Illuminati
18th-century Bavarian secret society
Why this is trending
Interest in “Illuminati” spiked on Wikipedia on 2026-02-26.
Categorised under Science & Nature, this article fits a familiar pattern. Science and technology topics tend to trend after breakthroughs, space missions, health announcements, or widely shared research findings.
At GlyphSignal we surface these trending signals every day—transforming Wikipedia’s vast pageview data into actionable insights about global curiosity.
Key Takeaways
- The Illuminati ( ; plural of Latin illuminatus , 'enlightened') is a name given to several groups, both real and fictitious.
- The society's stated goals were to oppose superstition, obscurantism, religious influence over public life, and abuses of state power by monarchs.
- " The Illuminati—along with Freemasonry and other secret societies—were outlawed through edict by Charles Theodore, Elector of Bavaria, with the encouragement of the Catholic Church, in 1784, 1785, 1787 and 1790.
- It attracted literary men such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Johann Gottfried Herder and the reigning Duke of Gotha and of Weimar.
The Illuminati (; plural of Latin illuminatus, 'enlightened') is a name given to several groups, both real and fictitious. Historically, the name usually refers to the Bavarian Illuminati, an Enlightenment-era secret society founded on 1 May 1776 in the Electorate of Bavaria. The society's stated goals were to oppose superstition, obscurantism, religious influence over public life, and abuses of state power by monarchs. "The order of the day", they wrote in their general statutes, "is to put an end to the machinations of the purveyors of injustice, to control them without dominating them."
The Illuminati—along with Freemasonry and other secret societies—were outlawed through edict by Charles Theodore, Elector of Bavaria, with the encouragement of the Catholic Church, in 1784, 1785, 1787 and 1790. During subsequent years, the group was generally vilified by conservative and religious critics, who claimed that the Illuminati continued underground and were responsible for the French Revolution. It attracted literary men such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Johann Gottfried Herder and the reigning Duke of Gotha and of Weimar.
Content sourced from Wikipedia under CC BY-SA 4.0
