THE REAL POLITICS OF ILLUMINATI

There has been very little serious academic research on the politics of the
historical Bavarian Illuminati, mainly because their writings have
rarely been translated from German and few Germans have bothered
to study them until relatively recently.

Prior to this most people read ex Freemason John Robison's 'Proofs of

the Conspiracy' (1797) and ex Jesuit Augustin Barruel's 'Memoirs, a
History of Jacobinism' (1798), who quoted selected statements from
the trials of the Illuminati, and the Order's own writings and letters,
out of context in order to create their Anti-Christian, totalitarian
conspiracy theory, designed to horrify the average European. Apart
incidently for Percy B Shelley, who loved Memoirs and throughout his
life read long passages of it to his friends, to inspire rather than
horrify. In 1812 he formed his own Illuminati cell probably in Oxford,
based on his own interpretations of Illuminism, which he called
'Philanthropism'. Nothing is known of the subsequent history of this
group. In 1814 he adopted a militant version of the philosophy of
William Godwin and effectively became the first English Anarchist.
Fundamentalist Puritans in the United States would enthusiastically
adopt the books in their intended negative sense however, and also
began the first conspiracy theories against Thomas Jefferson's
connection with the Illuminati from their pulpits (at the behest of
'devout Christian' and founder of the Central Bank and Federal
Government, Alexander Hamilton, who was campaigning against
Jefferson's 'radical leftism'). Few academics ever took Barruel or
Robinson's accounts seriously.

The liberal Academic position until recently was that the Illuminati
simply represented a secretive manifestation of Enlightenment
Rationalism of the kind proposed by Voltaire and middle class
intellectuals, and a faith in Science rather than Religion, that
required caution in a Catholic Bavaria effective run by the totalitarian
Jesuits. This view is reflected in the 'official' Masonic position given in
the otherwise accurate historical link further down this page.

A counter position to this is that the Bavarian German Enlightenment

was under different influences to the the French and Western
German Enlightenment, partly due to the presence of the Rosicrucian
tradition in Tubingen (although the Masonic Rosicrucians of the 18th
century were conservatives, the original Rosicrucians of the 17th
century included many radical utopians) and partly due Bavaria's
Catholic culture. Due to this and other factors the Illuminati were as
much influenced by Rousseau's Post Enlightenment Romantism and
Boehme's 'rational mysticism' as they were Rational Enlightenment
sources. With prominent members like Goethe, they were also as
imbedded in the Arts as they were the Sciences. And as I
demonstrated in the earlier post, many were also interested in a
minimal form of rational Occultism.

In fact it seems both these views are true, for in examining the
complete list of Illuminati members (see The Perfectablists, T
Melanson) people from both these camps can be found, as well as
those from the Prussian 'Enlightened Despot' camp and other counter
Catholic positions including proto anarchists. The reason apparently
being the Illuminati emphasised its opposition rather than affirming
an ideology, and politically manipulated coalitions of various 'radical
intellectuals' into compartmentalised local branches, often unaware
of each other and not privy to the full agenda of the higher degree
members who deliberately kept them in the dark. The most dramatic
example of this being the recruitment as a novice of Franz Karl von
 Eckartshausen, the conservative mystic and scientist, and author of
'The Cloud upon the Sanctuary' (whose works were recommended by
Weishaupt and later by Crowley), who resigned after being fully
initiated and meeting other members.

Thus the real key is what the leadership of the Illuminati believed,
and particularly what the Illuminatus Magus and Illuminatus Rex
grades taught in the secret inner circle of the Order.

In 1999 German academic Martin Mulsow analysed the Illuminatus

Rex degree (or Docetist grade) in terms of the History of Philosophy
and placed it in the tradition of 'Hermetic "left wing Wolffianism"
from an 18th century perspective'. This doesn't help much as
Christian Wolff was simply a moderate Liebnitzian rationalist, with
religious sympathies, who believed in 'realistic' human perfectionism
and utopian society. Monika Neugebauer Wolk discusses this study in
her essay 'Illuminaten' in The Dictionary of Gnosis and Western
Esotericism ed Wouter J Hanegraaf (2005) but emphasises the
Hermetic element as a statement of Docetist Gnosticism (the belief
Christ was a deity and not a physical being, opposed to Catholic and
Pauline theology) on the basis of the name Weishaupt prefered for
the degree. But not all scholars agree.

A study of Weishaupt's open philosophical writing, as well as of J

Feder's (the 'spiritual father' of the Illuminati, and leader of those in
the Illuminatus Magus degree), reveals a unified anti-Kantian Idealist
position, that took a pro Lockean (and later Humean) Empirical
stance against excessive Rationalism, combined with a scientific form
of Liebnitzeanism. Though later some elements of Kant were adopted
and even Hegel was greatly influenced by the Illuminatus Magus von
Baader, a Behmenite mystic and scientific philosopher, influenced by
Goethe (the philosopher artist-scientist).

Politically the Illuminati leadership seems commited to the political

theories of Rousseau ('man was born free but everywhere is in
chains' taken to their extreme left wing conclusions), and
incorporating the esoteric version of this in de Gebelin's Monde
Primitif (a kind of mystical semi primitivism, based on the 'noble
savage' as shaman). Their private letters suggest they took this to
anarchist conclusions. However they regretably differed from
anarchists in that they didnt think the average European sufficiently
evolved or rational enough yet to function in such a society,
therefore 'wards' would be required in the immediate future,
'enlightened leaders' strong enough to impose a radical agenda and
educational policy to prepare for the future perfect anarchist eutopia.
But such 'leaders' would be chosen for their political idealism, strong
will and established position in the aristocracy, rather than their
intelligence, and would be surrounded by a circle of the 'best minds'
to advise them, typically Illuminati members. Goethe's role as advisor
to Karl August, Duke of Saxe Weimar, being the archetypal example.

The Illuminati was thus by its very nature factional and riven by
internal conflict, with at the end even Baron von Knigge, Weishaupt's
number two, denouncing him as a neo-Jesuit tyrant.

THE ILLUMINATI AND COMMUNISM

This is a complex historical topic in its own right, but I'll tackle it with a few
brief cross sections of political history that outline one current
among others:

1776 - 1790s Bavarian Illuminati (Order of Perfectiblists)

The secret government of enlightened philosophers via their
influence on well placed and suceptible Establishment figures and
indoctrinated minions. The gradual take over of established power.
The ultimate creation of a libertarian Stateless eutopia. Flawed by
the intoxication of power and the Machiavellian aspect.

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1786 - 1793 Universal Confederation (inner core : The Social Circle)
A democratic alliance of the most radical Republicans in France and
Europe, guided by the 'Philadelphian' secret society, the Social Circle,
modelled on the Illuminati inner group. A more Revolutionary French
reworking of Illuminist principles aiming at Popular Sovereignty (the
People as King), Direct Democracy and 'Gracchan' Republicanism
(people's assemblies and the egalitarian redistribution of publically
owned land to individual lease holders or semi-private owners). The
Illuminist elite serve as elected Tribunes of the People after a
Revolution controlled by an elite Vanguard. Until the Revolutionary
moment the Social Circle acts as a 'representation of the Will of the
People'. A mix of Communists, Socialists and Anarchists of all types
allied around what they opposed, the Ancient Regime and Jacobin
Dictatorship.

'Tribunal' Philadelphes : Pantheonists 1793 - 1796, Communauts 1796

-1799
Gracchus Babuef's militant revolutionary vanguard group aimed at
'the common good', 'true equality' and 'the total power of the
people'. An extreme faction of the Universal Confederation that
inherited the mantel of the Social Circle after Bonneville fled the
Jacobin Terror to America. Its early form a more open, anarchistic
direct democracy circle opposed to Jacobin dictatorship was closed
down by Republican Police led by a young Napolean. They met in the
Club of the Pantheon in the crypt of the Convent of St Genevieve
(known as the 'Cave of the Brigands'). Their Plebeian Manifesto was
written by Sylvan Marachal, de Bonneville's deputy, who had first
employed Babeuf as the Social Circles typesetter. A more 'worker'
orientated rather than 'intellectual' ethos was promoted. Its later
form became an authoritarian vanguard, with strict discipline and
hierarchy, achieved by 'collective decision' and majority election.
Political power was imposed by the secret Directory of Public Safety.
Organisation was by loosely connected grouplets and cells subject to
'revolutionary discipline'. Internal dissidents remained silent. Group
members refered to themselves as 'Communauts', a term coined by
Social Circle member, Restif le Breton, the utopian socialist, early sci
fi novelist and pornographer. A subgroup the Italian 'Society of
Lights' secret society created the 'Black League' in Italy and
Switzerland (probably drawing in ex Illuminists there) which
constituted the network from which the National Revolutionary
'Carbonari' would emerge and eclipse. Unlike modern Marxist groups
members were often 'Christian' and linked to Occult orders.

The Philadelphes and Adelphes 1799 - 1816 and 1816 - 1837

Society of Lights member and former comrade of Babuef, Phillipe
Bounarroti, reorganised the Philadelphes network as an Anti-
Napolean association 1799 - 1816.
Later after Napolean's defeat becoming a network of Revolutionary
Socialist secret societies, which though semi-autonomous (the semi
independent Adelphes network was the Italian branch of the
Philadelphes, closely linked to the emerging Carbonari) were
attempted to be brought under central control by Bounarotti's central
control group le Monde (named after occultist Court de Gebelins
esoteric Rousseauan Monde Primitive cult) which operated publically
as the occult masonic Order of Sublime and Perfect Masters.
Bounarroti was of more an anarchic individualist character, who
distrusted Collectives, but saw himself as the new Tribune of the
People and ruled his network with a dictatorial zeal. The ammount of
influence he had in reality is contested by historians (with Marxists
usually dismissing it). Nearly all subesequent revolutionary secret
societies descended from or were influenced by the Philadelphes
network. The most liberal and proto-nationalistic subgroup of whom
were led by Charles Nodier (who invented the myth of the
Merovingians, a kind of French Arthurianism).

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Carbonari Period 1803-1830
Under Napolean France was driven in a constitutional direction by the
'liberals' around Lafayette, who formed an alliance with radical
English Whigs and American Jeffersonians. When Napolean reneged
on his commitment to a Constitution, and after his fall the Monarchs
of the Restoration became increasingly despotic and conservative,
these liberals formed a Masonic network that agitated for Revolution,
later known as the French Carbonari (after their more radical Italian
counterparts, more influenced by the Adelphes groups). Leading
members other than Lafayette included the Comte d'Argenson, who
was later to become more radical and become a deputy of Bounarroti,
and J C Dupont du l'Eure, who later moved in a more conservative
direction (a distant relative of the Duponts who emigrated to America
with the rise of Napolean and became moderate Jeffersonians, their
offspring creating the Dupont Chemical Corporation, now a central
pillar of the Military Industrial Complex).

The French Carbonari sponsored early revolutionary students

societies, such as the Friends of Truth, who were responsible for the
infiltration and control of other student societies, such as the anti-
monarchist Independents.

In turn Bounarroti's associate in the Philadelphian Monde, Joseph

Rey, created the secret society, the Liberal Union, which portrayed
itself as a liberal constitutionist group and became very influential
among the French Carbonari. In fact it seems Rey's real agenda was
Philadelphian, and he steered the Carbonari in a more radical
direction as well as agitating them against the Catholic Hapsburgs.
Rey also had links with the German originating League of Youth, a
more illuminist revolutionary student group, that used gymnasiums
as fronts, and identified themselves with peasant dress and long
hair. The League of Youth appear to be based on Bounarroti's ideas
of international youth movements and set about infiltrating groups
like the Society of Truth. Repeating the idea of radical circles within
larger liberal movements.

In Italy the National Republican Carbonari had outgrown the Adelphes

network, but Adelphians such as Gio Prati founded their own
Carbonari lodges and acted as middle men between Rey's Liberal
Union and the Alta Vendita, the secret central committee of the
Carbonari in Naples. The Carbonari also had links with early Mafia
type groups.
Bounarroti, Rey, Prati and later d'Argenson formed the leadership of
le Monde.
Later more authoritarian Carbonari, such as Carlo Bianco, argued for
the rule of Revolutionary 'dictators' like Bounarroti. It is in this period
that the Republican movement begins to split between Nationalists
and International Socialists, and although both start out as leftist,
the Nationalist begin to evolve in a more totalitarian and
traditionalist direction, culminating with Italian Fascism.

Meanwhile in Russia, the Anti-Czarist Decembrists had formed their

own secret society, the Union of Salvation, which was influenced by
news of the Liberal Union. After developing contacts with the Liberal
Union and Italian Carbonari the society evolved in to the more
Revolutionary Union of Welfare, and was soon driven in conspiratorial
directions by agents of the Adelphes and Philadelphes. A similar
network of secret societies emerged in Russia and Eastern Europe of
which Alexander Herzen was a part.
Herzen's philosophy influenced Russian Revolutionaries, culminating
in the early Nihilists and Bakuninites. It was in Russia and Italy where
the most extreme radicalism would begin to evolve.

The European Monarchist dictatorships of the 1820s were very

successful in secret police operations against the Revolutionaries,
particularly in France and Italy were both Carbonari movements were

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 largely broken up and their leaders arrested. What replaced them
was a chaotic array of autonomous societies and revolutionary cells
of various sizes. In Italy alone there was news of the notorius the
'five in a family' and 'seven sleepers' cells, as well as larger societies
like the 'Sons of Mars' and 'American Hunters' of Ravenna, the 'Black
Bellies' of Rome, the 'Vampires' and 'Shirtless Ones' of Naples, the
'Piercers' of Tuscany and the 'Imitators of Sand' (an assassin) of
Sicily.
A few larger groups, such as the 'Destroyers' maintained networks of
cells across Italy, and had links with mixed Italian emigre groups,
such as the 'Greeks of Silence' in Athens and the 'Devils' in London. A
similar chaos existed in France on a smaller scale.

Bounarroti's Philadelphians created the secret societies the 'True

Italians' in Italy and the 'Reformed Carbonari' in France to reorganise
the chaos under central control, ultimately under his Monde and its
leadership circle the 'Grand Firmament', but only met with limited
success before the death of Bounarroti created more chaos.

Bounarroti's most influencial recruits however were a small society of

Polish emigrants on the isle of Jersey, organised as the 'Polish
People' group. These promoted Philadelphian ideas to their extreme,
calling for the abolition of private property, the dictatorship of the
people (towards an educative program allegedly leading to the
abolition of the State), the 'direct action' and 'terrorism' of small
armed cells and the denunciation of all less radical programs. This
group would spread its ideas throughout Poland and Eastern Europe,
forming allied secret societies there and inspiring fellow travellers to
do the same. Here police repression only seemed to encourage a
more violent responce.

The Blanquists 1830 - 1848

Bounarroti's last practical project was his role in the Revolution of
1830 which overthrew the last despotic conservative monarch
Charles X. His role in this was the creation of a Philadelphian secret
society called the Friends of the People, key members of which were
Armand Barbes (a Romantic Revolutionary and democrat, who linked
Utopian Socialism and Spiritualism) and August Blanqui (a former
French Carbonari student cell organiser and violent Insurrectionist,
obsessed with Revolution but no political program). However the
main force of the Revolution was made up of various former
Carbonari groups and Constitutionalist radicals who enthroned Louis
Phillipe, Duc of Orleans (the descendent of Phillipe Egalite, Duc of
Orleans, of the Palais Royale) as a constitutional people's monarch
over a liberal parliament. This may have also been the realistic
agenda of the Philadelphes under Bounarroti, as a first stage in a
Republican project.

Bounarroti died in 1837 causing chaos in a Philadelphes movement

tightly controlled by one man. This may have also delayed plans for
the second Republican Revolution.
Blanqui and Barbes emerged as the leading Philadelphian
conspirators, but increasing fell out over aims and methodology.
Barbes, the more typical Philadelphes, looked to a popular Revolution
that would lead to a democratic Socialist Republic, that would begin a
utopian transformation of society and the individual. Blanqui was
fixated on the effectiveness of Revolutionary organisation, under a
strict network of five man cells, but had no program other than the
dictatorship of the people and a pragmatic responce to events, in
contrast to Barbes he also had no time for ethics or reluctance for
extreme acts of terroristic violence.

Barbes organised earliest with the creation of the Society of

Avengers in 1834, but this was soon closed down by the police. In
1835 he teamed up with the more devious Blanqui to create the
Society of Families. This was originally organised as a network of five

5
 man cells, but these were expanded to a 12 man 'family', named and
designed after Bounarroti's local Neo-Carbonari lodges under the
True Italians society. Five families made a section, and three sections
made a quarter, whose leaders were linked by a Revolutionary agent
to a secret Central Committee who dictated instructions down the
chain. This was penetrated by police agents in 1836 and broken up.
When the two were released from prison in 1837, following the death
of the 'retired' Bounarroti and intervention by radical liberals, like
Victor Hugo, the disciple of Nodier, they began to recreate their
secret society.

Their ultimate society the Society of Seasons, was more democratic

and prolitarian, but structured on similar lines, based on cells called
weeks, six men led by a leader they only knew as Sunday, these were
organised into Months of Four Weeks lead by July, which in turn made
a Season of three Months lead by Spring, and a Year of four Seasons
under a Supreme Agent for that region. At its height the Central
Committee of three was employing five regional agents in five Years.
This proved inpenetratable to police infiltration beyond the level of
its many weeks (inspiring Chesterton's famous story, the Man who
was Thursday) and in 1839 launched a coup of 1500 activists who
systematically took over all the centres of power in Paris.
Unfortunately they were too low in numbers and morale and the coup
failed leading to the collapse of the Philadelphes network in France.
By 1848 following their release from prison Barbes and Blanqui were
bitter enemies, forming the rival Club of the Revolution and the
Central Insurrection Society, both of whom took part in the mass
uprisings of 1848 that saw the end of the Constitutional Monarchy
and the start of the Second Republic. Ironically Barbes became a
leader in the Republican National Guard which suppressed a workers
demonstration demanding more power, led by Blanqui. In 1849
Barbes attempted to overthrow the Republic and replace it with a
more radical Communistic State, but failed and was sentanced to life
in prison. Blanqui continued with various small scale insurections for
many years, but spent much of his life in prison between them.
Although elected president of the Paris Commune in 1871 he was not
allowed to leave jail.

Irish Republicanism 1839 - 1850

Following the temporary collapse of the Philadelphes after the failed
coup of 1839, conspiratorial activity ceased in most of Europe and its
agents who were not in jail were in exile on the fringes of Europe.
Some in Russia and Eastern Europe but also some in Ireland, which
became a hotbed of subversion. From 1839 the long standing Irish
Independence movement expanded from circles of former Jacobites,
to a Nationalist Republican movement modelled on the Romantic
Nationalism of the Continent. This was orchestrated largely by a
secret society called the Ribbon Society or Sons of the Shamrock.
This was divided into several regional Brotherhoods run by a Master
who had control of three members who each had control of twelve
brothers with each set isolated from each other. They did not attempt
a coup but rather terrorised the community as a shadow government.
A central committee in Dublin attempted to form alliances with
Republican groups in Scotland, Wales and England, but didnt get far
before informers led to its break up. From its ashes rose the Young
Ireland group of the 1840s, which was much more connected to
overseas groups via Manzini's Young Europe network. Its was then
former Carbonari and others entered Ireland and reorganised Young
Ireland into an effective secret network. The upshot of which was its
transformation into the Fenian Irish Republican Brotherhood in 1850,
which shifted from National Republicanism to Socialist Revolutionary
Republicanism and linked into the broader Revolutionary alliance now
revived on the Continent.

From the Paris Commune to Marxism

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The Society of Seasons was not the only secret society operating in
1830s Paris, another was the League of Outlaws a small society of
German emigrants founded in 1834 by Socialist Theodore Shuster
who supported the aims of Blanqui in over throwing the French
government. The society was based on Bounarroti's New Carbonari
model, but no direct links to the Philadelphes are apparent, until
Bounarroti's last protégée Johann Hoeckerig joined the radical
Tailor's wing of the movement which was dedicated to Babeuf's
ideas. At this time the Outlaws were organised into a more tightly
hierarchical format. However the most influential member of the
Tailor's faction was the Christian Communist Wilhelm Weitling, who
would challenge Shuster for the leadership. The League was
factioned according to the craft guilds of its members, being of a
more proletarian nature than Blanqui's early societies. The
Carpenter's under Shuster sought to reform the French Republic into
a more worker friendly Socialism, while the Tailor's followed a more
radical agenda of total Social Revolution and were probably affiliated
to the Philadelphian movement. In fighting would lead to the break
up of the Outlaws and Shuster's faction becoming Nationalistic as the
League of Germans. An early prototype for German Nationalist
societies. Weitling's 1838 splinter group the League of the Just
outgrew the Outlaws to become a thousand strong organisation. It
also adopted a democratic form in which ten members formed a
Commune and sent an elected delegate, rather than a centrally
appointed leader to the County which was based on ten Communes.
The Counties were based on Halls who elected members of two
central committees, an Executive Committee, which planned activity,
and a Support Committee which controlled resources and adjudicated
disputes. Any instruction which clashed with a member's conscience
could be ignored. It promoted a broad range of ideologies that shared
its basic principles from traditional Babuef supporters through
proponents of Utopian Socialism and Fourierism to those influenced
by Saint-Simon and the radical Hegelians. It was later joined by a
young Karl Marx, who supported its aims but decried its
'supernaturalist authoritarianism' and 'superstitious rituals'.

The League of the Just worked in a coordinated way with the Society
of Seasons in the 1839 rising but following its failure decamped to
London where League members were given sanctuary by the Chartist
network, particularly its Owenite radicals, then very close to the
Spiritualist movement (and prefiguring later radical Theosophists like
occultist Annie Besant). Correspondence indicates a Central
Committee of the League was set up in London with contacts in
Germany, Belgium and Switzerland, thus establishing London as the
primary organising centre for exiles (though a small chapterof
Bonneville's Social Circle had also existed there). Soon Weitling left
for Switzerland, were he established a small branch of the League,
and in 1843 recruited the Russian conspirator Michael Bakunin.
Bakunin would like many Socialists be deeply influenced by the ideas
of Proudhon, the French Anarchist, and eventually adopted
Anarchism himself, later blending Proudhon's ideas with the anarchic
Communism of Godwin, and so reviving the original libertarianism of
the Philadelphians of the early French Revolution. Desiring a freer
mode of operation he eventually resigned from the League and
created the first Anarchist secret society 'the Alliance' (which would
have great success infiltrating and radicalising Spanish Proudhonist
movement, a prequel to the Spanish Revolution and Civil War).
Weitling would emigrate to New York at this time. Back in London the
Hegelian Bruno Bauer was elected leader, and the League was
renamed the Communist League in 1847, when it recruited Karl Marx
and his 15 member Communist Correspondence Society of Brussels
(the first Marxists). Marx would be given the task of writing the
Communist Manifesto of 1848 in an attempt to unify the various
diverse strands of Revolutionary Socialism under a new ideology. But
the League had little influence on the 1848 French Revolution which
appears to have involved more traditional Philadelphian elements.

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In 1850 Marx gained complete control over the League making it
essentially the first Marxist group. At this stage he banned all ritual
and non Marxian ideologies from the League, though continued its
conspiratorial methodology, and set about attempting to unite the
Communist movement under his leadership. The League's
membership list was obtained by Prussian Intelligence however and
many members were arrested. The Communist League disbanded in
1852.

Meanwhile conspiratorial operations on the Continent came under the

control of the Grand Lodge des Philadelphes in London, formed from
French exiles. This was an umbrella group that included Blanquist
and Mazzinist lodges, as well as lodges from the Rite of Mizraim, the
Rite of Memphis and the Swedenborg Rite. The latter was a primarily
Occult rite derived from the Hermetic Rite of the Illumines d'Avignon
of 1786 (a mix of Hermeticism, Swedenborgianism and radical Marian
Catholicism) but was allied to the politically active Rite of Mizraim
and its splinter group the Rite of Memphis (a parallel lodge system
founded in 1838 initially for military lodges, simplifying the degree
system and adding Neo-Templar aspects). The Socialist Louis Blanc
later joined a Memphis Rite lodge and moved the association in a
more radical left wing direction, while the Mizraim Rite was still
under a Carbonari influenced radical Republicanism. This alliance
played a significant role in Revolutionary politics up to and including
the Paris Commune of 1871.

Just prior to and during the Paris Commune the Communist

movement founded the First International for the unification and
coordination of the global Revolutionary program. This included the
Marxists and Anarchists (both still operating conspiratorial 'clubs')
but excluded the Masonic groups containing the old school
Philadelphian traditions which stripped of their radical elements were
regarded as bourgeois democratic groups. The First International
broke up over infighting between Marx and Bakunin and the
Syndicalists, with the minority Marxists accusing Bakunin and his
Anarchist and Syndicalist followers of using a secret society to
control the 'democratic association'. Marx denounced the use of
secret societies in the name of his theory of the dialectical class
struggle (though in practise Marxists continued to operate
clandestinely in clubs and political parties and their various front
groups). In 1889 the Second International was formed with the
exclusion of Anarchists and Syndicalists who from then on organised
seperately. Many anarchists remained agnostic about the Occult
while Marxists totally rejected it (though this did not prevent the
USSR becoming the biggest proponent of psychic research in the 20th
century).

Also in 1889 the bourgeois Masonic lodges of Memphis and Mizraim

merged into a single rite which continued to combine occultism and
politics until its dissolution in the 1890s. Members of the occult
secret society the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light (traceable back to
the Knights of Light, an ally of the Illuminist Asiatic Brethren), who
were at that time adopting oriental and tantric ideas, reactivated the
old Rite of Memphis and Misraim, and combined it with aspects of the
also defunct Swedenborg Rite, to create the occult order the Ordo
Templi Orientis in 1902, which adopted a more radical agenda
regarding itself politically as a new Illuminati. Around the time it
became colonized by Aleister Crowley and used as a vessel for
Thelema it also became allied to the Anarchist movement under its
founder Theodore Reuss. This remained until Reuss was accused of
being a police spy (possibly falsely), and with increasing Marxist
ideological influence within Anarchism the two movements drifted
apart. During the 1930s Occultism would become increasingly
associated with Fascism. It was not until after WWII that some in the
organised Left would re-engage with the Occult, and trend reaching

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its height in the 60s and 70s New Left and Counter-culture crossover.