What's the difference between the Illuminati and Freemasons?

Freemasonry emerged from stonemasons' guilds in Britain, formalising with the founding of the Grand Lodge of England in 1717. The Bavarian Illuminati was founded in 1776 by Adam Weishaupt as an Enlightenment society focused on reason and education.

They are separated by nearly sixty years, two countries and two different purposes. The confusion arises because Weishaupt recruited heavily from Masonic lodges, which were the natural place to find educated men used to private association.

Freemasonry is highly institutional: Grand Lodges by jurisdiction, subordinate lodges, degrees, officers, dues, buildings and published constitutions. Australia has Grand Lodges in every state.

The Illuminati has no lodge system, no buildings and no territorial branches. Membership is individual and international. This is the single biggest practical difference, and it explains why one leaves a large public footprint and the other almost none.

Mainstream Freemasonry requires belief in a supreme being and, in most jurisdictions, restricts craft lodges to men, with separate orders for women.

The order accepts men and women equally, of any faith or none, judged on character and intent rather than gender, wealth or lineage. Merit above birth is one of its explicit principles.

The square and compasses, the apron, the trowel and the letter G are Masonic. The all-seeing eye and the light are used by the Illuminati, though the eye appears in Masonic and religious contexts too.

Because both traditions use geometry and light, outsiders merge them. Members of either would find the merger strange.

A belief that character can be deliberately developed, that ritual and principle help people hold to commitments, and that private association is legitimate in a free society. Both also share the burden of two centuries of conspiracy writing that treats them as interchangeable.