Friendship in Ritual
Friendship in Ritual
This chapter explores the relationship between male friendship and the transformational aspects of Freemasonry's initiation, known as the “apprentice ritual” (rite d'apprenti). Drawing from more than twenty different manuals used by brethren to perform the apprentice ritual, dating from the 1740s to the French Revolution, the chapter reconstructs what an apprentice candidate likely experienced once he stepped into a French lodge. More specifically, it examines the initiate's multiple encounters with lodge members and spatial zones and how these interactions fit into the wider pedagogical project of symbolically breaking down the candidate's egoistic self. It shows how the initiation ritual generated a form of “ritualized friendship” that was anchored in the moral foundation of an ecumenical Christianity. The chapter argues that Freemasonry's apprentice ritual symbolically recast the neophyte into a new form, emptying him of specific undesirable psychological elements which otherwise would have made friendship a problematic, unstable relationship.
Keywords: male friendship, Freemasonry, apprentice ritual, initiation ritual, ritualized friendship, Christianity
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