Beyonce's Illuminati Sign

About

Beyonce’s Illuminati Sign refers to a triangle-shaped hand gesture made by singer Beyonce Knowles during the halftime performance at Super Bowl XLVII on February 3rd, 2013.

Origin

Prior to Beyonce’s performance, the founder of SuperPAC Elect a New Congress William Fawell called for a boycott of the halftime show.^[1] He asserted that Beyonce’s and Jay-Z’s music celebrated the “modern criminal police state” and that the performance would be un-American. The morning following the performance, Fawell declared in an email to U.S. News’ Washington Whispers blog^[2] that the diamond-shaped hand gesture Beyonce made at the end of her performance was proof that she was a part of the Illuminati, a group named after an 18th century secret society that is allegedly part of a conspiracy to create a totalitarian government for the entire globe known as the New World Order.^[3]

Prior Associations

This was not the first time Beyonce and her husband Jay-Z (Sean Knowles-Carter) have been associated with the Illuminati. As early as 1998, hip hop culture has been associated with the group, with mentions in songs by Dr. Dre, Jay-Z and Tupac Shakur.^[4] In the mid-2000s, Jay-Z began making a diamond-shaped hand gesture known as the “dynasty sign”^[5] to represent his label, Roc-A-Fella Records. By 2008, online conspiracy theorists^[6] began associating this symbol with the Illuminati, as a reference to the all-seeing eye or Eye of Providence^[7] that can be found on the back of the United States one-dollar bill.

In January 2012, the theory that Beyonce and Jay-Z’s were associated with the Illuminati came back into fashion after the birth of their daughter, Blue Ivy. Conspiracy theorists on Twitter suggested that her name could be an initialism for “Born Living Under Evil, Illuminati’s Very Youngest.”^[8] In April of that year, two single serving sites titled Jay-Z Illuminati^[9] and Beyonce-Illuminati^[10] launched, accusing both artists of using the secret society’s symbolism for attention while not actually being members of the group.

Spread

Throughout Beyonce’s performance during the halftime show, Twitter ran abuzz with speculations of her membership in the Illuminati (shown below) and sped up rapidly after she flashed the hand gesture on stage. As the second half of the game began, many of these tweets were immediately chronicled on Buzzfeed^[13] and the Huffington Post^[11] shared a screenshot of the gesture with tweets interpreting it as an Illuminati symbol. After the game ended, Buzzfeed^[12] spoke with Fawell who said he was not surprised that she used the gesture.

In the two days following the Super Bowl, news of Beyonce’s hand gesture was shared on Bleacher Report^[14], Yahoo! Sports^[15], Discovery News^[16], Inquisitr^[17], The Examiner^[18], the Blaze^[19] and BoingBoing^[20], though many of these sites concluded she was simply flashing the dynasty sign. On the 5th, conspiracy theory site Vigilant Citizen^[21] broke down all of the suspected Illuminati imagery throughout Beyonce’s performance, including usage of lights and displays as well as the dresses worn by backup musicians.