This book describes the religious phenomenon in a species known as Homo sapiens. We have found that religion is one of the key characteristics that has distinguished this species from others since it acquired the human traits we possess today, more than one hundred thousand years before our era. From that early time of its complete independence from other living species on this planet, religion has accompanied it as a fundamental and important motivator in human life throughout the ages.

My aim is to understand the religious phenomenon as it is, and its true nature, by describing it accurately and isolating it from the rest of the phenomena of human culture.

What is religion? This is the fundamental question we will seek to answer satisfactorily together. Therefore, what I present to the reader in the following pages is a contribution to the phenomenology of religion, distinguished, I hope, by its novel approaches, analyses, and conclusions. A work appearing at this late stage, after the flourishing of this type of research globally, must necessarily have compelling justifications for its existence.