Ritual , Secrecy , and Civil Society
tres wrote that “ The Duke de Chartres … wished the princess to be received into freemasonry . Although this ceremony was not to her taste , the princess , always eager to obey and please her husband , readily resolved to consent to it .” 42 Once she joined , one can infer that the duchess found attractive the friendship and charitable concerns so much a part of masonry , but in the first instance , it was the will of her husband that had brought her into the organization .
Whatever their individual motivation , the women who joined masonic lodges of adoption began to develop , behind the closed doors , a sense of their own agency . A study of the evolution of degree rituals shows a slow but steady change in emphasis , symbols and power of the women . Where once women had “ assisted ” the males who presided over the ceremony , they began to play a much greater part with the ritual of 1775 . By 1779 , the ritual was actually conducted by the Sisters Inspectress , Treasurer and Introductress ; the brothers “ assisted ” them . The higher degrees added to the original four degrees over time manifested this growth most dramatically . In the degrees of Sublime Ecossaise and Amazonnerie Anglaise , the ritual centered on the women themselves ; women were the central figures and their vows were decidedly feminist . One also finds evidence that the women , if they did not actually write the rituals in the first four degrees , began to influence the symbolism and language . They forced the brothers of the Loge des Neuf- Soeurs to retract a new ritual the brothers had written for their lodge of adoption initiation ; and the likelihood is that when the publisher of the standard lodge of adoption ritual book changed the symbolic description of Noah ’ s ark from having four floors to three , dropping the floor for the domestic animals , they forced him to add it back in .
The example of the three princesses and the rosters of the lodges of adoption show that no single membership pattern prevailed . The women who joined , as the men who sponsored them , were individuals with their own reasons for affiliating . Their particular noble status , their personal life stories , their desire to be part of an attractive secret society were all factors entering into their decisions to join . The pull of the organization was strong enough to attract provincial residents and military wives in need of a center for socialization , members of the noblesse de robe looking for a source of increased power , and a court nobility attracted by the charitable activities , Enlightenment philosophy and the excitement of the secret society . Once they were part of the new organization , however , their experience was similar . They were molded by a powerful series of rituals into a community of friends ; and within the strength of that community , they acquired increasing power and a budding sense of feminism .
42
DeLille , p . 24 14