>>24441592I recommend skimming the illuminati book, it's pretty funny.
It's basically a story about how a liberal college professor named Weishaupt tries to found a """mystical""" but actually liberal atheist secret society in deeply Catholic Bavaria. Except he's a hack and the people he attracts are dumb pseuds.
My favorite part is when he has a very promising recruit in the pipeline who is interested in secret societies and frankmasonry, and he's socially connected and could really pull in more people. Except he's already passed the first stages and he needs to be "inducted onto the next step" of the secret society where he gets more information about the esoteric " powers that be" that the order serves. The problem that Weishaupt is a hack and is procrastinating on writing the rituals and mystical lore to be enacted for this stage of induction and keeps stringing him along. He eventually comes clean to the guy and the guy (Knigge) becomes his right hand and writes the bullshit rituals with him.
My second favorite is when the order starts branching out outside of Bavaria into more Protestant and less backwards areas of Germany. Weishaupt has promising recruits, he sends them some liberal books with great pomp and tells them this is rare subversive material people can get killed for so they must read it in total secrecy. They respond "man, we read these at school".
