page_title: Freemasonry and women
section_title: Lodges of Adoption
hierarchical_section_title: Freemasonry and women / Lodges of Adoption
caption_attribution_description: Réception d'une femme dans une loge d'adoption française sous le Premier Empire.
context_page_description: Freemasonry and women have a complex relationship, which can be readily divided into many phases with no demonstrable relationship to each other until the 20th century. A few women were involved in Freemasonry before the 18th century; however the first printed constitutions of the Premier Grand Lodge of England appeared to bar them from the Craft forever.
  The French Lodges of Adoption which spread through Continental Europe during the second half of the 18th century admitted Masons and their female relatives to a system of degrees parallel, but unrelated to the original rite. After eclipse in the 19th century, they were revived as women-only lodges in the 20th, and these later adopted the male degrees to give rise to French women's Masonry in the 1950s.
  18th-century British lodges and their American offshoots remained male only. In the late 1800s, rites similar to adoption emerged in the United States, allowing masons and their female relatives to participate in ritual together. These bodies, however, were more careful to discriminate between the mixed ritual and the genuine Freemasonry of the men.
context_section_description: As the Freemasonry of the Premier Grand Lodge of England spread in France, the French fraternity stayed within the letter of Anderson's proscription of women, but saw no reason to ban them from their banquets or their religious services. During the 1740s, lodges of adoption began to appear. Attached to a regular (men only) lodge, wives and female relatives of the masons would be admitted to a parallel system of degrees, with a similar moral undertone to the authentic rite of the lodge. The earliest had a nautical theme. In 1747, the Chevalier Beauchaine began the Order of Woodcutters (Ordre des Fendeurs), with rites supposedly based on an early version of the Carbonari. In 1774, the lodges of adoption came under the jurisdiction of the Grand Orient de France, and the published regulations show a system of four degrees:
  Apprentie, or Female Apprentice.
  Compagnonne, or Journeywoman.
  Maîtresse, or Mistress.
  Parfaite Maçonne, or Perfect Masoness.
  Further degrees came and went, with a ten-degree system evolving at the end of the Eighteenth century. The idea spread widely in Europe, but never appeared in England. After a brief eclipse during the Reign of Terror at the start of the French Revolution, lodges of adoption flourished, with the Empress Josephine presiding over one in Strasbourg in 1805.
  In 1808, the Grand Orient decided that these lodges were unconstitutional, and they became marginalised until re-activated by the same Grand Orient in 1901. In their new incarnation, the chair was taken by a woman, where previously only a man could occupy the "Chair of King Solomon". Final separation occurred in 1935, and in 1959 they adopted the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, embracing regular masonry as Grande Loge féminine de France. Only one lodge, Cosmos, holds to the adoptive rite.
caption: Admission of a young lady into a Lodge of Adoption
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