It is a sacred rectangle that turns any surface into a sanctuary.
Votive niches, carvings, reliefs and inscriptions on fault surfaces suggest important sacred sanctuaries, particularly those with oracular functions, may have been deliberately built astride active fault traces and venerated as direct connections to the chthonic realm ('the underworld').
Standing some 21,000 feet above India's sacred Ganges River, the notorious "Shark's Fin" surface of Mount Meru can be as formidable and fatal as any encounter with a great white shark.
During the opening credits of "The Cup," the camera pans across the surface of a mani stone, a sacred object for adherents of Tibetan Buddhism, on which prayers are inscribed in elegant, stylized script.
Tears are close to the surface -- not sad tears, more sacred tears... if that even makes sense.
The sacred carp accumulated in a great heap below the surface of the water, their gaping circular mouths angled upward.
Even her quavery voice, which surfaced especially when she spoke about how sacred sex was because it brought us little children, was something I could now endure or pass over.
None the less, his readiness to challenge sacred cows from the inside did not take long to surface.
Almost forgotten archaeological layers of belief still poke through the surface here, old echoes that stretch religious absolutes held sacred by Muslims, Christians and Jews alike into weird, unsettling shapes.
Gingerly I wipe the surface clear of dust and replace the totems to their sacred space.
In dusky colors often shot through with opalescence, they picture ordinary objects on flat surfaces — a shoe, a bowl, a paper bag — as if they were sacred relics.
