FINAL WARNING: The Birth of Tyranny
lodges were established.Few knew the supreme direction of the Order. Only those within the
inner circle, known as the ‘Areopagite’ (meaning ‘Tribunal’), were
aware of their true purpose. To all others, Weishaupt said that he
wanted a one-world government to prevent all future wars.The book World Revolution (by Nesta Webster) stated: “The art of
Illuminism lay in enlisting dupes as well as adepts, and by
encouraging the dreams of honest visionaries or the schemes of
fanatics, by flattering the vanity of ambitious egotists, by working on
unbalanced brains, or by playing on such passions as greed and
power, to make men of totally divergent aims serve the secret purpose
of the sect.”Foolish, naive people, with money to burn, were especially welcomed.
Weishaupt wrote: “These good people swell our numbers and fill our
money box; set yourselves to work; these gentlemen must be made to
nibble at the bait ... But let us beware of telling them our secrets, this
sort of people must always be made to believe that the grade they have
reached is the last.” Weishaupt explained: “One must speak
sometimes in one way, sometimes in another, so that our real purpose
should remain impenetrable to our inferiors.” And what was that
purpose? It was “nothing less than to win power and riches, to
undermine secular or religious government, and to obtain the mastery
of the world.”Initiates were told that the Order represented the highest ideals of the
Church, that Christ was the first advocator of Illuminism, and his
secret mission was to restore to men the original liberty and equality
they had lost in the Garden of Eden. Weishaupt said that Christ
exhorted his disciples to despise riches in order to prepare the world
for the community of goods that would do away with property
ownership.Weishaupt wrote to Zwack: “The most admirable thing of all is that
great Protestant and reformed theologians (Lutherans and Calvinists)
who belong to our Order really believe they see in it the true and
genuine mind of the Christian religion.” However, when one of
Weishaupt’s followers would reach the higher degrees, their secret