Page 19 - Jim Marrs - The Rise of the Fourth Reich: The Secret Societies That Threaten to Take Over Americ

INTRODUCTION 13

official crest of the Illuminati. In an investigative piece for Esquire maga-
zine, Rosenbaum wrote, “I do seem to have come across definite, if skele-
tal, links between the origins of Bones rituals and those of the notorious
Bavarian Illuminists . . . [who] did have a real historical existence. . . . From
1776 to 1785 they were an esoteric secret society with the more mystical
freethinking lodges of German Freemasonry.”
Other researchers agree that the Order is merely the Illuminati in dis-
guise, since Masonic emblems, symbols, German slogans, even the layout
of their initiation room, all are identical to those found in Masonic lodges
in Germany associated with the Illuminati. The Tomb is decked out with
engravings in German, such as “Ob Arm, Ob Reich, im Tode gleich”—
“Whether poor or rich, all are equal in death.” According to U.S. News

& World Report, one of the Bonesmen’s traditional songs is sung to the
tune of “Deutschland Über Alles.”
The Bavarian Illuminati was formed on May 1, 1776, by Adam Weishaupt,
a professor of canon law at Ingolstadt University of Bavaria, Germany. His
Illuminati were opposed to what they saw as the tyranny of the Catholic
Church and the national governments it supported. “Man is not bad,”
Weishaupt wrote, “except as he is made so by arbitrary morality. He is bad
because religion, the state, and bad examples pervert him. When at last rea-
son becomes the religion of men, then will the problem be solved.”
Weishaupt also evoked a philosophy that has been used with terrible
results down through the years by Hitler and many other tyrants. “Behold
our secret. Remember that the end justifies the means,” he wrote, “and
that the wise ought to take all the means to do good which the wicked
take to do evil.” Thus, for the enlightened—or “illuminated”—any means
to gain their ends is acceptable, whether this includes deceit, theft , mur-
der, or war.
The key to Illuminati control was secrecy. “The great strength of our
Order lies in its concealment. Let it never appear in any place in its own
name, but always covered by another name, and another occupation,” stated
Weishaupt. He not only deceived the public, but he reminded his top
leaders they should hide their true intentions from their own initiates by
“speaking sometimes in one way, sometimes in another, so that one’s real
purpose should remain impenetrable to one’s inferiors.”