Now available for the first time in English since the book was written over 200 years ago. In this masterwork of Enlightenment-era scholarship and hidden knowledge, On the Allegorical Spirit of Antiquity unveils a stunning thesis: that the myths of the ancient world—from Hercules and Saturn to Europa and Cerberus—are not idle fictions, but coded records of natural cycles, agricultural labor, and astronomical truths. With bold etymologies and sweeping cross-cultural comparisons, Adam Weishaupt, the controversial founder of the Bavarian Illuminati, pierces through centuries of superstition to reveal the rational, symbolic systems concealed beneath the chaos of mythology. What appears as divine drama and monstrous lore is, in his account, a rigorous science written in the language of stars and seasons.