Quote:
Originally Posted by jazing
Many of the founding members of Greek letter organizations had masonry background. If that translated into the sororities as well, I would not be surprised.
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Yes, many fraternity founders had a masonic background. Many others did not. Sometimes, rituals were written by someone other than the founders, and sometimes those ritual writers had a masonic background and sometimes they did not. Sometimes they had background in other fraternal organizations, sometimes they had familiarity with liturgy or cultural ceremonies, sometimes they had familiarity with classical mysteries, and so on.
The point is this: While it might be reasonable to speculate that, at least as to rituals written by founders and others who were masons, those rituals will bear signs of masonic influence, this is still speculation. It is equally reasonable to speculate that masons would avoid too much masonic influences in rituals they wrote so as not to lead to speculation of similarities. As AzTheta says, unless you are familiar with rituals of orgs other than your own, then you are only guessing. And unless you are familiar with "most" rituals, then you really can't make statements about what happens in "most" rituals.
As for sororities, I see no reason to automatically assume that masonic influence would "translate" to their rituals.