Owl of Wisdom Symbolism
Monday, March 9th, 2009 - by Terry Melanson
Just in case you missed it (and most did). And because I hadn’t made it clear in the article; the owl of Minerva holding an opened book is the insignia of the Bavarian Illuminati - not the “all-seeing eye,” and especially not the reverse of the Great Seal of America. What’s more, the article (”Owl of Wisdom: Illuminati, Bohemian Club, Schlaraffia, James Gordon Bennett Jr.“) shows two examples of the insignia (2 of 3 known to still exist).
Adam Weishaupt continued to utilized the motif after he had went into exile - this is why Barruel wrote in his Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism, that Weishaupt “adopted the bird of night for his emblem.”
Masonic historian Arturo de Hoyos:
This design, with the addition of the letters P.M.C.V. (per me caeci vident : through me the blind see), was cast or hand-graved as a jewel to be worn by Minervals. There is no record of how many were made, and only three are known to exist: one in a private collection in Ansbach, Germany; one in a private American collection; and one in the Deutsches Freimaurermuseum Bayreuth. A photograph of this last one appears in Freimaurer Solange die Welt besteht (Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien, 1993), p. 314.







