Family and friends sit in a vehicle trailer, where they will spend the night, near the enclosure for buffalos awaiting sacrifice on the eve of the sacrificial ceremony for the “Gadhimai Mela” festival in Bariyapur November 27, 2014. The festival renowned for its large number of animal sacrifices, is held every five years at the Gadhimai Temple where devotees from Nepal and bordering India will sacrifice buffaloes, goats and birds while offering prayers to Gadhimai, the goddess of power. (Photo by Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters)

Devotees attend the annual voodoo festival in Ouidah January 10, 2016. The national voodoo holiday in the West African country of Benin had a distinctively political accent this year as practitioners from Africa and the Americas gathered on Sunday to offer prayers and sacrifices for peace. Hundreds of followers of the traditional religion gathered in the Atlantic coast town of Ouidah, once an important port in the slave trade, to pray for calm during the tiny country's presidential election scheduled for February. (Photo by Akintunde Akinleye/Reuters)

Indian groom Prakash Sing (R) and bride Durga Prasad (C) perform marriage rituals at the Lord Shiva temple during the Maha Shivratri festival, in Kolkata, eastern India, 01 March 2022. Maha Shivaratri is celebrated with great devotion and religious fervor by Hindus, in honor of Lord Shiva with ritual bathing of Shivalingams and prayers. Unmarried women observe fast from dawn to dusk and pray to Lord Shiva to give them a good spouse. According to one of the most popular legends, Shivaratri is the wedding day of Lord Shiva and Parvati. (Photo by Piyal Adhikary/EPA/EFE)

Ra Paulette is an American cave sculptor based in New Mexico who digs into hillsides to sculpt elaborate artistic spaces inside mountains. Reviewer Martha Mendoza in the Los Angeles Times described the caves he created as shrines, as hallowed places, a “sanctuary for prayer and meditation” while others describe the caves as works of art. The caves are finished with “scallops, molded curves, smooth ledges, inlaid stones, narrow pods and crusty ledges”. His caves attract visitors worldwide.

Afghan policemen take position at the site of a suicide attack followed by a clash between Afghan forces and insurgents after an attack on a Shi'ite Muslim mosque in Kabul, Afghanistan on Friday, August 25, 2017. Gunmen stormed a Shiite mosque in the Afghan capital while worshippers were at Friday prayers, setting off an explosion that killed a security guard outside and pushing into the shrine, officials said. (Photo by Omar Sobhani/Reuters)

A Tibetan man stirs butter tea made for the arriving guest during the function organised to mark Losar or the Tibetan New Year at a Tibetan Refugee Camp in Lalitpur February 19, 2015. Tibetans across the world marked the arrival of the New Year with prayers and festivities. (Photo by Niranjan Shrestha/AP Photo)

Traditional trumpeters perform during the durbar festival on the second day of Eid-al-Fitr celebrations in Nigeria's northern city of Kano, July 7, 2016. The Durbar festival begins with prayers, followed by a parade of the Emir and his entourage on horses, accompanied by music players, and ending at the Emir's palace. The Durbar festival had been in hausaland for more than 500 years. It was introduced by sarki muhammadu rumfa of kano in the late 14th century, as a way of demonstrating military power and skills before going to war. The festival is also an opportunity for local leaders to pay homage to emir throughout the jahi cheering. (Photo by Akintunde Akinleye/Reuters)

An Indian Hindu devotee pours milk on a snake as an offering during the annual Nag Panchami festival, dedicated to the worship of snakes outside the Nagvasuki temple, in Allahabad, on July 28, 2017. Officially the snake charmers' profession is banned in India, but many in the country offered prayers and milk blessings to cobras and other deadly serpents on July 28 in an annual tribute. The 800,000 charmers and their young apprentices come to the fore for the Nag Panchami festival which dates back several centuries. (Photo by Sanjay Kanojia/AFP Photo)