Religion is a complex and integral phenomenon within the humanity’s history which can be defined in a plethora of different ways. According to Tylor, the key element of any religion is a belief in spiritual beings (59). Different creatures fall under the category of spiritual beings in different religions, be it ancestors, divine beings, or gods and goddesses. The major point of such approach to religion is a belief in certain beings that can be encountered in non-empirical ways (Keith 41). The divine deities of the Grey Fathers Church are the six so-called Grey Fathers. These are the highly developed divine beings who 14 billion years ago stepped down from space and created Earth, some animals and humans. They are the benevolent humanity loving anthropomorphic beings of such high and divine nature that humanity lost the contact with due to forgetfulness of their true nature.
Sacred Objects
One of the vital parts of any religion is the existence of certain sacred object that are to be worshipped. Emile Durkheim, a renown French sociologist and philosopher, claimed that any religion implies a system of beliefs and practices with the use of sacred things (Durkheim 62). These beliefs form a community of people who adhere to them and get engaged in the same rituals with the use of sacred things, which altogether creates a church. In the Grey Fathers Church, such object are the megalithic structures found across the planet, such as the Stonehenge. The adherers of the Church believe that these megalithic structures are the remaining evidence of the presence of the Grey Fathers on Earth a long time ago, they have left these sacred objects to remind the humanity of their true divine nature, which people have forgotten due to the fact that they grew apart from nature. On special dates, such as the winter and the summer solstice, the adherers of the Church gather on the holy places around the sacred object and do their rituals. They are aimed at awakening and remembering the true nature and the procreator beings, the Grey Fathers.
The adherers of this Church deem The Grey Book as the holy scripture with truths and conditions of life and death left by the Grey Fathers. This book contains the main goal for humanity and the meaning of its existence – to maintain the remembrance of their cosmic origin. The ways to achieve this goal is to take care about nature and study astrology. The adherers of the church claim that astrology, the pseudo-science that explains the correlation between celestial bodies and human life, as something that was left for humanity by the Grey Fathers, and which was later adopted by various other religious and mystic traditions.
Functionality
Throughout humanity’s history and the history of religion, one of its main purposes was creating and providing the people with a meaning of life which is a basic human need. Ultimately, religions help people overcome the hardships in life, as well as help them cope with existential dread by providing an explanation for these hardships and ways to combat despair and hopelessness in the most challenging of times (Keith 13). The Grey Fathers Church explains that all of the difficulties in life are a means to remember the Fathers and the cosmic nature of humans.
The main moral beliefs of the Church of the Grey Fathers are to be kind to nature and to Earth, to remember cosmic origins of humans, and to worship the Grey Fathers as the way to this remembrance. If the person reaches this aim by their death, they are believed to return to the Fathers and remain in perpetual bliss forever.
Works Cited
Durkheim, E. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Oxford University Press, 2001.
Keith, A. Religion in Sociological Perspective. Sage, 2016.
Tylor, E. Primitive Culture. Harper, 1958.