Pike was born in 1809, in Boston, studied at Harvard, then later served as a Brigadier-General in the Confederate Army. After the Civil War, he was found guilty of treason and jailed. He was pardoned by fellow Freemason President Andrew Johnson in 1866, with whom he met at the White House the very next day. The only monument to a Confederate general in Washington, D.C. was erected in Pike’s honor. Pike was one of the founding fathers, and head of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, being the Grand Commander of North American Freemasonry from 1859-1891. In 1869, he was a top leader in the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and in 1871 wrote the Masonic handbook, the Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Rite of Freemasonry.

In addition to a Supreme Council located in Charleston, South Carolina, Pike established Supreme Councils in Rome, Italy, led by Mazzini; London, England, led by Palmerston; and Berlin, Germany, led by Bismarck. He set up 23 subordinate councils in strategic places throughout the world, including five Grand Central Directories in Washington, DC (North America), Montevideo (South America), Naples (Europe), Calcutta (Asia), and Mauritius (Africa), which were used to gather information. These branches have been the secret headquarters for the Illuminati’s activities ever since. [11]

In a letter that he wrote to Mazzini, dated August 15, 1871, Pike graphically outlined plans for three world wars, that were seen as necessary to bring about the One World Order. For a short time, this letter was on display in the British Museum Library in London, and was copied by William Guy Carr, former Intelligence Officer in the Royal Canadian Navy, and author of Pawns in the Game. Carr summarizes:

The First World War was to be fought so as to enable the Illuminati to overthrow the powers of the Tzars in Russia and turn that country into the stronghold of Atheistic-Communism. The differences stirred up by the Agentur of the Illuminati between the British and German Empires were to be used to foment this war. After the war ended, Communism was to be built up and used to destroy other governments and weaken religions.

World War Two was to be fomented by using the differences between Fascists and Political Zionists. This was to be fought so that Nazism would be destroyed and the power of Political Zionism increased so that the sovereign state of Israel could be established in Palestine. During world war two International Communism was to be built up until it equaled in strength that of united Christendom. At this point it was to be contained and kept in check until required for the final social cataclysm...

World War Three is to be fomented by using the differences the agentur of the Illuminati stir up between Political Zionists and the Leaders of the Moslem world. The war is to be directed in such a manner that Islam and Political Zionism (including the State of Israel) will destroy themselves while at the same time the remaining nations, once more divided against each other on this issue, will be forced to fight themselves into a state of complete exhaustion physically, mentally, spiritually and economically... [12]

Pike then told Mazzini that, after World War Three would have ended, a global social cataclysm will be provoked that will be greater than the world has ever known:

We shall unleash the Nihilists [meaning terrorists] and the atheists, and we shall provoke a formidable social cataclysm which in all its horror will show clearly to the nations the effect of absolute atheism, origin of savagery and of the most bloody turmoil. Then everywhere, the citizens, obliged to defend themselves against the world minority of revolutionaries, will exterminate those destroyers of civilization, and the multitude, disillusioned with Christianity, whose deistic spirits will from that moment be without compass or direction, anxious for an ideal, but without knowing where to render its adoration, will receive the true light through the universal manifestation of the pure doctrine of Lucifer, brought finally out in the public view. This manifestation will result from the general reactionary movement which will follow the destruction of Christianity and atheism, both conquered and exterminated at the same time. [13]