Another Westphalia Press review. In this book you will find the lectures spoken at a colloquium in Paris in June 2022. It covers a wide variety of texts about the French Rite and its relation to “Enlightenment Culture”.
Authors (speakers) include Margaret Jacob, the compiler of the book Cécile Révauger, Roger Dachez, Pierre Mollier and many others. In total there are 21 texts filling a book of just under 200 pages.
The book clearly shows how French (style) Freemasonry differs from Anglo-Saxon Freemasonry. There is much more focus on societal developments, modernization, humanism, citizenship and indeed secularism.
Contrary to how other Freemasons describe French Freemasonry, French Freemasonry isn’t “atheistic” by definition, nor political. Religious references aren’t removed because French Freemasonry is against religion or wants to recruit only atheists, but because it does not want to exclude people without a religion. The idea is “complete freedom of conscience” of its (prospective) members, not an agenda.
The same with politics. The subject of the French Revolution appears in more than one text. There is no place for party politics in the lodges, but developments in society can certainly be talked about. Just as with any other subject, not to convince other members that a certain viewpoint is correct, but to allow everybody to compare different ideas.
The book will also teach you a few things about the development of French Freemasonry. How around 1780 out of a variety of different ways of working the “Regulator of Masons” was created (and how the Hiram story differs.) How the “Chamber of Degrees” compressed 81 degrees to the four “orders” (‘high degrees’) of the French Rite. How the French Rite fared abroad, etc.
Hence, a scholarly introduction into French (style) Freemasonry in English.