Par
Franck Buydouin
Published on
May 5, 2025 at 4:46
The Masonic Lodge Confluence was created in 2009, at the East of Pontivy (Morbihan). It has the distinction of being exclusively feminine. Like the obedience to which it is affiliated, the great female lodge of France.
Maryvonne DevayVenerable mistress of confluence, and its sisters organize a public conferenceTuesday May 6, 2025, at Pontivy (Morbihan), with a remarkable guest: Marie-Thérèse Besson, former great mistress of the Grand Lodge Female de France, from 2015 to 2018.
Maryvonne Devay, what is the great female lodge of France?
It is an exclusively female Masonic obedience created in 1945. At the time, it was called Union Masonic Female de France. She changed her name in 1952.
An obedience is a grouping of lodges and each obedience has its particular rules.
The Grand Lodge Female de France brings together 450 lodges on French territory, which represents around 13,000 members; we say sisters …
What is a Masonic lodge?
It is a place of awakening, maturation, emancipation, debates … a place of discovery and self -construction. A place of both a health and flight.
Why choose to join, today, a non -mixed lodge as confluence?
Entering a female box is making a choice: that of working between women, with women. It is also to build a woman’s identity, to forge a woman’s word. It is a singular fight.
In society, we are rarely in an exclusively female universe. I wanted to confront the lives of other women and build myself among other women.
Entering a female lodge is also to beat for those who do not have the freedom to fight, for those who dare or not or cannot speak.
Is there a difference between female Freemasonry and male Freemasonry?
No, not for me. We are complementary. One thing is certain is that we are not a club service club!
What does Freemasonry bring you?
Freemasonry is an initiatory company. To be initiated is to build yourself, but it is also acting and taking a stand. We have rules, and what is particular and paradoxical, is that these rules make free. And that is an irreplaceable wealth.
We are also committed and responsible women who fight against the attacks brought to our principles of tolerance, respect for others, parity and secularism.
That it is the genesis of confluence, the lodge of which you have been the venerable mistress since June 2024?
For a long time, Pontivy was a Masonic desert. That is to say, there was no Masonic lodge. Confluences, like other lodges, was born from the desire to set up in this arid area with people with faith pegged to the body.
The name Confluences comes from the fact that we are, here, to the confluence of several rivers. It is symbolic and it is also a proposal made at the service of a territory. This is what is the strength of the founders … We are still six founders in the Lodge …
The conference you are organizing will be led by Marie-Thérèse Besson. Who is she?
Marie-Thérèse Besson was a great mistress of the Grand Lodge Female de France between 2015 and 2018. We had already invited it in 2023 to animate a conference entitled, women’s Freemasonry, between tradition and modernity.
This time, his conference is entitled Woman and Freemasonry, an emancipation. Marie-Thérèse Besson will explain what a lodge is, what we do at the Grand Lodge Female de France, she will also talk about Masonic engagement …
Freemasonry is renowned for its discretion. Organizing a public conference is revealing yourself …
If we have decided to organize a public conference, it is to stir up curiosity, make you want to meet, but also explain what Freemasonry is.
It is true that today Freemasonry is attacked from all sides. Freemasonry is accused of being a sect. While it is quite the opposite: it is difficult to enter masonry, but it is very easy to get out of it. Just resign. We are free. And it is not a network either …
The Grand Lodge Female de France offers a method that may interest women who want to share with other women the values of Freemasonry, which are tolerance, fraternity, freedom, secularism, equality, freedom …
Woman and Freemasonry, conference hosted by Marie-Thérèse Besson, Tuesday May 6, at 7:30 p.m., at the Palais des Congrès in Pontivy (room the norm). Organized by the Confluences Philosophical Circle, of the Grand Lodge Female de France. Open to everyone. Free and free entry.
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