Is Donald Trump? Is Katy Perry?

Am I?

Everyone from the BBC to Beyoncé

has been accused of being part of the Illuminati -

a secret group said to comprise of the world's most powerful people

seeking to establish a new world order.

Even if you haven't heard of the Illuminati,

chances are you've probably seen one of the symbols associated with them.

Pentagrams, goats,

even the all-seeing eye that's found on US banknotes.

References have also cropped up in music videos,

such as Rihanna's S&M,

which featured a fake newspaper with a headline declaring her...

So why do musicians and artists

like to play around with references to the Illuminati?

I think quite simply, they're just having fun.

They're just entertained by these stories like many of us are.

I'm reminded of a conspiracy theory from 1966

that Paul McCartney of The Beatles had died in a car crash

on the way home after doing some recording

and he'd been replaced by a Canadian DJ

who looked a lot like him and quickly learned to play the bass and sing.

Paul McCartney has never denied this conspiracy theory.

He's always kept quiet about it

and I think McCartney, like Jay-Z, Rihanna and others,

is just entertained by the story.

So who are the Illuminati?

Are they really a shadowy elite who control the world?

The Illuminati were, to the best of our knowledge,

a Bavarian secret society formed in the 18th Century.

It opposed superstition, religious influence and state authority.

They even created a rule book which stated that...

The Bavarian group eventually faded into irrelevance

and has nothing to do with modern concepts of the Illuminati.

The conspiracy theory that we know about today

stems from the Discordian movement.

The story goes that Discordianism began in 1965

in the office of a Texas drug attorney.

Two schoolmates...

...used the office photocopier to publish copies

of the Principia Discordia, the movement's founding text.

The book promoted the idea that...

...and Discordianism gathered steam throughout the 60s and 70s

with Hill and Thornley actively trying

to cause mischief and spread disinformation.

Their mission was expanded even further by two other Americans -

a writer called Robert Anton Wilson and his friend Robert Shea.

Wilson was editor at Playboy

and the two of them decided they would write a novel

and they would throw all of the great conspiracy theories into this novel

and call it Illuminatus.

And in fact, they enjoyed it so much they turned it into a trilogy.

They decided that it would be fun to try and spread

a little chaos and misinformation deliberately about the Illuminati

and they did this by writing letters to the mainstream press,

by writing letters to fanzines - which were popular at the time -

but also through the letters page of Playboy itself.

They would also write in letters from imaginary readers

saying that the Illuminati weren't real at all

or were kind of sitting on the fence.

It didn't really matter, what did matter is that all these people

seemed to be generating this conversation about the Illuminati.

And the idea was that you, as the reader,

were supposed to question that,

interrogate it, ask, "Are they really real?"

The myth travelled far and wide.

Wilson and Shea's The Illuminatus Trilogy

attributed some of the mysteries of the time,

such as, "Who shot John F. Kennedy?" to the Illuminati.

Although the multitude of conspiracy theories

that appear in the trilogy are imaginary,

they're blended with enough truth to make them seem plausible.

Probably the oddest theory was the suggestion that

Adam Weishaupt, the founder of the Bavarian Illuminati,

assassinated George Washington and assumed his identity

{as President of the USA.

Believers of this theory point to Washington's portrait

on the US one dollar bill

which they suggest is actually the face of Weishaupt.

Despite its lack of mainstream sales the trilogy became a cult favourite.

It was even made into a mammoth eight-hour stage play in Liverpool,

launching the careers of British actors Bill Nighy and Jim Broadbent.

The 70s print magazine culture seems distant now

from our globalised hyper-connected internet,

but Illuminati rumours are still rife on websites such as 4chan and Reddit

where believers swap their favourite versions of the conspiracy

and champion evidence to prove it's still in existence.

Ultimately it's not down to a shadowy elite whether you choose to believe

in the Illuminati conspiracy theory or not.

It's up to you.

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