It begins, however, with a prologue, set almost half a century earlier, telling us of the diamond's sacred origins in India.
They provide accounts of the primordial time; describe the transformations that explain the nature of human existence in the world; and help humans return to the sacred origins, overcome sin, and become renewed by participating in the primordial sacred fullness of being.
Shroud skeptics call on a shopping list of evidence, including traces of paint pigments and carbon-14 dating tests carried out in 1988 that led three independent laboratories to date the cloth between 1260 and 1390, to cast doubt on its sacred origins.
Other special pieces have less sacred origins, like the beer tankard depicting ships and a Swedish flag commissioned by a Swedish sailor marooned off Hainan Island in the winter of 1785; the punch bowl, from the same year, painted with a scene of a naval battle from the American Revolutionary War; the colorful dish (c.
Kamūlān is from the word mula, which means "the place of origin", a sacred building to honor the ancestors, probably those of the Sailendras.
Sculptural representations of the sacred or holy have their origin in cult.
They are often viewed as sacred or even of divine origin, if not directly identified with the deity, as in the Zoroastrian fire altars.
Even though the Dargah is by origin a Muslim sacred space, Indians of all faiths feel culturally connected to the Sufi tradition and its history.
Finally this cup that might well have had secular origins found a sacred home in Venice.
Origin is not a sacred work, but the antipathy shown to it by some might have something to do with the wounds it inflicted on a whole herd of sacred cows.
