Mackey A G - Encylopedia of Freemasonry - The Grand Masonic ...

24 ADOPTIVE
ADOPTIVE
cession advances beneath an arch of foliage to
the pedestal of the east, where it stops .
" ` Whom bring you here, my brethren? '
says the Master to the godfathers .
" ` The son of one of our brethren whom the
Lodge is desirous of adopting,' is the reply of
the Senior Warden.
" ` What are his names, and what Masonic
name will you give him? '
" The Warden replies, adding to the baptismal
and surname of the child a characteristic
name, such as Truth, Devotion, Benevolence,
or some other of a similar nature .
" The Master then descends from his seat,
approaches the louveteau or lewis (for such is
the appellation given to the son of a Mason),
and extending his hands over its head, offers
up a prayer that the child may render itself
worthy of the love and care which the Lodge
intends to bestow upon it . He then casts
incense into the censers, and pronounces the
Apprentice's obligation, which the godfathers
repeat of ter him in the name of the louveteau .
Afterwards he puts a white apron on the infant,
roclaiming it to be the adopted child of the
ge, and causes this proclamation to be
received with the honors .
"As soon as this ceremony has been performed,
the Master returns to his seat, and
having caused the Wardens with the child to
be placed in front of the north column, he recounts
to the former the duties which they
have assumed as godfathers . After the Wardens
have made a suitable response the deputation
which had brought the chid into the
Lodge room is again formed, carries it out,
and restores it to its nurse in the anteroom .
" The adoption of a louveteau binds all the
members of the Lodge to watch over his education,
and subsequently to aid him, if it be
necessary, in establishing himself in life . A
circumstantial account of the ceremony is
drawn up, which having been signed by all the
members is delivered to the father of the child .
This document serves as a dispensation, which
relieves him from the necessity of passing
through the ordinary preliminary examinations
when, at the proper age, he is desirous of
participating in the labors of Masonry . He is
then only required to renew his obligations ."
In the United States, the ceremony has
been recently practised by a few Lodges, the
earliest instance being that of Foyer Maconnique
Lodge of New Orleans, in 1859 . The
Supreme Council for the Southern Jurisdiction
Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, has
published the ritual of Masonic Adoption for
the use of the members of that rite. This
ritual under the title of " Offices of Masonic
Baptism, Reception of a Louveteau and Adoption,"
is a very beautiful one, and is the
composition of Brother Albert Pike . It is
scarcely necessary to say that the word Baptism
there used has not the slightest reference
to the Christian sacrament of the same name .
(See Lewis .)
Adoptive Masonry. 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
" Magonnerie d'Adoption, " or Adoptive Masonry,
and the societies in which the initiations
take place have received the name of "Loges
d'Adoption," 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 Masonry, 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 fictionsof
positive statements and problematic conjectures
. Mons . J . S. Boubee, a distinguished
French Mason, in his Etudes Maconniques,
places the origin of Adoptive Masonry in the
17th century, and ascribes its authorship to
Queen Henrietta Maria, the widow of Charles
I . of England; and 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 apocryphal .
Others have claimed Russia as the birthplace
of Adoptive Masonry ; 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 18th century, and which attempted
in all of their organization, except the