World League of Illuminati

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World League of Illuminati

In 1880, Theodor Reuss, a druggist, singer, and student of the esoteric, launched an attempt to reactivate the Illuminati, the order originally founded by Adam Weishaupt (1748-1830) in 1776 and destroyed in 1785. The first lodge was opened in Munich, Germany. The Berlin lodge opened in 1895, and soon afterwards Reuss met an actor named Leopold Engel (1858-1931). They became involved in several activities, including the founding of the German section of the Theosophical Society. Engel was interested in all things psychic, and practiced mesmerism and naturopathic healing. Like Reuss, he also had the idea of reviving the Illuminati and had himself founded the World League of Illuminati in 1893. In 1896 he joined Ruess' Order of Illuminati and in 1899, they formally merged the two organizations.

On March 12, 1901, Reuss, Engel, and a group of their order members met and drafted a document that was backdated to the first day of the new century, January 1, 1900. It reestablished the then-dormant Munich lodge and asserted the order's authority to found Masonic lodges. Reuss was affirmed as the order's master. The founding of the new Munich lodge was duly announced as a regular Masonic lodge open to master Masons. Masons objected that it was merely an offshoot of the Illuminati and not Masonic. Reuss simply severed its connection with the Order of Illuminati. As a result, he and Engel quarreled. They patched up their relationship for a while, but in 1902 went their separate ways.

Actually, Reuss was losing his interest in the Illuminati. He renewed a relationship with Karl Kellner and began the process that would lead to the founding of the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO). In the meantime, Engel reestablished the World League of the Illuminati and issued a new set of regulations at the beginning of 1903. Three years later, he issued a manifesto in the form of a history of the order. He took extra pains to separate his position from that of Reuss, now operating under the OTO banner.

The World League survived through the 1930s and drew on a variety of Masonic and Rosicrucian sources. Engel died on October 8, 1931. He was succeeded by Julius Meyer. Then on September 22, 1934, the League was closed down by the Gestapo, and much of its material confiscated. Work of the order was immediately transferred to the regional groups. As early as 1896, Engel had opened a group in Austria and a Swiss group was founded in 1929. A Polish group opened in 1937, but as with the Austrian group, it was closed after the Nazi takeover of the country. Only the Swiss group under Karl Brodbeck operated through World War II (1939-45).

Meyer was able to revive what was now known as the Illuminaten Orden (IO) after the war. He charged Maximillian Haitz with the task of reassembling the archive that the Gestapo seized, which he was partially able to accomplish. Eduard Korbel revived the IO in Austria. Following Brodbeck's death in 1955, Hermann Joseph Metzger (1919-1990) assumed leadership of the Swiss IO. That same year, P. Kirchvogel emerged as the new international leader of the World League, Julius Meyer having died in 1953. In 1963 Kirchvogel passed that office to Metzger.

Metzger had already begun work on a master vision that included the uniting of a various Magical/occult lineages/ activities in his person. In 1947 he had taken over a publishing house, Psychosophische Gesellschaft, following the death of its owner. In 1957 he had become a bishop, and then in 1960, the patriarch of the Gnostic Catholic Church, a church that traces its history to the apparition of the Virgin Mary and subsequent consecration to the bishopric of Jules-Benoit Doinel (1842-1902). Metzger had also joined the Ordo Templi Orientis, the order cofounded by Reuss and passed to magician Aleister Crowley. In 1963, Crowley's successor as Outer Head of the Order, Karl Johannes Germer (1885-1962), died. Metzger held an election of the German-speaking leadership and in 1963 proclaimed himself the new Outer Head.

The World League was merged into what Metzger called the Ordo Illuminatorum (OI). The work of the new OI includes 13 degrees that borrow material from all of the different organizations over which Metzger had attained control. The 13th degree was the administrative degree for the international leaders, including the Aeropagus of the Illuminati.