Five Heroines, and a History the Order Had to Face

The Order of the Eastern Star teaches through five degrees, each attached to a woman from scripture and to a point of the star and a colour: Adah, Ruth, Esther, Martha and Electa. Each stands for a virtue, and the whole is a moral system rather than an esoteric one. There is no claim to hidden knowledge and no grade ladder implying attainment.

Membership requires a Masonic connection, and the qualifying relationships have been widened over time. It is by a large margin the biggest fraternal body in the world that women can actually join, and for a century it was one of the few structured public organisations available to women in many American towns, which accounts for its size far better than its ritual does.

The order carries the segregation of American fraternalism in its structure. Predominantly Black chapters organised under the Prince Hall obedience, which had been refused recognition by mainstream Grand Lodges since the eighteenth century, and Prince Hall Eastern Star bodies exist as separate organisations to this day. Recognition between the mainstream and Prince Hall lines has come gradually and jurisdiction by jurisdiction, and in some places it has not come at all. Any account of the order that does not say so has left out the part that shaped it.