To begin with, let us dispense with all preconceived notions we may have. Let us, for a few minutes, disregard Adam Weishaupt and his Bavarian creation. Let us cleanse our minds of any ideas placed there by Dan Brown or other fictional authors. Freemasonry, the Bildeberg Group, Bohemian Grove, The Trilateral Commission, The Council on Foreign Relations, and all other associations we implicate upon the word "illuminati", cast aside for just a few minutes, I beg of you. Just so we can approach these ideas with a clear head and without prejudice... and let's just look at the word for a minute:

illuminati (ih-loo-muh-nah-tee, -ney-tahy)

— pl n , sing -to
a group of persons claiming exceptional enlightenment on some subject, esp religion

[C16: from Latin, literally: the enlightened ones, from illűminâre to illuminate

Source for definition

From the route source - literally "The enlightened ones". Now let us look at the word "enlightened":

enlightened (en-lahyt-n-deh)

— adj
1. factually well-informed, tolerant of alternative opinions, and guided by rational thought: an enlightened administration ; enlightened self-interest
2. privy to or claiming a sense of spiritual or religious revelation of truth: the search for an enlightened spiritual master.

Source for definition

The etymology of "enlightened" is as follows:

enlighten (v.)
late 14c., "to remove the dimness or blindness (usually figurative) from one's eyes or heart;" see en - + lighten. Old English had inlihtan. Related: Enlightened; enlightening.

Source for etymology

So, cobbling this together a bit, I arrive at the following deductive definition of "Illuminati": Those who seek to be factually well informed, tolerant, guided by rational thought - to remove the dimness or blindness from one's eyes or heart".

That doesn't sound malignant or evil at all!?! What gives here? This sounds to me like a good thing! This enlightenment. In point of fact, aren't we all here trying to accomplish just that? To either become enlightened or to try and enlighten others with the bits and pieces of knowledge that we've managed to come across?

In fact every single person I can think of, from the totality of history, that I respect, admire, look up to, idolize, or hold in regard are people who did exactly this... enlighten. From Sun Tzu,and Socrates and his student Plato, through Euclid, Archimedes, Niccolò Machiavelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, and into modern personal heroes such as Thomas Edison, F.D.R., and J.F.K.... And many more... All minds that I see as trying to move humanity forward... to make things better.

How did this all end up so twisted? Wanting to be informed and caring turned into a synonym for pure, unadulterated evil? Well, truth be told, it was probably because knowledge is power. Villify it and you've created a taboo against the very thing that might empower the masses to make a stand. Old school psyops. Reverse psychology.

It's hard for some of the younger folks to conceive of but, even a hundred years, or so, ago, literacy was the exception - and not the rule. People relied upon experts to instruct them, as necessary, and relied heavily upon others ( scribes or scriveners ) when they needed something written. Therefore the average person, anywhere in the world, only really knew what they'd been told - and the ones doing the telling had some very vested interests... such as the the Church or the servants of ones Monarch or landlord. We were told what to think and information was not only controlled... it was monopolized by the few. Knowledge that had been discovered by the ancients in Greece and in Rome was now, by chance and by malice, locked away and only allowed to the few.

A quick study of just one branch of this "tree", if you will, of hidden knowledge - a study of the schism - also called The Reformation shows that, at one point, laypersons were not allowed to even touch the bible, the Mass was, in some places, and at some times, given facing away from the congregation - and in Latin, a tongue mostly foreign to the people of that time... As if just reading the lips of the Priest might accidentally allow for some sort of revelatory learning. All the participants were really allowed to do was recite passages, in a tongue not their own, on cue. Information was totally controlled.

Books were uncommon, and were largely written in Latin until a guy named Johannes Gutenberg perfected a method of mass producing information quickly and economically by use of printing - thus opening the flood gates for the average person not only to have access to information, but also to have a strong motive to learn the, heretofore rare art of literacy ...

CONTINUE READING: http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread888775/pg