With all this as background, Bataille tries to characterize the deeper meaning of ritual sacrifice. The price we pay for entering into the realm of project is that we and other living creatures are reduced to things.¹² Ritual sacrifice aims to restore our experience of the immanent immensity by momentarily undermining the world of things. The sacrifice of the lamb, for example, removes the animal, which has been diminished by its reduction to the status of thing, from the world of project, symbolically restoring it to the immanent immensity. Ritual sacrifice is thus tied to our recognition of and longing for this generative reality in which we are immersed and from which we are estranged. Bataille says, “The first fruits of the harvest or a head of livestock are sacrificed in order to remove the plant and the animal…from the world of things…. The principle is destruction,….[But] the thing—only the thing [i.e., its thingness]—is what sacrifice means to destroy in the victim. Sacrifice destroys an object’s real ties of subordination; it draws the victim out of the world of utility and restores it to that of unintelligible caprice.”¹³

Now, the moral of the story. In his book, Earth’s Insights, J. Baird Callicot's book Earth's Insights,¹⁴ surveys many of the world’s major religious traditions asking of each what contribution it might make to Environmental Ethics. We want ultimately to ask a similar question of the Shinto tradition. Here we will make only a few brief and tentative comments.

First, we have already pointed out that Tatsuo’s actions are not political, but “ritualistic.” Politics is about human interests. In contrast, ritual sacrifice suspends the world of project in favor of what is prior to it—“that which has the passion of the absence of individuality.” Shinto is founded on a vision of an unfolding cosmos prior to, and larger than, individuals and their interests.¹⁵ So Shinto contributes to the environmental debate a deep, processive, cosmic vision of nature (musubi).

Second, Tatsuo’s vision does not rely on reducing nature to a miniaturized, idealized, and thus more manageable status—which some cite as a typically Japanese response to the unpredictability of the natural.¹⁶ In contrast, nature for Tatsuo is immense and awesome, without bounds and conceptually uncontainable. Here, Shinto contributes an emphasis on the unfathomable mystery of the vast immensity of nature.

Third, most modern ethical theories are either utilitarian or concern themselves with duties and rights. In contrast, our interpretation of Tatsuo’s Shinto roots accords with contemporary “Deep Ecology” in calling for a transformation in human consciousness. This is a “virtue ethic.”¹⁷ A virtue ethic delineates those human characteristics the possession of which enhances the life of the person and indirectly that of the community. It is an ethic that recognizes that some people are more creative and powerful than others and are to be praised for such characteristics and held up as models. Himatsuri, according to our interpretation, holds out as an exemplar of the good life, the person capable of being intimately connected to the immanent immensity. Tatsuo is, to this extent, a hero (or “kami”) insofar as he is open to Great Nature. And this not because of his sacrificial act, but for the consciousness that spawns it. He is not “deprived of the marvelous.” Here, Shinto emphasizes the importance of exemplars—among whom are persons intimately connected with Great Nature and functioning as living examples of that relation.

Finally, the Shinto tradition is rich in ascetic and other ritual practices sometimes capable of transforming and purifying one’s perception of Great Nature. This is a possible practical contribution of the Shinto tradition to environmental consciousness. As we were told by one Shinto practitioner, “when I do misogi, I can feel the stars breathing.” Thus, Shinto offers us practical ways of realizing a more profound relation to Great Nature.