Religiosity starts from the premise that there is a metaphysical force, in the literal sense that it exists beyond the physical realm that we observe and interact with in our daily lives. Religion then seeks to codify, explain, and articulate this into a coherent belief system which consciously defines the world around us. However, this process has so often led to dogmatic and frankly absurd scripture, the relevance of which wanes with the passage of time.

It is this author’s contention that a Solar Cult – sun worship, for want of a better description – is simultaneously the most rational and metaphysically consistent form of religiosity.

If one accepts religioisity’s preconditions, then it appears reasonable to look first to the source of life that imbibes the ‘life force’ within all living things. For millennia, the Indo-Europeans have done just this; the sun offered a focal point for pre-Christian religious feeling. It is uncomplicated. It speaks to the innate knowledge of life present in everybody.

What our forebears could perhaps not articulate, but what we know from scientific enquiry, is the extent to which the sun and sun-like stars are central to our existence. As we know, without the sun we would not exist, nor would our sources of sustenance or their sustenance, or the weather that sustains the ecosystem in which these processes are possible. But another point here is the very existence of our world and the materials necessary to construct a habitable planet. The entirety of what we see around us is derived from the magnificence of exploding stars whose power produced the materials of our provenance. This immediately entrenches the equivalence of creation and destruction as the epicentre of solar religiosity.

It is also true – but potentially less well understood – that solar energy regulates the fundamental functions of our brains which permit feelings of spiritual inspiration to occur within us. There is a signalling system before the retina which orders the brain to release certain excitory neurotransmitters in response to stimulation by solar energy in the ultraviolet spectrum, neurotransmitters which have been shown to provide feelings of what we might call divine inspiration — it is no surprise, therefore, that the sun has been an object of spiritual focus since the dawn of mankind.

Furthermore, it is clear to me that the sun has a symbolic value beyond its functional and psychological effects. Our life-giving star is obviously associated with strength, power, Will and virility; its daily conquest of the darkness is another aspect noted in all the old religious conceptions of the world, notably in Republican Rome but also amongst the more northerly-dwelling peoples who structured their festivals around the Return of the Sun.

We must also recognise the aesthetic and metaphysical equivalence of creation and destruction to those who truly see the world. The Sun embodies this outlook; it and stars of its likeness are simultaneously creators and destroyers, which ultimately sewed the seeds of both our presence and eventual demise, as well as that of everything which exists. This is true in a mechanical sense also, for a star’s final destination may be a supernova, an event that produces the materials required for the creation of all life. A supernova then results in the total gravitational collapse of a star, transforming it into a gravitational singularity, a Black Hole which is the supreme universal destroyer.

It is true to say that all metaphysical aspects described in religious dogmas the world over reveal, essentially, the spiritual and mundane functions of the Sun, while ascribing them to totally disparate entities and forces invented by man for political reasons.

Many cultures throughout history and across the planet, however, held the sun to be the pinnacle of the sacred, and personified it or him or her in various ways. Often these cultures created elaborate pantheons of heavenly deities and spirits which may or may not have a strong basis in reality, but always their myth spread out from the solar epicentre. This is the outward expression of the Cult of the Sun.