The Rite of Adoption was a Masonic rite which appeared in France in the 18th century. Lodges of adoption were usually attached to regular craft lodges, but admitted the female relatives of Freemasons to a mixed lodge with its own ritual. The number of degrees varied over its history, but the first three bore the same names as the craft degrees, although the pass-words and themes of the ritual were quite different.
After flourishing during the second half of the eighteenth century, spreading to much of continental Europe, the lodges were declared unconstitutional by the Grand Orient de France early in the nineteenth, then after almost a century of eclipse, revived as female only lodges in the early twentieth. It was these lodges who later adopted the Freemasonry of their male counterparts, becoming the Grande Loge féminine de France.
The Rite of Adoption is often seen as a prototype for contemporary concordant bodies admitting the wives and daughters of Freemasons, such as the Order of the Eastern Star.
Read more about Rite Of Adoption: Upper Degrees
Famous quotes containing the words rite of, rite and/or adoption:
“No doubt they rose up early to observe
The rite of May.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“[T]he Congregational minister in a neighboring town definitely stated that ‘the same spirit which drove the herd of swine into the sea drove the Baptists into the water, and that they were hurried along by the devil until the rite was performed.’”
—For the State of Vermont, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Frankly, I adore your catchy slogan, “Adoption, not Abortion,” although no one has been able to figure out, even with expert counseling, how to use adoption as a method of birth control, or at what time of the month it is most effective.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)