Feast · 13 October
The Temple enclosure
Address · Square du Temple – Elie-Wiesel, 75003 Paris
Metro · Temple (3)
Today · Free access. Square du Temple, free access.
The story
The enclos du Temple was the seat of the Templars for the province of France and their largest commandery in the kingdom. Its exact founding date remains uncertain: a first house, the Vieux Temple, existed around 1140 near the place de Grève, and a charter of 1146 mentions a house of the Temple in Paris. The fortified estate covered about six hectares of today's Marais, around a great tower, a church and a palace.
At dawn on Friday 13 October 1307, on the secret orders of Philip the Fair, the Templars were arrested throughout the kingdom. Jacques de Molay and some 140 brothers of the Paris house were seized in the enclos; some were killed, the others imprisoned. The order was dissolved in 1312 and its property passed to the Hospitallers, who made the enclos the Grand Priory of the Temple. The great tower served as a prison for the royal family from 13 August 1792: Louis XVI left it on 21 January 1793 for the scaffold, and Louis XVII died there in 1795. Napoleon had it razed from 1808; the church and cloister had disappeared in 1796, and the Grand Prior's palace fell in 1853.
For Thelema, the Temple refers to the Templar lineage symbolically claimed by the O.T.O., the Order of the Templars of the East, which Crowley joined in 1910 and of which he became head in 1925, having proclaimed himself such as early as 1921. In it he bore the name Baphomet, taken from the accusations levelled against the Templars during the trials opened by the arrests of 1307, and he included their last Grand Master among the saints of the Gnostic Mass. No source indicates any particular visit by Crowley to this site.
Almost nothing remains of the enclos. The square du Temple, designed by Adolphe Alphand and inaugurated on 11 November 1857, partly covers the site of the great tower; since 2017 it has been called square du Temple – Elie-Wiesel and contains a bandstand of 1900 and a memorial stele to the deported children of the 3rd arrondissement. Blue markings on the ground, on rue Eugène-Spuller, outline the turrets and the tower, and a plaque at the corner of rue Dupetit-Thouars and rue Gabriel-Vicaire superimposes the plan of the enclos on today's streets. Every 13 October, the map suggests a gathering, a reading and a laying of flowers.