One of several American orders drawing their membership from Master Masons and their female relatives, the Order of the Amaranth was originally founded in 1860 by James B. Taylor, a Freemason in New Jersey, under the name of “the Ancient Rite of Adoptive Masonry.” Taylor drew his inspiration from the older French systems of adoptive Masonry, the rival Order of the Eastern Star, and a chivalric order founded by Queen Christina of Sweden in the seventeenth century.
Taylor’s Ancient Rite fared poorly in the scramble for popularity among fraternal orders in mid-nineteenth-century America, and by 1873 what was left of it had been taken over by Robert Macoy, one of the leading American Masonic promoters and publishers of the time. Macoy also ran the Order of the Eastern Star, and set about combining the two organizations into a single “Rite of Adoption of the World” with three degrees. The Order of the Eastern Star, in Macoy’s system, became the first or Initiatory Degree; the second degree was a little-used rite named Queen of the South, while the Order of the Amaranth was the third.
The combination of the rites proved to be unworkable, however, as leading members of the Order of the Eastern Star disliked the fact that their organization was at the bottom of the degree sequence. In 1897 the Order of the Amaranth separated from the Rite of Adoption of the World and became an independent body, though its female membership remained limited to members of the Order of the Eastern Star. In 1921 this last connection was severed and the Order of the Amaranth began admitting Master Masons and their female relatives without requiring an Eastern Star connection.
The Order of the Amaranth remains active today, although its membership has declined in recent years along with that of all Masonic concordant bodies. As a social and charitable organization, its major activities are raising money for diabetes research and assisting with other Masonic activities.
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SOURCE:
The Element Encyclopedia of Secret Societies : the ultimate a-z of ancient mysteries, lost civilizations and forgotten wisdom written by John Michael Greer – © John Michael Greer 2006