”Look, at the end of the day I wasted twenty years of my life trying to uncover the 'dark truth' behind the New Illuminati. I will spell it out in words of one syllable for you, for the sixteenth fucking time, because apparently you missed the memo.
There. Is. Nothing. There.
Nothing. No terrible secret. No blood sacrifices. No Mafia. No mind control. No spies in the White House. No acid in the kool-aid. No ancient Crowleyian sex majick. No Satanism. No sad old women in underwear getting their jollies from being serviced by college football jocks. No circles of power. No chanting. No robes. No fucking story.
They're just a bunch of slightly kooky guys who like obscure history and meeting in old buildings that smell of pipesmoke and brandy. They're harmless. Toothless. They like archaeological surveys and writing sarcastic letters to Pravda and Le Monde. Yes, they have a secret fucking handshake. It's about as complex as the Daily Enquirer's crossword, okay? No, I'm not going to show it to you.
Now give up and fuck off to someone who'll tell you the President is a lizard robot clone or Elvis pissed in their cheerios. I won't. The world is a boring, boring place, and the NI are no exception.” - Transcript of an interview with David Blumenthal, author of “Secrets of the Templars”, “Heirs of Arimathea”, “Sex, Lies and Theophory”, “Illuminated!”, and several other 'tell-all' exposés on the New Illuminati, currently serving consecutive sentences for six hundred counts of libel, slander, defamation and tax evasion.
The New Illuminati has the dubious privilege of being the only one of the seven organisations that is legal in almost every country they operate in. They present themselves as something between an old boys' club and a weekend hobby for amateur sleuths and the curious. Increasingly popular in the last decade, the New Illuminati are for every bussinesswoman who wants to be seen with something a bit more respectable than the Fortean Times on her desk; every up-and-coming banker who needs a little edge on the competition and recognises the CEO's tie-pin; every passionate truth-seeker, disillusioned with the infighting and cat-herding of disorganised Internet forums and mailing lists, who has realised that - if They are really lying to Us - then We're better in numbers.
In the early 1980s, a Japanese eccentric named Shimori Yukiko and a fabulously wealthy British aristocrat, Charles Foxstronecroft, sat down to dinner together. What resulted from their discussions, and their work in the months and years that followed, was the organisation known as the New Illuminati.
Although the name of the organisation, and its associated rumours of secret rituals, ties to organised crime, occultism and brainwashing, put it heavily in the media spotlight over the next decades - including a series of garish and briefly bestselling “exposés” by down-on-their-luck journalists who claimed to have infiltrated the highest levels of the organisation - by 2010, the popular consensus was that the New Illuminati were depressingly dull. Every scandalous rumour was debunked as artistic invention; every skeleton in the closet fleshed out in a tweed suit and briar pipe.
These days, membership in the NI is seen as a harmless - even faintly laughable - affectation. It's well-known that the group functions a little like the Masons, with discreet but recognisable cufflinks and tie-pins bearing the organisation's logo. There are rumours that certain banks give preferential recruitment to members and their children. The group sponsors semi-regular newspaper and Internet competitions to “solve” a variety of puzzles and problems, usually with a historical theme - the truth behind the Pyramids; crop circles; unexplained disappearances; spontaneous combustion. Prizes are large enough to attract respectable academics as well as frothing youngsters, though rarely awarded - the nature of the competitions being sufficiently esoteric that even their competitors agree a true “win” would gain the entrant enough public acclaim and attention to make the money unimportant.
Both Shimori and Foxstonecroft are still at large, though their presence is more often visible as signatories to public monuments and charities than in person. Shimori has a research position at Tokyo University, but the majority of her lectures are delivered by VR feed, where - her students relate - her avatar appears as a six-foot, two-dimensional representation of a tarot card. Foxstonecraft has retired to his country estates, from where his PA regularly updates the British and international press on the state of his attempts to breed the perfect Empress Josephine rose-bush, and very little else.
It is publicly known that there are no fixed entry requirements to join the New Illuminati. However, since even an application for membership requires two sponsors from your local Lodge - and Lodges tend to be fairly self-selecting - the stereotypical member is either wealthy or from an old family (“old” in the truest sense - pure Cordillerano blood in Filipino lodges counts for as much as a hereditary title in British lodges); with a keen and active mind; and an ability to keep their mouth shut. Many Illuminati are introduced to a Lodge at university, where student societies with focuses as diverse as astronomy, politics, theology and activism make fertile recruiting grounds for membership.
In 2019, the New Illuminati are a registered and accepted organisation in hundreds of countries across the globe. Only the most lawless of states lack lodges altogether, only the most totalitarian prohibit them; and even there, they are by no means the first against the wall when the riot police come - if nothing else, because they seem so fundamentally harmless. Horseplay with trouserlegs and secret handshakes aside, the NI seem to be very little other than a gathering-place for like-minded, mature people who enjoy throwing their considerable intellects against unsolvable historical, scientific and philosophical problems.
In their search for truth and personal enlightenment, the New Illuminati are known to be interested in: