See Adonhiramite Freemasonry

An organization which bears a very imperfect resemblance to Freemasonry in its forms and ceremonies, and which was established in France for the initiation of females, has been called by the French Maçonnerie d'Adoption, or Adoptive Freemasonry, and the societies in which the initiations take place have received the name of Loges d'Adeption, or Adoptive Lodges. This appellation is derived from the fact that every Female or Adoptive Lodge is obliged, by the regulations of the association, to be, as it were, adopted by, and thus placed under the guardianship of, some regular Lodge of Freemasons.

As to the exact date which we are to assign for the first introduction of this system of Female Freemasonry, there have been several theories, some of which, undoubtedly, are wholly untenable, since they have been founded, as Masonic historical theories too often are, on an unwarrantable mixture of facts and fictions—of positive statements and problematic conjectures. M. J. S. Boubee, a distinguished French Freemason, in his *Études Maçonniques* (Masonic studies), places the origin of Adoptive Freemasonry in the seventeenth century, and ascribes its authorship to Queen Henrietta Maria, the widow of Charles I of England. He states that on her return to France, after the execution of her husband, she took pleasure in recounting the secret efforts made by the Freemasons of England to restore her family to their position and to establish her son on the throne of his ancestors. This, it will be recollected, was once a prevalent theory, now exploded, of the origin of Freemasonry—that it was established by the Cavaliers, as a secret political organization, in the times of the English civil war between the king and the Parliament, and as an engine for the support of the former.

M. Boubee adds that the queen made known to the ladies of her court, in her exile, the words and signs employed by her Masonic friends in England as their modes of recognition, and by this means instructed them in some of the mysteries of the Institution, of which, he says, she had been made the protectress after the death of the king. This theory is so full of absurdity, and its statements so flatly contradicted by well-known historical facts, that we may at once reject it as wholly without authority.

Others have claimed Russia as the birthplace of Adoptive Freemasonry; but in assigning that country and the year 1712 as the place and time of its origin, they have undoubtedly confounded it with the chivalric Order of Saint Catharine, which was instituted by the Czar, Peter the Great, in honor of the Czarina Catharine, and which, although at first it consisted of persons of both sexes, was subsequently confined exclusively to females. But the Order of Saint Catharine was in no manner connected with that of Freemasonry. It was simply a Russian order of female knighthood.

The truth seems to be that the regular Lodges of adoption owed their existence to those secret associations of men and women which sprang up in France before the middle of the eighteenth century, and which attempted in all of their organization, except the admission of female members, to imitate the Institution of Freemasonry. Clavel, who, in his *Histoire Pitoresque de la Franc-Maçonnery*, an interesting but not always a trustworthy work, adopts this theory, says (on page iii, third edition) that female Masonry was instituted about the year 1730, that it made its first appearance in France, and that it was evidently a product of the French mind. No one will be disposed to doubt the truth of this last sentiment. The proverbial gallantry of the French Freemasons was most ready and willing to extend to women some of the blessings of that Institution, from which the churlishness, as they would call it, of their Anglo-Saxon Brethren had excluded them.

But the Freemasonry of Adoption did not at once and in its very beginning assume that peculiarly imitative form of the Craft which it subsequently presented, nor was it recognized as having any connection with our own Order until more than thirty years after its first establishment. Its progress was slow and gradual. In the course of this progress it affected various names and rituals, many of which have not been handed down to us. Evidently it was convivial and gallant in its nature, and at first seems to have been only an imitation of Freemasonry, inasmuch as that it was a secret society, having a form of initiation and modes of recognition. A specimen of one or two of these associations of women may be interesting.

One of the earliest of these societies was that which was established in the year 1743, at Paris, under the name of the *Ordre des Félicitaires*, which we might very appropriately translate as the Order of Happy Folks.

The vocabulary and all the emblems of the order were nautical. The sisters made symbolically a voyage from the island of Felicity, in ships navigated by the brethren. There were four degrees, namely, those of Cabin-boy, Captain, Commodore, and Vice-Admiral, and the Grand Master, or presiding officer, was called the Admiral. Out of this society there sprang, in 1745, another, which was called the Knights and Ladies of the Anchor, which is said to have been somewhat more refined in its character, although for the most part it preserved the same formulary of reception.

Two years afterward, in 1747, the Chevalier Beauchaine, a very zealous Masonic adventurer, and the Master for life of a Parisian Lodge, instituted an androgynous society, or system of men and women, under the name of the *Ordre des Fendeurs*, or the Order of Wood-Cutters, whose ceremonies were borrowed from those of the well-known political society of the Carbonari. All parts of the ritual had a reference to the sylvan vocation of wood-cutting, just as that of the Carbonari referred to coal-burning. The place of meeting was called a wood-yard, and was supposed to be situated in a forest; the presiding officer was styled Pére Maître, which might be idiomatically interpreted as Goodman Master; and the members were designated as cousins, a practice evidently borrowed from the Carbonari.

The reunions of the Wood-Cutters enjoyed the prestige of the highest fashion in Paris; and the society became so popular that ladies and gentlemen of the highest distinction in France united with it, and membership was considered an honor which no rank, however exalted, need disdain. It was consequently succeeded by the institution of many other and similar androgynous societies, the very names of which it would be tedious to enumerate (see Clavel's History, pages lll-2).

Out of all these societies—which resembled Freemasonry only in their secrecy, their benevolence, and a sort of rude imitation of a symbolic ceremonial—at last arose the true Lodges of Adoption, which did far claim a connection with and a dependence on Freemasonry as that Freemasons alone were admitted among their male members—a regulation which did not prevail in the earlier organizations.

It was about the middle of the eighteenth century that the Lodges of Adoption began to attract attention in France, whence they speedily spread into other countries of Europe—into Germany, Poland, and even Russia; England alone, always conservative to a fault, steadily refusing to take any cognizance of them.

The Freemasons, says Clavel in his History (page 112), embraced them with enthusiasm as a practicable means of giving to their wives and daughters some share of the pleasures which they themselves enjoyed in their mystical assemblies. This, at least, may be said of them, that they practiced with commendable fidelity and diligence the greatest of the Masonic virtues, and that the banquets and balls which always formed an important part of their ceremonial were distinguished by numerous acts of charity.

The first of these Lodges of which we have any notice was that established in Paris, in the year 1760, by the Count de Bemouville. Another was instituted at Nijmegen, in Holland, in 1774, over which the Prince of Waldeck and the Princess of Orange presided. In 1775 the Lodge of Saint Antoine, at Paris, organized a dependent Lodge of Adoption, of which the Duchess of Bourbon was installed as Grand Mistress and the Duke of Chartres, then Grand Master of French Freemasonry, conducted the business.

In 1777 there was an Adoptive Lodge of La Candeur, or Frankness, over which the Duchess of Bourbon presided, assisted by such noble ladies as the Duchess of Chartres, the Princess Lamballe, and the Marchioness de Genlis; and we hear of another governed by Madame Helvetius, the wife of the illustrious philosopher; so that it will be perceived that fashion, wealth, and literature combined to give splendor and influence to this new order of Female Freemasonry.

At first the Grand Orient of France appears to have been unfavorably disposed to these imitation pseudo Masonic and androgynous associations, but at length they became so numerous and so popular that a persistence in opposition would have evidently been impolitic, if it did not actually threaten to be fatal to the interests and permanence of the Masonic Institution. The Grand Orient, therefore, yielded its objections, and resolved to avail itself of that which it could not suppress. Accordingly, on the 10th of June, 1774, it issued an Edict by which it assumed the protection and control of the Lodges of Adoption.

By this Edict it was provided that no Lodge of Adoption should be established without the previous permission of the Grand Orient; and that no candidate should be received in these Lodges unless she had been first examined and approved by the Grand Orient. This Edict was followed by another of the same body, which was issued in 1776, in which the character of the Adoption Lodges was more formally defined. It was decreed that no woman should be received unless she was a wife, widow, or daughter of a Freemason, or unless she had been initiated by some Lodge of Adoption that was under the protection of the Grand Orient. It was also provided that the Lodges of Adoption should not have any connection with the Lodges of Speculative Freemasonry; and that their principal object should be charity and the cultivation of the social virtues.

This step on the part of the Grand Orient did not, however, entirely eradicate the prejudices which had been entertained against the Lodges of Adoption, or prevent the development of schisms. After the Grand Orient had given its protection to them, and regulated their ceremonies, a new and distinct body appeared, in 1779, in the shape of a Masonic female association called the *Ordre des Dames Chevaliers de l'Œillet*. It professed to be under the direction of the Grand Lodge of France, and to be authorized by it; but it was rather an independent association, and was in direct opposition to the formal Lodges of Adoption. Its principles and ceremonies were of a character very different from those of the Grand Orient. The latter, being composed of good Masons and not of imitators, were willing to admit the best possible system of female Masonic organization, provided it were conducted with due regard to Masonic principles and to the regulation established by their authorities.

The practice of admitting women to the rights of Freemasonry was adopted by a number of other Masonic associations in the course of the nineteenth century, but the Lodges of Adoption eventually disappeared in France.

For further details, see also *The Freemasons' Monthly Magazine* (1848–1860), and Clavel's *Histoire Pitoresque de la Franc-Maçonnerie*.

This text is taken from historical records and sources and is intended for educational purposes. It explores the various facets of Adoniramite Freemasonry, its origins, practices, and its eventual evolution.