IN HAYAO MIYAZAKI’S environmental fable Princess Mononoke, the antlered, baboon-faced Forest Spirit walks serenely on dappled water. The ambitious industrialist Lady Eboshi levels her long rifle. “Now watch closely, everyone,” she tells the awed soldiers around her. “I’m going to show you how to kill a god.” She hits the spirit with her first bullet, and later shoots its head off its body.
A particular news story struck me last summer that, bizarrely, recalled the scene above. It was the tale of a similar assault on divinity – a god dispatched at mortal hands: “An ice stalagmite that forms in ...
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