A ‘Church of the Meteorite’ has been set up in the Russian city of Chelyabinsk. Its members worship the space rock which streaked across the sky and rocked the region in February, injuring over 1,600 people, and causing damage and furor on the ground.
While scientists have long confirmed that the space rock that hit
Russia’s Urals Mountains on February 15 is “an ordinary
chondrite” (the most common type of meteorite that falls to
Earth), the founder of the Church of the Chelyabinsk Meteorite
believes it contains “a set of moral and legal norms that will
help people live at a new stage of spiritual knowledge
development.”
Paranormalist Andrey Breyvichko says the meteorite, estimated at
10,000 metric tons, is so powerful it could actually trigger the
Apocalypse.
The biggest of the seven major chunks that the giant rock
fragmented into was discovered in the local Lake Chebarkul,
forming an ice-hole 8 meters in diameter. An operation to recover
it from the lake began on September 10, due to be completed by
September 25. The chunk is covered by about 2.5 meters of
sediments and is estimated to be 30 to 100cm long, weighing about
600kg.
Breyvichko’s kindred souls regard the data stored inside the
meteorite as the "testimonies", urging local authorities to give
them the rock, which they want to be placed in a temple to be
later built in Chelyabinsk.
The founder of the cult of the meteorite church is strongly
against the operation to bring the chunk out of the lake,
claiming that as long as the meteorite stays at the bottom of the
lake, it is “in a positive environment”.
"Contact with outsiders, who treat it as an average stone, can
violate the information contained in it. We already see the
perturbation of the noosphere from constant attempts to lift the
meteorite in fomenting international instability around
Syria," Breyvichko told the First Regional Channel.
There are currently about 50 believers in the Church of the
Chelyabinsk Meteorite. These days they are busy holding rites on
the shores of the lake, trying to protect the meteorite by
building “protective barriers” around it, LifeNews.ru reported.
"I think it won’t hurt Chelyabinsk to become a truly holy
city, home to a great temple that will be the object of
pilgrimage for millions of people from across the world,"
Breyvichko stated.
When the meteorite exploded in February numerous videos of the
meteorite explosion appeared online, scoring millions of views
across the world. A number of local opportunists began selling
alleged pieces of the space rock in a bid to make a quick
fortune.