(Latin, “King God.”) According to recent speculative literature, the title held by a group of European aristocratic families allegedly descended from the family lines of the 24 High Priests of the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, who took names from Jewish mythology corresponding to their ritual roles. In every generation, therefore, there was a Melchizedek, a Michael, a Gabriel, and so on. See Temple of Solomon. The Rex Deus priesthood allegedly operated two boarding schools in the Temple complex, one for boys and one for girls, and had the privilege of ceremonially deflowering the girls when they reached childbearing age.
The girls would then be married off to husbands, who would raise the children as their own; however, the children had to be returned to the temple boarding school on their seventh birthday to receive the priesthood’s training and presumably, if female, another helping of their genetic material as well. Jesus is claimed as the result of one such union, fathered by a priest with the ceremonial name of Gabriel.
According to the story, the Rex Deus families escaped the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 68 CE and survived as an underground family tradition, surfacing in the early Middle Ages as important families of European aristocracy; how a group of Jewish families achieved this feat at a time when other Jews were confined to ghettos and subject to harsh persecution is not clear. Several founders of the Knights Templar were allegedly members of Rex Deus families, and the same families played a crucial role in the origins of the Freemasons and a variety of other currently popular historical events. The Sinclair family of Scotland is inevitably cited as one of the Rex Deus families.
The extensive surviving documentation on the ancient Jewish priesthood, ranging from the Old Testament to the writings of the Roman historian Josephus, contains no trace of the supposed Rex Deus tradition, or for that matter of 24 High Priests in the Temple, and many of the claims made for the Rex Deus priesthood include drastic violations of Jewish religious law. The evidence for the existence of the Rex Deus families, on the other hand, consists of unsupported claims made to the co-author of a book on the subject after a lecture on Rosslyn Chapel. This has not prevented the story from being repeated as fact in a number of other books on the subject of Christian origins.
SEE ALSO:
- Christian origins
- Jesus of Nazareth
- Rosslyn Chapel
- Freemasonry
- Knights Templar
- Sinclair family
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