From the Eleusinian Mysteries to the Freemasons and Illuminati, to the power networks of today – a history of secret societies.
Writing about secret societies means venturing into territory fraught with danger. On one side lurk the conspiracy theorists, who suspect a sinister lodge behind every handshake and see proof of a hidden world government in every pyramid on a dollar bill. On the other side are those who consider the topic settled – a relic of bygone centuries, at best fodder for Dan Brown novels or rainy evenings spent watching television. Both sides are wrong. For the history of secret societies is simultaneously a history of power, knowledge, and the question of who controls them. And this question is as relevant as ever.
The Mysteries at the Beginning
At the beginning stands Eleusis. For over 1,500 years, pilgrims traveled along the Sacred Way, which led from Athens to the small town on the Aegean Sea, to participate in the most famous mysteries of the ancient world. What transpired there, in the great Telesterion, that enormous hall of worship with a floor area of over 4,000 square meters, remains uncertain to this day. For the initiates remained silent. Their vow of silence was so sacred that Diagoras of Melos, who broke it, was henceforth called "the Impicious"—and supposedly every copy of his book on the mysteries was tracked down and destroyed. Even Aeschylus, the father of Greek tragedy and son of Eleusis, is said to have stood trial, suspected of revealing too much about the mysteries in his plays.
What we do know is this: The mysteries were dedicated to the cult of Demeter and her daughter Persephone. The abduction of Persephone by Hades, Demeter's desperate search, the daughter's return to the light—at its core, it was a drama about death and rebirth, about the changing of the seasons and the hope that humankind, too, could overcome death. Cicero wrote in his work "On the Laws" that the mysteries taught participants "to know the origins of life and to acquire the strength not only to live happily but to die with hope." Emperor Augustus was initiated. Emperor Julian was the last Roman ruler to receive the initiations before Emperor Theodosius banned the cult in 392 AD and the Gothic king Alaric destroyed the sanctuary a few years later.
The crucial aspect of Eleusis was not the content of the mystery—it was the principle of initiation itself. The distinction between initiates and the uninitiated, between those who had beheld the Great Light and those who remained outside, created a structure that would have an impact far beyond the ancient cult. She established the model upon which all subsequent secret societies functioned: an inner circle of knowledge, an outer circle of the ignorant, and a boundary between them marked by ritual, oath, and symbol. Those who had received the initiations were transformed. Sophocles summarized it thus: "Thrice blessed are those mortals who, after witnessing these rites, enter Hades. To them alone is it granted to truly live there."
Under the Sign of Square and Compasses
When four lodges met in the London pub "Goose and Gridiron" on June 24, 1717, to found the first Grand Lodge of England, it marked the beginning of a movement that would transform Europe. Freemasonry, originating from the stonemasons' guilds of the Middle Ages and the builders' guilds of the great cathedrals, brought that Eleusinian principle into the modern age: initiation, degrees, symbols, and secrecy. The "Great Architect of the Universe" replaced the old gods; square and compasses took the place of Persephone's torches. The Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft, and Master Mason degrees reflected the graduated initiation of the ancient mysteries.
What distinguished Freemasonry from the ancient mysteries was its Enlightenment aspiration. The "Old Charges" of 1723, written by the preacher James Anderson and co-authored by the naturalist John Theophilus Desaguliers, established a constitution that proclaimed tolerance and fraternity across denominational lines. In the lodges, commoners and nobles met as equals—a sensation for the time, the significance of which can hardly be overstated. Mozart was a Freemason and incorporated the symbolism of the lodge into his "Magic Flute," where Sarastro's sun kingdom can be interpreted as an allegory of the enlightened lodge. Goethe was a Freemason and declared in 1821: "Our fraternity has much that is unique, of which only one may be highlighted at present: that as soon as we assemble, the most decisive kind of equality arises." The first president of the United States, George Washington, was a Freemason. The ideals of the French Revolution—liberty, equality, fraternity—unmistakably bore the mark of the lodges.
And yet, from the very beginning, Freemasonry harbored a contradiction that persists to this day: it preached openness but practiced secrecy. It championed enlightenment but shrouded itself in ritual and mystery. This contradiction made it vulnerable. Pope Clement XII banned Freemasonry as early as 1738, and since then the Catholic Church has never fundamentally revised its position. Totalitarian regimes—from the National Socialists, who murdered thousands of Jewish Freemasons, to the Communists—persecuted the brethren with particular bitterness. Secrecy became suspicion, and suspicion became a pretext for persecution.
A Professor in Ingolstadt
Anyone recounting the history of secret societies in Germany cannot ignore one date: May 1, 1776. On that day, the twenty-six-year-old professor of canon law, Adam Weishaupt, founded the "League of Perfectibilists" at the University of Ingolstadt—later known as the Illuminati. Weishaupt, orphaned at a young age and raised by his godfather Johann Adam von Ickstatt in the spirit of Wolff's Enlightenment philosophy, was a bitter opponent of the Jesuits, who, despite the suppression of their order, still wielded considerable influence at the Bavarian university. His goal was radical: to cultivate an elite through a system of education and surveillance, an elite that would assume key positions in the state and undermine princely rule from within.
The order grew rapidly. With the help of Baron Adolf von Knigge—yes, the very same Knigge whose name later became synonymous with good manners—Weishaupt succeeded in placing the Order of the Illuminati on a Masonic foundation, thus gaining access to a European network. Goethe joined, as did Herder, the architect of modern Bavaria, and Count Montgelas. Members were found in seventy cities, numbering up to fifteen hundred. Every Illuminati member had a pseudonym—Weishaupt called himself "Spartacus," Knigge "Philo"—and each had to complete a monthly reading quota, ranging from Seneca, Dante, and Petrarch to the writings of the materialist d'Holbach, which were banned throughout Germany.
But the order carried the seeds of its own downfall within it. Weishaupt's authoritarian manner even repelled Knigge, who eventually broke away from the order. In 1784, Elector Karl Theodor banned all secret societies in Bavaria. A lightning strike finished the job: When Father Lanz, a confidant of Weishaupt, was struck by lightning while out for a walk outside Regensburg in 1785, membership lists of the order were found sewn into his habit. The Bavarian police had their evidence. Weishaupt fled to Gotha, where Duke Ernst II—himself an Illuminati member under the order name "Timoleon"—granted him asylum. The order was shattered. But the legend had only just begun.
Skulls and Bones
For what happened after the Illuminati were banned is perhaps more instructive than their brief existence. The former Jesuit Abbé Barruel, in his "Memoirs of the History of Jacobinism," constructed a massive conspiracy theory that blamed the Illuminati for the French Revolution. The idea that a forbidden secret society from Bavaria was controlling the fate of Europe proved immortal. It crossed the Atlantic and took on new, distinctly American forms.
In 1832, William Huntington Russell founded the student fraternity "Skull & Bones" at Yale University—allegedly inspired by German student fraternities Russell had encountered during a study abroad program. What began as an elite student club, admitting only fifteen select freshmen each year, became one of the most powerful networks in American history. Three US presidents emerged from Skull & Bones: William Howard Taft, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush. John Kerry, Stephen Schwarzman, the founder of the Blackstone Group, and Frederick Smith, founder of FedEx, are also Bonesmen. The windowless assembly building on the Yale campus—"The Tomb," built in 1856 in the Egyptian Doric style—has become a symbol of that peculiar American blend of elite education and secrecy.
In the 2004 presidential election, two Bonesmen, Bush and Kerry, faced off. Tim Russert asked them both about their membership on his show "Meet the Press." Bush's answer has gone down in history: "It's so secret that I can't say anything about it." Kerry's answer was no less revealing: "Not much, because it's a secret." One might chuckle at this. But when the most powerful man in the world and his challenger publicly admit to belonging to a secret society they are not allowed to discuss, it's more than an anecdote. It's a symptom.
The New Cathedrals of Power
And with that, we arrive in the present. The rich and powerful of this world no longer meet only in lodges and fraternity houses. They meet in Davos, at the World Economic Forum. They meet at the Bilderberg Conferences, those gatherings that have been held since 1954, whose participant lists are published, but whose contents are shrouded in the strictest secrecy. They meet in Bohemian Grove, that wooded estate on the Russian River in California, where once a year around two thousand men from the American elite gather—and where a ceremony called the "Cremation of Care" takes place before a giant owl statue, whose symbolic meaning ignites the imagination.
Are these secret societies in the classical sense? No, certainly not. They are networks of power that utilize the structures developed by Eleusis and the Freemasons thousands and centuries ago: belonging through invitation, cohesion through exclusivity, trust through secrecy. The form has changed, but the principle remains the same. And the question Cicero could have posed in the ruins of Eleusis is the question of our time: Who decides the fate of the many behind closed doors?
The Light of Publicity
The answer, paradoxical as it may sound, lies in the very nature of the secret society itself. For every secret society, as we showed in the previous column, carries its own Achilles' heel: the symbols that hold it together are simultaneously the traces that betray it. The lists sewn into robes are found. The meeting places, called "crypts," are photographed. The participants, sworn to silence, write memoirs. Helmut Schmidt reported openly on Bilderberg and Bohemian Grove in "People and Powers." Bill Clinton mentioned his participation in Bilderberg in his autobiography. The transparency made possible by the internet makes it increasingly difficult to maintain the walls that once surrounded the Telesterion of Eleusis.
Goethe, himself a Freemason and Illuminati member, did not have his Faust end in hell—unlike Marlowe's version, which we saw in the puppet theater. In Goethe's version, Faust is saved. By love. By light. The greatest German poet, who himself moved in the secret societies of his time, knew in the end what the true message is: that no secret is stronger than the truth. And no wall higher than the light. "He who strives ever onward," sing the angels in the second part of Faust, "he can we redeem." Perhaps this is the most beautiful answer ever given by an initiate to the mystery of secret societies.
Sapere aude!
S.
Further reading: https://www.ganjingworld.com/s/xbQNDxqkZ6
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