorways with the blood of a lamb so that the Angel of Death would pass by their
houses.
Pat
ILLUMINATI PROJECT: MEMO #12
8/3
J.M.:
I've finally found the basic book on the Illuminati: Proofs of a Conspiracy by John
Robison (Christian Book Club of America, Hawthorn, California, 1961; originally published in 1801). Robison was an English Mason who discovered through personal experience that the French Masonic
lodges—such as the Grand Orient—were Illuminati fronts and were the main instigators
of the French Revolution, His whole book is very explicit about how Weishaupt
worked: every infiltrated Masonic group would have several levels, like an ordinary
Masonic lodge, but as candidates advanced through the various degrees they would be
told more about the real purposes of the movement. Those at the bottom simply thought
they were Masons; in the middle levels, they knew they were engaged in a great project
to change the world, but the exact nature of the change was explained to them according
to what the leaders thought they were prepared to know. Only those at the top knew the
secret, which—according to Robison—is this: the Illuminati aims to overthrow all
government and religion, setting up an anarcho-communist free-love world, and,
because "the end justifies the means" (a principle Weishaupt acquired from his Jesuit
youth), they didn't care how many people they killed to accomplish that noble purpose.
Robison knows nothing of earlier Illuminati movements, but does say specifically that
the Bavarian Illuminati was not destroyed by the government's crackdown in 1785 but
was, in fact, still active, both in England and France and possibly elsewhere, when he
wrote, in 1801. On page 116, Robison lists their existing lodges as follows: Germany
(84 lodges); England (8 lodges); Scotland (2); Warsaw (2); Switzerland (many); Rome,
Naples, Ancona, Florence, France, Holland, Dresden (4); United States of America
(several). On page 101, he mentions that there are 13 ranks in the Order; this may
account for the 13 steps on their symbolic pyramid. Page 84 gives the code name of
Weishaupt, which was Sparta-cus; his second-in-command, Freiherr Knigge, had the
code name Philo (page 117); this is revealed in papers seized by the Bavarian
government in a raid on the home of a lawyer named Zwack, who had the code name Cato. Babeuf, the French revolutionary, evidently took the name Gracchus in imitation
of the classical style of these titles. Robison's conclusion, page 269, is worth quoting:
Nothing is as dangerous as a mystic Association. The object remaining a secret in the
hands of the managers, the rest simply put a ring in their own noses, by which they may
be led about at pleasure; and still panting after the secret they are the more pleased the
less they see.
Pat
At the bottom of the page was a note in pencil, scrawled with a decisive masculine
hand. It said: "In the beginning was the Word and it was written by a baboon."
ILLUMINATI PROJECT: MEMO #13
8/5
J.M.:
The survival of the Bavarian Illuminati throughout the nineteenth century and into the
twentieth is the subject of World Revolution by Nesta Webster (Constable and
Company, London, 1921). Mrs. Webster follows Robison fairly closely on the early
days of the movement, up to the French Revolution, but then veers off and says that the
Illuminati never intended to create their Utopian anarcho-communist society: that was
just another of their masks. Their real purpose was dictatorship over the world, and so
they soon formed a secret alliance with the Prussian government. All subsequent
socialist, anarchist, and communist movements are mere decoys, she argues, behind
which the German General Staff and the Illuminati are plotting to overthrow other
governments, so Germany can conquer them. (She wrote right after England fought
Germany in the First World War). I see no way of reconciling this with the Birchers""
thesis that the Illuminati has become a front for the Rhodes Scholars to take over the
world for English domination. Obviously—as Robison states—the Illuminati say
different things to different people, to get them into the conspiracy. As for the links with
modern communism, here are some passages from her pages 234-45:
But now that the (First) Internationale was dead it became necessary for the secret
societies to reorganize, and it is at this crisis that we find that "formidable sect"
springing to life again—the original llluminati of Weishaupt. . . . What we do know
definitely is that the society was refounded in Dresden in 1880. . . . That it was
consciously modelled on its eighteenth century predecessor is clear from the fact that its
chief, one Leopold Engel, was the author of a lengthy panegyric on Weishaupt and his
Order, entitled Geschichte des Illuminaten Ordens (published in 1906). . . .
... In London a lodge called by the same name . . . carried on the rite of Memphis— founded, it is said, by Cagliostro on Egyptian models—and initiated adepts into illuminized Freemasonry. . . .
Was it ... a mere coincidence that in July 1889 an International Socialist Congress
decided that May 1, which was the day on which Weishaupt founded the Illuminati,
should be chosen for an annual International Labour demonstration?
Pat
ILLUMINATI PROJECT: MEMO #14
8/6
J.M.:
And here's still another version of the origin of the Illuminati, from the Cabalist Eliphas
Levi (The History of Magic by Eliphas Levi, Borden Publishing Company, Los
Angeles, 1963, page 65). He says there were two Zoroasters, a true one who taught
white "right hand" magic and a false one who taught black "left hand" magic. He goes
on:
To the false Zoroaster must be referred the cultus of material fire and that impious
doctrine of divine dualism which produced at a later period the monstrous Gnosis of
Manes and the false principles of spurious Masonry. The Zoroaster in question was the
father of that materialized Magic which led to the massacre of the Magi and brought
their true doctrine at first into proscription and then oblivion. Ever inspired by the spirit
of truth, the Church was forced to condemn— under the names of Magic,
Manicheanism, Illumi-nism and Masonry—all that was in kinship, remote or
approximate, with the primitive profanation of the mysteries. One signal example is the
history of the Knights Templar, which has been misunderstood to this day.
Lev! does not elucidate that last sentence; it is interesting, however, that Nesta Webster
(see memo 13) also traced the Illuminati to the Knights Templar, whereas Daraul and
most other sources track them Eastward to the Hashishim. Is all this making me
paranoid? I'm beginning to get the impression that the evidence has not only been
hidden in obscure books but also made confusing and contradictory to discourage the
researcher. . . .
Pat
Scrawled on the bottom of this memo was a series of jottings in the same masculine
hand (Malik's, Saul guessed) that had jotted the baboon reference on memo 12. The
jottings said:
Check on Order of DeMolay
Eleven-fold DeMolay Cross. Eleven intersections, therefore 22 lines. The 22 Atus of
Tahuti? Why not 237?
TARO = TORA = TROA = ATOR = ROTA !?????
Abdul Alhazred = A:.A:.??!
ILLUMINATI PROJECT: MEMO #15
8/6
J.M.:
Here's the weirdest version of the Uluminati history that I've found so far. It's from a
publication written, edited and published by somebody named Philip Campbell Argyle-
Stuart, who holds that the conflicts in the world are due to an age-old war between
Semitic "Khazar" peoples and Nordic "Faustian" peoples. This is the essence of his
thinking:
My theory is that an extremely devilish imposed overcrust was added to the Khazar
population consisting of humanoids who arrived by flying saucer from the planet
Vulcan, which I assume to be not in intra-Mercurial orbit around the sun, but rather in the earth's orbit, behind the Sun, forever out of sight to earthlings, always six months
behind or ahead of the earth in orbital travel....
Likewise for the Gothic Faustian Western Culture. The previously comparatively inert
and purposeless migrating population streams known as Franks, Goths, Angles, Saxons,
Danes, Swabians, Alemani, Lombards, Vandals, and Vikings suddenly had an overcrust
added consisting of Norman-Martian-Varangians, arriving from Saturn by way of Mars
in flying saucers. . . .
After 1776 it (the Khazar-Vulcanian conspiracy) used the Illuminati and Grand Orient
Masons. After 1815 it used the financial machinations of the House of Rothschild and
after 1848 the Communist movement and after 1895 the Zionist movement. . . .
One more thing needs to be mentioned. Mrs. Helena Petrovna Blavatski (nee Hahn in
Germany), 1831-1891, founder of Theosophy . .. was both hypocritical and devilish, a true witch of
great evil power allied with Illuminati, Grand Orient Masons, Russian Anarchists,
British Israel Theorists, Proto-Zionists, Arabian Assassins and Thuggi from India.
Source: The High l.Q. Bulletin, Vol. IV, No. 1, January 1970. Published by Philip
Campbell Argyle-Stuart, Colorado Springs, Colorado. I
Pat
ILLUMINATI PROJECT: MEMO #16
8/7
J.M.:
I think I've found the clue as to how Zoroaster, flying saucers and all that lunatic-fringe
stuff fits into the Illuminati puzzle. Dig this, boss-man:
The Nazi Party was founded as the political appendage of the Thule Society, an
extremist fringe of the Illuminated Lodge of Berlin. This lodge, in turn, was made up of
Rosicrucians—high Freemasons—and its preoccupation was mourning the death of the
feudal system. Masons of this time were, like the Federalist Party in post-revolutionary
America, working diligently to prevent "anarchy" and preserve the old values by
bringing about Christian Socialism. Indeed, the Aaron Burr conspiracy, which Professor
Hof-stadter notes was allegedly Masonic in origin, was an American prototype of
German intrigues of a century later. To their external scientific socialism these Masons
added mystic concepts which were thought to be "gnostic" in origin. One of these was
the concept of "Gnosticism" itself, called Illumination—which held that heavenly
beings directly or indirectly gave humanity its great ideas and would come back to
Earth after mankind had achieved sufficient progress. Illumination was a brand of
pentecostalism which was persecuted by orthodox Christianity for centuries and had
become lodged in Freemasonry through a complex historical process which is
impossible to explain without a major digression. It is sufficient to say that the Nazis,
being "Illuminated," felt themselves to be divinely inspired and therefore felt justified in
rewriting the rules of good and evil to suit their own purposes.
(According to Nazi theory) the heavenly beings, before the present Moon was captured,
had lived on the highest ground, in Peru, Mexico, Condor (Ethiopia), Himalaya, Atlantis
and Mu, forming the Uranian Confederation. This was taken quite seriously and British
intelligence actually combatted it with the Tolkien fantasy called the "Silmarillion," basis for the famous "Hobbit" books. . . .
Both J. Edgar Hoover and Congressman Otto Passman are high-ranking Masons and
both, significantly, reflect this philosophy and its Manichean attitude. The chief danger
in Masonic thinking aside from the "divine right of government" is, of course,
Manicheanism, the belief that your opponent is opposing God's will and is therefore an
agent of Satan. This is the extreme application and Mr. Hoover usually reserves it for
"Godless Communism" but it is almost always present to some degree.
Source: "The Nazi Religion: Views on Religious Statism in Germany and America" by
J. F. C. Moore, Libertarian American, Vol. III, No. 3, August 1969.
Pat
Note: There appear to be two Memo #16s!
ILLUMINATI PROJECT: MEMO #16
8/7
J.M.:
Here's some more info on how Blavatsky, theosophy and the motto under the great
pyramid on the U.S. Seal fit into the Illuminati picture (or don't fit into the picture. It's
getting more confusing the further I dig into it!) This is an article defending Madame
Blavatsky, after Truman Capote had repeated the John Birch Society's charge that
Sirhan Sirhan was inspired to murder Robert Kennedy by reading Blavatsky's works:
"Sirhan Blavatsky Capote" by Ted Zatlyn, Los Angeles Free Press, July 26, 1968:
Birchers that attack Madame Blavatsky, though smaller in number and as crazy as ever,
find a new home in an atmosphere of suspicion and violence. Truman Capote takes
them seriously. . . .
Does Mr. Capote know that the Illuminati (according to sacred Birch doctrine) began in
the Garden of Eden when Eve made it with the snake and gave birth to Cain? That all
the descendants of snake-man Cain belong to a super-secret group known as the
Illuminati, dedicated to absolutely nothing but the meanest low down evil imagined in
the Satanic mind of man?
Anti-Illuminati John Steinbacher writes in his unpublished book, Novus Ordo Seclorum
(The New Order of the Ages): "Today in America, many otherwise talented people are
flirting with disaster by associating with those same evil forces . . . Madame Blavatsky's
doctrine was strikingly similar to that of Weishaupt. . . ." The author also gives his version of the Bircher's version of what the Illuminati are actually trying to accomplish:
Their evil goal is to transcend materiality, and to bring about one world, denying the
sovereignty of nations and the sanctity of private proverty.
I don't think I can believe, or even understand, this, but at least it explains how both the
Nazis and the Communists can be pawns of the Illuminati. Or does it?
Pat
ILLUMINATI PROJECT: MEMO #17
8/8
J.M.: You may remember that the East Village Other's chart of
the Illuminati Conspiracy (Memo #9) listed "The Holy Vehm" as an Illuminati front. I
have finally found out what The Holy Vehm is (or, rather was). My source is Eliphas
Levy's History of Magic, op. cit., pages 199-200:
They were a kind of secret police, having the right of life and death. The mystery which
surrounded their judgments, the swiftness of their executions, helped to impress the
imagination of people still in barbarism. The Holy Vehm assumed gigantic proportions;
men shuddered in describing apparitions of masked persons, of summonses nailed to the
doors of nobles in the very midst of their watch-guards and their orgies, of brigand
chiefs found dead with the terrible cruciform dagger in their breasts and on the scroll
attached thereto an extract from the sentence of the Holy Vehm. The Tribunal affected
most fantastic forms of procedure: the guilty person, cited to appear at some discredited
cross-road, was taken to the assembly by a man clothed in black, who bandaged his eyes
and led him forward in silence. This occurred invariably at some unseemly hour of the
night, for judgment was never pronounced except at midnight. The criminal was carried
into a vast underground vault, where he was questioned by one voice. The hoodwink
was removed, the vault was illuminated in all its depth and height, and the Free Judges
sat masked and wearing black vestures.
The Code of the Vehmic Court was found in the ancient archives of Westphalia and has
been printed in the Reichstheater of Muller, under the following title: "Code and
Statutes of the Holy Secret Tribunal of Free Courts and Free Judges of Westphalia,
established in the. year 772 by the Emperor Charlemagne and revised in 1404 by King
Robert, who made those alterations and additions requisite for the administration of
justice in the tribunals of the illuminated, after investing them with his own authority."
A note on the first page forbade any profane person to glance at the book under penalty
of death. The word "illuminated", here given to the associates of the Secret Tribunal,
unfolds their entire mission: they had to track down in the shadows those who
worshipped the darkness; they counterchecked mysteriously those who conspired
against society in favour of mystery; but they were themselves the secret soldiers of
light, who cast the light of day on criminal plottings, and it is this which was signified
by a sudden splendour illuminating the Tribunal when it pronounced sentence.
So now we have to add Charlemagne to the list of the Illuminated—along with
Zoroaster, Joachim of Floris, Jefferson, Washington, Aaron Burr, Hitler, Marx, and Madame
Blavatsky. Could this all be a hoax?
ILLUMINATI PROJECT: MEMO #18
8/9
J.M.:
My last memo may have been too hasty in using the past tense in speaking about the
Holy Vehm. I find that Darual thinks they may still exist (History of Secret Societies,
op. cit., p. 211):
These terrible courts were never formally abolished. They were reformed by various
monarchs, but even in the nineteenth century it was said that they still existed, though
very much underground. The Nazi werewolves and resistance organizations fighting the
Communist occupation of East Germany claimed that they were carrying on the
tradition of the "Chivalrous and Holy Vehm." Perhaps they still are.
Pat
ILLUMINATI PROJECT: MEMO #19
8/9
J.M.:
I wish you would explain to me how your interest in the numbers 5 and 23 fit in with
this Illuminati project.
This is all I've been able to unearth so far on the number mystery, and I hope you find it
enlightening. It's from a book of mathematical and logical paradoxes: How to Torture
Your Mind, edited by Ralph L. Woods, Funk and Wagnalls, New York, 1969, page 128.
2 and 3 are even and odd;
2 and 3 are 5;
Therefore, 5 is both even and odd.
The damned book, by the way, provides no solutions to the paradoxes. I could sense the
fallacy in that one right away, but it took me hours (and a headache) before I could state
it in precise words. Hope this helps you. Anyway, for me, it was a relief from the really
frightening stuff I've been tracking down lately.
Pat
There were two further memos in the box, on different stationeries and by different
typewriters. The first was brief:
April 4
RESEARCH DEPARTMENT:
I am seriously concerned about Pat's absence from the office, and the fact that she
doesn't answer the phone when we call her. Would you send somebody to her apartment
to talk to the landlord and try to find out what has happened to her?
Joe Malik Editor
The last memo was the oldest in the lot and already yellowing at the edges. It said:
Dear Mr. "Mallory:"
The information and books, you requested are enclosed, at length. In case you are
rushed, here is a quick summary.
1. Billy Graham was in Australia, making public appearances all through last week.
There is no way he could have gotten to Chicago.
2. Satanism and witchcraft both still exist in the modern world. The two are often
confused by orthodox Christian
writers, but objective observers agree that there is a difference. Satanism is a Christian
heresy—the ultimate heresy, one might say—but witchcraft is pre-Christian in origin
and has nothing to do with the Christian God or the Christian Devil. The witches
worship a goddess called Dana or Tana (who goes back to the Stone Age probably).
3. The John Dillinger Died For You Society has its headquarters in Mad Dog, Texas,
but was founded in Austin, Texas several years ago. It's some kind of poker-faced joke
and is affiliated with the Bavarian Illuminati, another bizarre bunch at the Berkeley
campus of the University of California. The Illuminati pretend to be a cabal of
conspirators who run the whole world behind the scenes. If you suspect either of these
groups of being involved in something sinister, you have probably just fallen for one of
their put-ons.
W.H.