An Original Manuscript on the Illuminati!

by Brandon Eichelberg

For this assignment, I decided to dive deeper into the ominous world of the Illuminati. I remember being very intrigued by this topic in middle school and staying up late watching cheesy YouTube videos on it, so I am pretty surprised that I have been given the opportunity to rekindle this interest and do some research for a real grade in a college class. 

To start my research, I decided to go to the Digital Public Library of America. I simply searched “illuminati” and narrowed my results down so that they would fit this prompt. I discovered a copy of an old English translation of a French book called On the Influence Attributed to Philosophers, Free-Masons, and to the Illuminati, on the French Revolution. Real hefty name.

This particular copy, which is scanned/photo-copied by Princeton University, was created in 1801. The original French was written by Jean-Joseph Mounier, and the English translation was done by a man named J. Walker. 

Based on the brief introduction, the whole piece is arguing against the negative accusations that were placed against such groups as philosophers, Free-Masons, and the Illuminati. Many Europeans during the French Revolution believed that such groups were implementing chaos within the order of the French government, and therefore supporting the revolution. This whole piece seems as though it could have been written, or at least owned, by Ludloe from Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist (ignoring the fact that Memoirs takes place before the French Revolution).

Mounier claims that such groups were not responsible for the French Revolution “directly or indirectly.” He also says that arguments against groups such as the Illuminati are by “superficial minds.” I found this interesting because it shows the contrast between the rational Enlightenment thinkers and the religious Christians that we have noticed in the Early Republic of America. 

Something else that I found interesting from Mounier, is his insistence on liberty and human reason. His whole argument – again, only based on the small bits that I did read – seems to support the French Revolution and Illuminati-like groups, yet he is denying that they are interrelated at all. 

Looking at this old document was also interesting in other ways unrelated to its subject matter. Something that really hindered my reading, was the use of the letter S. As can be seen in the image of the first page of the “Introduction,” the letter “s”, when lower-case and in the beginning or middle of a word, looks a lot like an ‘f’. However, I noticed that when a lower-case ‘s’ is at the end of the word, it looks normal. Furthermore, an upper-case ‘S’ looks normal as well. Maybe this has to do with the bleeding of ink? I am not 100% sure, considering I have not looked too much into it yet. My other thought was that it could relate to the Greek use of a lower-case sigma, which is different based on if it is at the end of a word or in the beginning/middle of a word. I’m sure Dr. Peeples knows, so I would love an explanation, especially if I cannot find one online.

Overall, I found the fruits of this labor interesting and fun. Diving into the Illuminati in the context of this class was a treat and seeing photo-copied versions of old manuscripts was very cool as well. 

The Old Exchange

By Brandon Eichelberg

For my museum visit, I chose to go to the Old Exchange. I walked around the self-guided portion of the building for a while and saw some very interesting things. The Great Hall on the second floor had some very insightful displays, and my favorite part of the floor would have to be the views out of the windows. At each window, there was an information sheet that discussed the significance of what I was seeing out of the window, such as Broad Street. I found this to be really interesting because it was a museum exhibit in real-time outside of the museum.

Other than this, there were two displays that I found very interesting in a room on the first floor. The first one was a showcase of the weapons used in the American Revolution. I found the weapons display to be intriguing because I was able to see how simple some of the weapons were from that time. My particular favorite was the Hessian bayonet. This is because it shows how weaponry was still so simple at that time. The bayonet, which was essentially a spear attachment for a musket, exhibits how hand-to-hand combat was still more reliable than gun combat. It also shines light on how new some aspects of warfare really are, considering warfare now is largely based on some sort of distancing. This is seen in the use of assault and sniper rifles, as well as fighter jets and missile launchers. This extreme difference in weaponry really shows how much war has shifted from close-combat strategies to distanced ones, and I think that the combination of spear (bayonet) and rifle really shows how the American Revolution was at a crossroads between these two periods of military history.

Furthermore, on top of this case, there was also a fun fact about Benjamin Franklin and his use of rattlesnake symbolism, which I found to be very relevant to our course discussion on his “Join or Die” artwork (even though it was not specifically a rattlesnake in his art). It stated that Franklin liked using the rattlesnake to describe the colonies because it never attacked unless provoked and it always made it clear when it was agitated.

The second display in that room that I found incredible was a Free Badge (even though it was a reproduction). The Free Badges were used in Charleston from 1783 to 1789 to designate the freedom of a free African American. Furthermore, the badge had specific serial numbers. Now the really interesting part, at least for me, was the engravement of a freedman’s cap in the center of the badge. As we have discussed in class, such symbolism was used in patriotic artwork depicting the goddess Columbia. This freedman’s cap symbolism comes from the Roman use of such caps on freedmen (people who were once slaves but gained their freedom), which is interesting to note because it seems fitting that the Columbia artwork that we saw in class would use such symbolism, considering many colonists would compare their subservience under Britain to enslavement.