The Hunting Ritual Becomes a Ritual

The hunt is a ritual. Expressing the hope of resurrection that the animal was food and you needed the animal to return. And more than respect, that animal becomes a messenger of divine power. You wind up as the hunter killing the messenger. Killing the god. The guilt is what is wiped out by the myth. It is not a personal act. You are performing the work of nature. In Japan, in Hokkaido, in Japan, among the Ainu people whose principal mountain deity is the bear. When it is killed, there is a ceremony of feeding the bear a feast of its own flesh. As though he worked present and he is present,. He served his own meat for