ILLUMINATED: Johnny Royal’s New Documentary Seeks To Illuminate The Illuminati

The new documentary Illuminated: The True Story of the Illuminati explores the elusive group popularized in Dan Brown’s novels, and shines a spotlight on the truth behind the mysteries. Johnny Royal (33 & Beyond: The Royal Art of Freemasonry) directs the documentary, which reveals the true historical origins of the Illuminati by examining their hand-written documents from the late 18th century, along with reenactments of the secret society’s rituals which have never been previously seen by the public.

Johnny Royal spoke exclusively with Film Inquiry about the feature-length documentary, and the Illuminati’s history, which is stranger than fiction.

Jim Dixon for Film Inquiry: What first interested you in the Illuminati?

Johnny Royal: My interest in the Illuminati started right around the same time as when I became a Freemason which was a little over a decade ago. I found in some of the research I had done that there was a connection there. I wasn’t quite sure what it was at the time, but going through the process of making this film it became very clear what the connection was, so that’s where my interest really kicked in is the aspects of the Illuminati’s infiltration into other fraternal organizations such as the Freemasons.

So you’re a Freemason yourself?

Johnny Royal: I am, yes.

Infiltrating the Freemasons

What was your biggest surprise when you started researching the Illuminati?

Johnny Royal: Well one of them was that they actually required that the majority of their members be Christians and when I started digging in through their documents – I was lucky enough to be in Bavaria looking at original handwritten documents by [Adam] Weishaupt and [Adolph] Knigge, and their scribes. They required their members – most of them – to be Christians. I was expecting to find some nefarious activity or some magical goats or something like that – also the aspect that they actually successfully did infiltrate Freemasonry. And, they did that because they needed their money and they needed a membership base.

One of the other big surprises for me was that they did in fact have correspondence with Benjamin Franklin and John Adams and I read those letters – translated – and they were basically looking to set up their own colony in the United States called Elysium but it never panned out. They didn’t have the money to get over to the United States but the place that they picked along the Savannah River ended up getting taken over by the British during the war.

What I got from the movie was that these were essentially secular intellectuals who were trying to limit the influence of the Catholic Church in secular life.

Johnny Royal: What the Illuminati started out as is different than what it ended up as. So it started out basically as a secret book club taught by Weishaupt, and the reason why is that during this time in Bavaria the Catholic Church held a very strict ban on Enlightenment Era thinking.

So, any philosophical works that they felt were against canon law or Catholic doctrine they banned. Now, there’s a very interesting character that comes into play here which is Johann von Igstadt, who was Weishaupt’s godfather. Weishaupt was the father of the Illuminati, but Igstadt raised Weishaupt from the age of five after his parents died. But Igstadt was the director and the book censor for Ingolstadt, so his job basically is to burn these books that the Church bans or to get rid of them, but instead he keeps them and builds a private library of over 4,200 volumes.

He reads these, and over the years he teaches Weishapt this type of thinking. So Weishapt is not in line with Catholic doctrine – he doesn’t think that there is anything wrong with this type of philosophical thinking – ecology, ethics, epistemology – so as he becomes a professor at Ingolstadt he basically gathers his brightest pupils and he starts teaching them these works.

Then he gets – another interesting character comes in which is Adolph von Knigge. Knigge was a high ranking Freemason in the strict observances in Bavaria. So it’s really Knigge that brings in ritual and ceremony to Weishaupt’s philosophy. So they use the skeleton of the rituals of the old strict observance of Freemasonry which really aren’t around or practiced anymore but the ceremonies, handshakes – all of those secret things – he brings that as a skeleton, and they layer Weishaupt’s philosophy on top of that.

So these elaborate ceremonies alluded to in the documentary – they weren’t part of the original elements of the Illuminati when they were founded?

Johnny Royal: Correct, when they were first founded it was purely philosophical. It was more of an instruction manual on ethics. How to make the world a better place by making yourself a better human being and the rituals start coming later. In fact the first rituals weren’t really developed until 1778 and Weishaupt’s early draft A School for Humanity, which was the predecessor of the Perfectibilists, which is the predecessor of the Illuminatis in 1774, so you have a four year period where there’s really no ceremony or no ritual attached to the degrees of Weishaupt’s writing.

Secret Societies and Societies With Secrets

How much danger would the members have been in had their group been exposed?

Johnny Royal: They were exposed fully and that’s one of the interesting things about the Illuminati. They were the first secret society to ever be fully exposed. And, there’s a difference between a secret society and a society with secrets. So in other words, Freemasonry is a society with secrets – we can’t talk about what we do in the rituals of the ceremonies but we can wear masonic rings and we can tell people, “Hey, I’m a Freemason.”

But a secret society such as the Illuminati, they’re not allowed to mention membership at all. In the film Illuminated: The True Story of the Illuminati, one of the interviewees, Eric Bertolli, talks about another really good example of it – it’s like the Mafia – if you are in the Mafia you can’t go around telling people you’re in the Mafia. But there was a detrimental effect when they were exposed because during the time Charles Theodore, the Elector of Bavaria, basically banned all secret societies, the Freemasons, the Rosicrucians, the Illuminati and he went so far as to issue another edict that said if you were caught in any of these groups you were going to be put to death.

So, it was detrimental and there’s a lot of conflicting theories that the Illuminati still exist today – it does not exist in the form that it did – the original form that it did in Bavaria at that time. And, in fact, if you read the book, The Secret School of Wisdom written by Josef Wäges and Reinhard Markner, it’s translated from the Bavarian rituals of the Illuminati – to even get through one of these degrees – it could take you twelve hours to perform it. So, there very long, long ceremonies and they’re very, you know – it’s lectured. You can tell it’s written by a college professor.

[Laughs] That’s sort of a turn-off right there.

Johnny Royal: Right. [laughs]

You mentioned your interviewees. You have quite a number of them in the documentary and they cover a number of disciplines. How did you find them?

Johnny Royal: So a majority of them I found through the fraternity – and Josef Wäges was introduced to me by Adam Kendall who is also in the documentary – Adam was in my last one, 33 & Beyond which was about Freemasonry, but Adam is in my opinion one of the most knowledgeable Masonic and fraternal historians in the world today. But Adam introduced me to Josef and Josef was one of the authors on that book, The Secret School of Wisdom, and I had read that and by the time I met Joe I was getting ready to release the last documentary and I said to Joe, have you ever thought of doing a documentary on this – There’s no one that’s ever really done the true story about who these people were.

And he was like, Well, I’ve talked to some people and I just don’t think they had the right idea or they couldn’t hold it in the right light, – so I gave him an early screener of 33 & Beyond and he said, I love it, let’s do it. From conception to release, we’re almost exactly two years from that day.

That’s actually not a bad turnaround time.

Johnny Royal: No, it’s not. My last one took seven years. So I cut it down quite a bit. [laughs]

You’re picking up speed.

Johnny Royal: Yup.

I admired the cinematography in this very much. It occurred to me that it must have been very difficult for you to spend that time in Bavaria with those eye-popping castles – I wondered if you wanted to say anything about your cinematographer and the importance of the look of the movie to the finished product.

Going Where Others Have Gone Before

Johnny Royal: Absolutely, so the cinematographer that I’ve worked with for several years, his name is Daryl Gilmore. And Daryl is very good at understanding and prepping for what my vision is when we go into what story we are telling. Some of my favorite directors, not in any particular order – I love Ingmar Bergman who did The Seventh Seal with Max von Sydow, I love Bergman. I also love Fritz Lang, the silent film director who did Dr. Mabuse the Gambler.

But I incorporated that and tied it in with how [Stanley] Kubrick would shoot, with these really long, drawn-out shots because I think that creates a feeling that’s representative of what you are trying to say in the story. So, in Illuminated what I wanted to have happen wasn’t a bunch of talking heads throughout the whole thing or narration. That’s why there’s some long pauses and just music so that the audience can absorb the information that’s coming in. It’s indicative of what these people going through in these rituals at the time.

I remember the first time that I went through the doors of Freemasonry as an apprentice what went through my mind is that I’m about to do pretty much the same thing that George Washington and Mozart and Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin had done and that’s very impactful. I was also very scared because I didn’t know what was going to happen. You’re in darkness and you just don’t know.

I think that with the filmmaking, Daryl really got the idea of like, okay, let’s go for these long dramatic shots, let’s really let the audience have time to breathe, just like a good song lets the music breathe and this is – we base this on a rhythm in a sense. It’s like a heartbeat because that’s what we are trying to do is get to the heart of the matter of this which is that the Illuminati were a group of like-minded individuals that simply wanted to make the world a better place by making themselves better.

I think it would be fair to say that the reason a lot of people out there right now have heard of the Illuminati at all would have a lot to do with Dan Brown and the book, Angels & Demons.

Johnny Royal: Yes, and actually I’m glad you brought that up because there were two things where all of that – even Dan Brown – was propagated from – one, the Illuminati was the first secret society to be fully exposed to the public. Part two is that there were several people who blamed the Illuminati for the French Revolution, which is complete nonsense. And then you have another part which is pop culture.

Pop culture uses different symbolism – such as the All-Seeing Eye and things like that. You know, you see people like Jay-Z doing the triangle over the eye but what people don’t realize – that symbol, that triangle by the head, that’s actually a Hermetic Golden Dawn symbol and it means fire. So, it’s not Illuminati. And, as to the Illuminati, there’s only one document in their original documentation, in fact, that I had seen featuring the All-Seeing Eye in the triangle, but that symbol is actually a Christian symbol and it’s hundreds of years older than when the Illuminati was even conceived.

So, that’s really where it kind of propagates from – Dan Brown definitely kick started it with Angels & Demons and people of pop culture carry that on that conspiracy – but it goes back to them being exposed, their works being published in Bavaria, and then up to the French Revolution and people blaming them but they weren’t even around anymore by that time.

Conspiracy Theories

Your movie is debunking a lot pop culture conspiracy theory myths but I wonder if you have any particular insight as to why people are so hungry for the conspiracy theory version? Not only specifically this, but generally.

Johnny Royal: Sure. I think that people want to grab a hold of things just to substantiate their belief systems. There’s this craze going on right now about people talking about storming Area 51 and there are some funny videos out there with the lock security guards saying like, wait till these guys run into the plasma field and boom [laughs].

There’s all this funny stuff but people are very thirsty and their very hungry for something to believe that – you know, I’m trying to think of what the right phrase is but I’ll just say it how I think but to blame, to place blame on things, to place blame on the government or if they’re not in a fortunate situation or if they’re – some people are just nuts and they just want to believe that there’s a secret group controlling the world. That’s just complete nonsense.

It can’t work like that for a number of reasons and one of the biggest reasons that the Illuminati failed is their administration. They required their members to keep a journal called a quivis lycett, and at the maximum height of the Illuminati you have between two to three thousand members. On top of the Illuminati the ruling body was called the Areopagus and there’s only six to eight of these people.

So imagine that me, you, and maybe six other people, and we’re on top of this organization, and we require our three thousand members to write a journal which they have to submit those to us every month, and between the eight of us we have to read all three thousand, and then we have to write individual letters back to each of these people, every month. So that was another big, detrimental flaw in the Illuminati structure – their administration – their day-to-day operations in a sense.

And just the inability to keep up on their own homework.

Johnny Royal: Exactly.

One of the websites I ran across, and I wish I was making this up, postulated that the Illuminati are alive and well trying to found a totalitarian new world order and that Katy Perry is apparently leading the charge.

Johnny Royal: [laughs] Yeah, I mean look in Freemasonry there are some degrees that are three hours long and those are really long to sit through, and you know the Illuminati that they are talking about, Illuminati in it’s true form, like I said before, some of those degrees are twelve hours long and it gets really, really boring sitting through twelve hours – you know it’s like going to a philosophy class for literally twelve hours and then you’ve got to walk around a little bit and do some funny handshakes and stuff like that – it’s just – it’s just not true.

I’m actually – there’s some really interesting philosophy in the degrees of the Illuminati, especially when you get in toward the higher degrees…[T]he metaphysical aspects of Weishaupt’s philosophy are very interesting to me and I think that there is some benefit for anybody that reads them. Basically he’s trying to prove the existence of the soul through logical and secular reasoning. He’s not taking a mystical approach, he’s taking a very grounded approach of saying – getting into ideas of like thermodynamics, like energy cannot be created or destroyed, part of us is energy therefore some part of us always has lived and always will continue to live.

He takes a very scientific and logical approach to it and that’s very interesting to me because it’s grounded in factual scientific work, kind of like an empirical approach to things…I am affiliated with other groups too that there’s some interesting ritual work done, and they teach some very interesting things – the strongest one, the most organized one in today’s society today are the Freemasons, because the administration is run properly from the grand lodges – it’s a group of really good guys and charity is on the forefront of doing things and there’s no ulterior motive.

There’s no desire for the fraternity or these other fraternities to dominate the world – I mean that just sounds really boring to me anyways – it’s like people that run for President of the United States, like I wouldn’t want that job, I wouldn’t want to be your Congressman or Senator, I know some people like that but that just sounds like a nightmare to me.

The Importance of Ritual

Do you think that there is something ingrained in the human psyche that craves or needs ritual in their lives?

Johnny Royal: Absolutely. I think it was Joseph Campbell – there was a great series on PBS a long time ago, maybe the early 80’s, but he was a master of studying mythology and formulating these ideas. He has a quote, I’m paraphrasing, but he says that the key to any good and interesting life is having ritual in your life. And whether that’s getting up and walking your dog everyday – people don’t realize like we have rituals that we do in our lives every day and those are the things that we kind of look forward to doing.

Now, as to formal initiatic ceremonies and rituals, the purpose of those is for the person going through them to talk about things that happened before, and then how the ritual initiation changes them going forward. Dr. Jim Tresner, who passed away last year was from Oklahoma, and he was considered one of the most brilliant figures of masonic and ritual studies, talked about the idea that initiation isn’t necessary for a woman, per se, because nature naturally initiates a woman. A woman knows when she becomes a woman, and a man never has that. So a lot of men go into the military, or join fraternal organizations.

There’s a big difference there that’s very important to note. That’s the purpose of the initiation: to divide your life from things that were happening before – a lot of them you don’t know why they are happening, and you blame things but then you come to realize through a good ceremony, a good ritual, a good system – you come to realize that everything you have in your life, and I mean everything, is based on your choices. We can’t control our emotions but in the human psyche we can control how we react to our emotions and that’s the idea – to circumscribe our desires and to keep our passions within those bounds.

Illuminated: The True Story of the Illuminati was released on all DigitalHD platforms, DVD, and theatrically July 30, 2019.