The illuminati was a secret society founded by Adam Weishaupt on May 1, 1776. Originally Adam wanted the order to be called the Order of the Perfectibilists. However after much debate he changed it to the Order of the Illuminati.
In 1777 Karl Theodor became ruler of Bavaria. He was a proponent of Enlightened Despotism and his government banned all secret societies including the Illuminati. Internal rupture and panic over succession preceded its downfall, which was affected by the Secular Edict made by the Bavarian government. The March 2, 1785 edict "seems to have been deathblow to the Illuminati in Bavaria." Weishaupt had fled and documents and internal correspondences, seized in 1786 and 1787, were subsequently published by the government in 1787. Von Zwack's home was searched to disclose much of the group's literature.
The literature mentioned creating a New World Order and proposed using the events in Revelation in the Bible and the Nostradamus prophecies to bring about the New World Order. It also mentioned that it's members would become the new rulers of the world.
Another reorganization took place in 1780 after the Lower Saxon noble Adolph Freiherr Knigge joined the Illuminati. In 1782 he gave a structure similar to the Freemason lodges to the order that had until that point, as Weishaupt himself conceded, not actually existed anywhere but in Weishaupt's head. Leadership of the order was given to a so-called Areopagus that consisted of Weishaupt, Knigge and others.
This new organization allowed the Illuminati to recruit numerous Freemasons and infiltrate entire lodges against the backdrop of a crisis that the higher grades of the German Freemasonry were going through after the collapse of the Order of Strict Observance in 1776.This relatively apolitical and romanticizing movement claimed succession from the Knights Templar and had enabled Karl Gotthelf von Hund to get the German lodges under his leadership. For years he had been claiming to be in contact with "Unknown Superiors" who had let him in on the deepest secret of Freemasonry. However, after no such "Secret Superiors" contacted the lodges after Hund's death in 1776, the lodge members were perplexed.
As a result, the disagreement between Weishaupt and Knigge intensified so much that it threatened to break the Order apart. Therefore an arbitral tribunal called a “Congress“ was convened in Weimar in February 1784.
While members of societies were quarrelling amongst themselves, secret societies had attracted the attention of the Bavarian authorities. They deemed the objectives of progressive-minded secret societies suspicious because they concentrated on changing the traditional order and on establishing a "rational state" by infiltrating public offices. On June 22, 1784, the Bavarian electoral Prince Charles Theodore consequently prohibited any "communities, societies and associations", which had been founded without his approval as a sovereign ruler. With the insistence of Father Frank, the chancellor Baron of Krettmayr, the Rosicrucian Baron of Törring and other people at court, another edict was released on March 2, 1785, which explicitly mentioned the names Illuminati and Freemason. It banned them for reason of treason and heresy.
The Documents mentioned extracting proponents of the Order of the Illuminati into Freemasonry, and creating the New World Order by using the events of Revelation in the Bible as a key player to bring about a One world government.
The Order was terminated by Pope Pius VI and the members disbanded. Some say members of the Order merely went into hiding and continued implementing their plans and strategies for the New World Order in the New World, or what is today called the United States of America.
Since then presidents, musicians, entertainers, writers, artists, actors, actresses, politicians, heads of state, royalty, song writers, CEO's of major corporations, film producers, directors, as well as people from various other trades have adopted the teachings of the Illuminati and have become members of Freemasonry as well as the Order of the Illuminati.