History - Past and Perspective
The Real Message in the Great Seal of the United States
Mike Rosiana/Getty Images Plus

The Real Message in the Great Seal of the United States

Though the Great Seal is very familiar, how many of us are familiar with its origins? ...
John F. McManus
Article audio sponsored by The John Birch Society

Nine weeks before America’s courageous Founding Fathers mutually pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor by signing the Declaration of Independence, a less auspicious but equally momentous event took place in far-away Bavaria. May 1, 1776 marked the launch of a conspiratorial organization known as the Bavarian Illuminati. Its founder, a college professor named Adam Weishaupt, was first a student and then a teacher at the Jesuit-run University of Ingolstadt.

Weishaupt had spent much of the previous five years formulating the structure and goals of a plot targeting all of mankind, an ambitious scheme designed to overturn civilization and plunge the entire world into tyranny. To this day the birth of the Illuminati on May 1 is commemorated by communists and socialists alike as “May Day.”

Despite Weishaupt’s affiliation with the Jesuits, his new organization had no religious foundation. In fact, it held both religion and established government in contempt. In his 1798 exposé of Weishaupt’s cabal, the French Jesuit Augustin Barruel paraphrased the insurrectionist’s perverse intent:

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