It is evident that this pretence of Zoroastrianism was as pure humbug as Weishaupt's later pretence of Christianity; of the true doctrines of Zoroaster he shows no conception--nor does he insist further on the point; but the above passage would certainly lend colour to the theory that his system was partly founded on Manichæism, that is to say, on perverted Zoroastrianism, imparted to him by a man from the East, and that the methods of the Batinis and Fatimites may have been communicated to him through the same channel. Hence the extraordinary resemblance between his plan of organization and that of Abdullah ibn Maymūn, which consisted in political intriguing rather than in esoteric speculation. Thus in Weishaupt's system the phraseology of Judaism, the Cabalistic legends of Freemasonry, the mystical imaginings of the Martinistes, play at first no part at all. For all forms of "theosophy," occultism, spiritualism, and magic Weishaupt expresses nothing but contempt, and the Rose-Croix masons are bracketed with the Jesuits by the Illuminati as enemies it is necessary to outwit at every turn.[505] Consequently no degree of Rose-Croix finds a place in Weishaupt's system, as in all the other masonic orders of the day which drew their influence from Eastern or Cabalistic sources. It is true that "Mysteries" play a great part in the phraseology of the Order--"Greater and Lesser Mysteries," borrowed from ancient Egypt--whilst the higher initiates are decorated with such titles as "Epopte" and "Hierophant," taken from the Eleusinian Mysteries. Yet Weishaupt's own theories appear to bear no relation whatever to these ancient cults. On the contrary, the more we penetrate into his system, the more apparent it becomes that all the formulas he employs which derive from any religious source--whether Persian, Egyptian, or Christian--merely serve to disguise a purely material purpose, a plan for destroying the existing order of society. Thus all that was really ancient in Illuminism was the destructive spirit that animated it and also the method of organization it had imported from the East. Illuminism therefore marks an entirely new departure in the history of European secret societies. Weishaupt himself indicates this as one of the great secrets of the Order. "Above all," he writes to "Cato" (alias Zwack), "guard the origin and the novelty of ⊙ in the most careful way."[506] "The greatest mystery," he says again, "must be that the thing is new; the fewer who know this the better.... Not one of the Eichstadters knows this but would live or die for it that the thing is as old as Methuselah."[507]