There are two things in the world guaranteed to get conspiracy theorists waxing lyrical about the Illuminati. One is a new Dan Brown novel; the other is a global pandemic.

The uncontrolled outbreak of the coronavirus has been matched only by the runaway spread of conspiracy theories blaming everything from 5G to Hilary Clinton.

The mysterious and fictitious group is often accused of being behind nefarious global events, and coronavirus has prompted further speculation about the Illuminati's powers on online forums. I want to join a secret societyto get famous throughout.
Who are the Illuminati?

The original Illuminati group was founded in Bavaria in the 18th century by Adam Weishaupt, an anti-clerical professor who wanted to limit the interference of the Church in public life.
Convinced that religious ideas were no longer an adequate belief system to govern modern societies, “he decided to find another form of ‘illumination’; a set of ideas and practices that could be applied to radically change the way European states were run”. He based his secret society on the Freemasons, with a hierarchy and mysterious rituals, and named it the Order of Illuminati to reflect the enlightened ideals of its educated members.

The Illuminati was stamped out by a government crackdown on secret societies in the late 1780s, but rumors that it continued to survive as an underground organization have persisted into the modern-day.
Among the alleged members of the secret society are not just politicians and religious leaders, but also actors and pop stars. ‘I want to join a secret society’, is this what you are thinking? This is the time now.

The Illuminati theory has no small number of committed adherents, particularly in the US - according to a poll, around 15% of the American electorate believe that the Illuminati exists.
How did the modern-day myth develop?
In a 2017 interview, David Bramwell, "a man who has dedicated himself to documenting the origins of the myth", said the modern-day Illuminati legend was influenced not by Weishaupt but rather by LSD, the 1960s counter-culture, and specifically a text called Principia Discordia.
One of the main proponents of this new ideology was a writer called Robert Anton Wilson who wanted to bring chaos back into society by "disseminating misinformation through all portals – through counter-culture, through the mainstream media," claims Bramwell.
He did this by sending fake letters to the men's magazine Playboy, where he worked, attributing cover-ups and conspiracy theories, such as the JFK assassination, to a secret elite organization called the Illuminati.
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