Adam Weishaupt begins working towards incorporating his system of Illuminism with that of Masonry, with the aim of creating a New World Order, which means the abolition of all monarchical governments and religions.

He had begun his formal education at age seven in Bavaria at a school controlled by the Jesuits, had later enrolled at the University of Ingolstadt and graduated in 1768 at age twenty with a doctorate of law, becoming a professor in 1772.

Following Pope Clement XIV’s suppression of the Society of Jesus the following year, Weishaupt had become a professor of canon law, a position that heretofore held exclusively by the Jesuits.

Weishaupt had been introduced in 1775 to the empirical philosophy of Johann Georg Heinrich Feder of the University of Göttingen.

Both Feder and Weishaupt will later become opponents of Kantian idealism.

Weishaupt had formed the "Order of Perfectibilists", which will later be known as the Illuminati, on May 1, 1776.

He has adopted the name of "Brother Spartacus" within the order.

The Order is neither egalitarian nor democratic.

The actual character of the society is modeled on one of its traditionalist enemies, the Jesuits, and is an elaborate network of spies and counterspies.

Each isolated cell of initiates reports to a superior, whom they do not know, a party structure that will effectively be adopted by some later groups.

Initiated into the Masonic Lodge "Theodor zum guten Rath" (Theodore of Good Counsel), at Munich in 1777, Weishaupt’s project of "illumination, enlightening the understanding by the sun of reason, which will dispel the clouds of superstition and of prejudice" is an unwelcome reform.

He had soon developed Gnostic mysteries of his own, however, with the goal of "perfecting human" nature through reeducation to achieve a communal state with nature, freed of government and organized religion.