imakegarb
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One wee, sleeket, cowran, tim'rous beastie
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Post by imakegarb on Jun 29, 2007 4:45:14 GMT
K, I just started reading the Rev. Bro. George Oliver's "Dictionary of Symbolic Masonry" (1853). Prior to now, I've only browsed it. Now I'm trying to read it and, tonight, I started on page 1. So, I'm rather innocently reading the preface, which the Rev. Oliver also wrote. In paragraph 1, he talks about why such a dictionary is so useful. Paragraph 2 says (with my italics): K, I've read that about a dozen times now. It says exactly what I think it says. And "nearly a century ago" for the Rev. Bro. Oliver would have been about 1750. Before all this foolishness about recognition, and the political divide, between English and French lodges. The Rev. Oliver seems to be talking about these mixed lodges as if there's nothing unusual about it (he doesn't talk about it any more, which would seem to mean he doesn't think his reader will be so astonished as to need further explanation). Anyway, this would push back the development of Co-Masonry in France far more than a century. **If** I'm reading this correctly. Google didn't turn up much worth reading. Is there anyone here who could enlighten me about this?
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Tamrin
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Nosce te ipsum
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Post by Tamrin on Jul 1, 2007 7:01:40 GMT
At the recent International Conference on the History of Freemasonry, Pierre-Yves Beaurepaire of France, spoke on, Eighteenth-century Adoption Lodges: A Space for Dialogue between Men and Women, (Paper 7b). The abstract for his paper reads as follows: The eighteenth century saw, with the establishments of lodges at both courts (Hoflogen) and châteaux (Schlosslogen), the emergence of a veritable Masonry of society that played an integral role in the fashionable aristocratic sociability of the period. The feminine presence was essential to its success because women facilitated the association of Masonic gatherings with the practice of amateur theatre and music, games of seduction, and other forms of elite entertainment. Freemasonry thus welcomed favourably the desire of European elites to create a space for dialogue between men and women.
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Post by lauderdale on Jul 18, 2007 9:15:29 GMT
Thanks Bro Karen, well worth knowing.
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imakegarb
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One wee, sleeket, cowran, tim'rous beastie
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Post by imakegarb on Jul 18, 2007 14:37:17 GMT
Thanks, y'all ;D I posted this elsewhere. | got some responses indicating I should pay it no mind, that it's not Masonic but a reference to an 18th Century fraternity based on seamanship and that this fraternity admitted women. However, more and more stuff from the period seems to be coming my way on this topic. And I'm not even looking for it all that hard for it. For instance, I was trolling EBay for books last night and I came upon this: cgi.ebay.com/RARE-1st-Ed-Masonic-Rites-Degrees-Denslow-Freemasonry_W0QQitemZ280134105897QQihZ018QQcategoryZ518QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItemIt's already out of my price range but Kessinger has it for cheaper and . . . anyway . . . the description makes reference to a "Dames of Mt. Tabor", which is described as "an androgynous degree" still being worked in 1818 in the Grand Orient of France. Ummmmmm, that's several generations before LDH. While I am, daily, startled by the theories some Masonic scholars of this period are willing to accept 1, I am equally startled by what they choose to ignore. But ignoring it doesn't mean it didn't happen. And I don't think this is a paper trying to well out of me. I think it's a book 1 David Stevenson, in his "The Origins of Freemasonry" observed about traditional Masonic historians, "This should go without saying, but in of the strong tendency of many people either, at one extreme, to believe the most implausible fables about Masonic history, and at the other extreme to dismiss all evidence relating to the history of Freemasonry as totally untrustworthy, it is worth stressing the obvious: that Masonic history should follow the rules accepted for other branches of history." I, very strongly, agree with this.
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Tamrin
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Nosce te ipsum
Posts: 3,586
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Post by Tamrin on Jul 18, 2007 21:02:53 GMT
While I am, daily, startled by the theories some Masonic scholars of this period are willing to accept, I am equally startled by what they choose to ignore. But ignoring it doesn't mean it didn't happen. As you have astutely pointed out, this is particularly so in the case of androgyne lodges. While they might not have had the Craft rituals, there are numerous rituals considered to be "Masonic" beyond those of the Craft. Importantly, they were sponsored by Craft lodges and they demonstrated, if nothing else, that the desire by women to participate in Freemasonry is not a relatively recent phenomenon. Indeed, if Dudley Wright is correct, they significantly precede grand lodge type Freemasonry and were therefore in place BEFORE the vast changes wrought to the Craft rituals by Desaguliers and others. In Woman and Freemasonry (1922, William Rider & Son, London, p.1), Wright wrote: The origin of Adoptive Masonry is placed generally in the seventeenth century, and its author is named as the widow of Charles I of England, daughter of Henry IV, and sister of Louis XIII of France. After the death of Charles I she is said to have been proclaimed "the protectress of the children of the widow," Freemasons in those days being known as "the children of the widow." She is said to have formed a society of women, to whom she communicated certain signs and passwords.
In 1712, in Russia, Catherine the Czarina obtained from Peter the Great permission to found the Order of St. Catherine, an Order of Knighthood for women only, of which she was proclaimed Grand Mistress. This was a quasi‑Masonic body.
In the eighteenth century there were four Grand Mistresses of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, which was an emanation of early Masonry. The Adoptive lodges had considerable influence. When we bear-in-mind that the French Lodge of Nine Sisters, which was under police surveillance for its suspected Republican tendencies, was considered to be so important that Benjamin Franklin deemed it worth the risk to his diplomatic mission at the time to frequent (even becoming Master), it is with some interest that we read (ibid., p.6): The Quadruple Lodge of the Nine Sisters was another prominent Adoptive Lodge, which held several fetes for philanthropic purposes. In 1780 a Lodge of Adoption was formed by the Lodge Social Contract to celebrate the convalescence of the Grand Master, the Duke of Chartres. This Lodge had for its first Master the Abbe Bertolio, who was assisted by the Princess Lamballe as Grand Mistress. Among the initiates of this Lodge were the Viscountess of Alfrey, the Viscountess of Narbonne and the Countess of Maille. In common with many others this Lodge was broken up by the Revolution. Wright goes onto say, (p.7): Adoptive Masonry was seized by the comprehensive mind of the first Napoleon as a means to consolidate his power, and it rose into favour again on the re‑establishment of the Empire. In 1805, the unfortunate Empress Josephine was installed Grand Mistress of the Loge Imperiale d'Adoption des Francs Chevaliers at Strasbourg, when she initiated one of her ladies of honour, Madame F. de Canisy. M. Boubée says that at no period in the history of Adoptive Masonry was there so brilliant a gathering. It was the first occasion on which French Masonry had been honoured with the presence of a sovereign. Nor were these rituals merely watered down versions to distract the ladies from "genuine" Freemasonry. In at least one instance they included a trial of courage and fortitude which to modern ears sounds excessive and even foolhardy (I believe I would have baulked at the challenge). Wright tells us (ibid., pp.7/8): The Rev. Dr. George Oliver, in his Revelations of a Square, gives an interesting account of a visit he paid to a Lodge of Adoption in Paris in 1808:
"The ceremonies are conducted with the utmost decorum. We are, of course, totally ignorant of the dark room, as none but females are admitted to that penetralia, and the preparations are conducted only by females; but when they are completed, and the trials come on, the Novice is conducted through the process by a lady and gentleman together.
"On this special occasion it was thought that the Candidate did not possess sufficient fortitude to endure the trials, and she was warned that if she had any doubts as to her power of endurance she had the opportunity of withdrawing. However, she indicated that she was quite willing to proceed, and she was accordingly conducted through the usual trials of fortitude and endured them with the courage of a martyr, and even at last, when placed on the summit of the symbolic mountain, and told she must cast herself down thence into the abyss below, where she saw a double row of bright steel spikes, long and sharp. They were real, substantial spikes, and she would have been killed if impaled thereon.
"The word was given to throw herself down, and with a suppressed shriek she made the required plunge. So unexpectedly sudden was her obedience that the guide, who had charge of the machinery, was scarcely allowed time to touch the spring before she fell recumbent at the bottom of the abyss. The machinery is so contrived that at the very moment when the final leap is made the scene changes to an Elysium of green fields and shady trees, bubbling fountains and purling streams, and beneath the velvet herbage is placed a bed of the softest down, to receive the fair body of the exhausted Novice as she falls. In the present instance the lady fainted, and lay for a time without motion, but was soon restored and tranquillised by the application of essences and perfumes, and the soft and soothing influence of delicious music.
"Being afterwards introduced into the Lodge, her constancy was rewarded by witnessing and forming a part of the most beautiful and captivating scenes I ever beheld."
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