“The battleline between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
A world run by hungry ghosts
I recently reread some of Paul Levy’s penetrating teaching on how to break the trance of evil, and relevant it is to these times. In his book Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil, Levy shows us that within the very force that can destroy us lies the hope of what can save our world at this time. Levy describes wetiko as a non-local, transcendental force that cannot be adequately expressed in language, because it is not a thing. The abstract nature of the English language fails to account for such dynamic forces as wetiko that affect us all the time yet are not visible or measurable.
Wetiko is an Algonquian Indian word describing a mercurial and elusive psychic phenomenon that has both material and spiritual aspects. Native American cosmology is similar to Eastern traditions in that the universe is regarded as a dream of the Creator and is a dream in which all the characters in the dream are dreaming as well. Wetiko describes a cannibalistic spirit that is driven by greed, excess, and selfish consumption (in Ojibwa it is windigo, wintiko in Powhatan). Wetiko deludes its host into believing that cannibalizing the life-force of others (others in the broad sense, including animals and other forms of life on Earth) is a logical and morally upright way to live.
Once human, wetikos are considered to have lost their minds and exist as crazy wild creatures that no longer live according to acceptable limits, engaging in excesses of every kind. This wetiko virus short-circuits the person’s ability to see itself as an enmeshed and interdependent part of a balanced environment, and instead elevates the self-serving ego to supremacy.
It is this false separation of self from nature that makes this cannibalism, rather than simple murder. It allows—indeed commands—the infected entity to consume far more than it needs in a blind, murderous daze of self-aggrandizement. Similar to the hungry ghosts (see the photo above), the demon-like creatures described in Buddhist, Taoist, Hindu, Sikh, and Jain texts , these beings are considered to be remnants of the dead who are afflicted with insatiable desire, hunger or thirst, as a result of evil perpetrated in many lifetimes
Wetiko exists in our imagination
We need our imagination to get a sense of wetiko, which is the very same faculty through which wetiko takes on its existence. Wetiko does not exist separate from our own selves. Says Levy, “The devilish wetiko virus, like a vampire, if left to its own devices, not only has no power but would die, as it is only able to exist if there is someone seemingly outside of itself on whom it can feast.” In other words, the very fact that we perceive wetiko as being separate from us is what allows it to thrive.
The wetiko virus is passed down trans-generationally, over multiple generations. Unlike other psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, ADHD, and the countless anxiety disorders that are rampant, the wetiko psycho-pathogen cannot be controlled with medication, because the medication would come from the very system that is infected with the virus. Overuse of Big Pharma medication can blunt the emotional system, contributing to people being more susceptible to the wetiko virus, which thrives in a climate void of authentic feeling.
A pack with the devil
Levy says that “Wetikos suffer from pseudologia phantastica, a form of hysteria characterized by a talent for believing their own lies.” This rampant and seemingly unlimited capacity for self-deception that afflicts humanity at this point is like a pack with the devil indeed. Essentially, this is the false self on steroids, which of course can be activated with the right cocktail, either of alcohol or medication. All our systems of government are infected with the wetiko virus and thus, all our leaders.
According to Levy—and I concur—though wetiko has no intrinsic power, it is a “virtual reality” that has enough energy to attack and destroy all of humanity. Imagine the power of this force within us that has the ability to destroy us when we remain separate from it, when we collude with the ancient myth—the mother of all myths—that we are separate. Imagine that power!
We get separated and cut off due to trauma—cut off from our innocence, from our loveseeds. Then we feed off ourselves and everyone else, and the virus of wetiko takes over. And it is all built on a lie. What if we could reclaim and harness that power?
An inability to feel
What Levy calls wetikos are the countless human beings who suffer from not being able to feel and then maintain a point of view that supports not feeling, thus feeding off their own precious energy to keep a lie alive. What’s more, without being able to feel, those who are highly infected are at risk of being overtaken by this virus, making them very susceptible to needing the Big Wetikos who are running the show. This notable absence of real feeling causes them to take a perverse pleasure in the ability to dominate and inflict brutality on others, similar to a vampire.
“Wetikos can psychopathically (and thus toxically) mimic the human personality perfectly. If it serves their agenda, they can be convincing beyond belief, making themselves out to be normal, caring, politically correct human beings. They are unable to genuinely mourn, being only concerned with themselves. They will feign grief, however, just as they will try to appear compassionate, if it is politically expedient to do so and, hence to their advantage, as they are master manipulators.” (Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil, Levy, p. 128)
If that sounds like sociopathology and possibly psychopathology, you are not far off base. It’s just that it is so rampant, and the force of it gets stronger from one generation to the next, and those DSM diagnoses don’t even begin to adequately describe the power and nature of wetiko. By shining the light of awareness on what is happening, we can call it what it is—a virus that is affecting everyone all the time.
A virus with no substance
There is no substance to wetiko, however. If you think wetiko exists you have succumbed to its trickery, and if you think it doesn’t exist—right—tricked again. It has no more substance than the appearance of “dark forces” that you encounter in a video game! As soon as you realize that, poof! No more wetiko!
Levy warns us that though wetiko comes from us, it is not simply “all in the mind” and therefore “not real.” You may deny it or ignore it, but doing so will not prevent you from being affected by it, any more than we could be safe in saying that because we don’t believe in malaria, we are immune to its ravages should we be bitten by an infected mosquito.
We need to look at this stuff. There is no way to bypass this, because there has been and continues to be so much trauma, which makes us all more susceptible to wetiko. After the San Bernardino terrorist shooting by a couple in December 2015, I faced my own wetiko as I was walking down the main street of the happy little village I lived in. I had seen the woman shooter in the burka who was part of the couple over and over on television in the days following the shooting.
On the weekend after the shooting, I encountered a woman in a burka walking toward me, and I suddenly found myself filled with rage toward her! I was so used to witnessing myself that I caught it “in a heartbeat” as they say, and realized what was happening. As I passed the woman, I smiled, and she smiled back, and I felt a real connection. I was human again. I realized how much the exposure to the media’s constant reporting of the attack had affected me,
This visceral response below the level of consciousness arose from the conditioning over a very short period of time during a time of trauma. Think for a moment how potent the effect of constant exposure to a culture of wetiko is! When we speak about unconscious racisim, we are referring to the insidious effects of the wetiko virus.
A beautiful young client of mine, aged 13, became severely anorexic in the course of the first two months of Covid-19 as her anxiety about what was happening caused her to seek a way to feel better. Due to all the social media input about finding your “Covid-19 body,” she began to believe that if she could get all the fat off her body, she would finally feel happy again. The wetiko virus discriminates neither age nor gender when it comes to finding a host.
Hosts for the virus
We don’t need to look to terrorists to see full-blown wetikos, as the major political parties are, at this moment, hosting the virus. The entire system does. It is not the politicians that are the problem, though you would think so if you believed the mainstream media. Understand that the real problem is how many people are affected by the wetiko virus in order for Big Wetikos to rise up the way they have.
The crowds get all riled up, and while they seem emotional, they are experiencing the rage that covers up terror, and rage and terror are two primal instincts from the lower brain. Feeling involves the heart, and an open one at that—a kind of innocence that is stronger than 10,000 shields. These are the qualities that get wiped out by the virus, which has its roots in trauma.
How can you know when you meet someone if they are taken up by wetiko? Take a moment and listen to the politicians who are on the world stage right now. Find out for yourself if you can feel https://www.kathleenhanagan.com/welcoming-the-shadow-back-home/that person’s heart radiating love. You will begin to know, because your heart does not lie.
Wetiko and the shadow
You may have already made the connection between the notion of wetiko and the human shadow, both the personal and archetypal. The less the shadow is consciously embodied in a person, the more that person will identify with the bright side of the personality. They are always so perfect!
Shadows are intimately connected to the light, and in the great mystery of life, the very light of our souls is discovered in the dark and disowned and discarded parts of the psyche. When we shine the light of awareness on these parts, the power of wetiko weakens. Remaining unconscious of these parts makes us precariously likely to unwittingly enact wetiko drama in our lives. Looking away is wetiko.
Groupthink can create a religion out of the energy of wetiko in no time at all. Wetiko is now globalized and televised, and courses through the waves of thoughts that travel around the planet in live-action time. Wetiko robs us of our souls.
Levy declares that, “Full-blown Big Wetikos are morally insane and abuse power simply because they can. The development of a rigid patriarchy follows wetiko disease like a shadow.” Because they continually recreate the ongoing process of killing their own souls, wetikos are reflexively compelled to do this to others. They turn the golden rule on its head by inflicting the trauma that was inflicted upon them in the ongoing hope of being triumphant. But they need others to survive, so there is but hollow victory.
From trauma to transformation
Trauma is not a noun or a thing, but rather a verb, in that it is a dynamic process that has a timeless dimension which unfolds itself over and over. With trauma, there is the physical correlate of neurons firing over and over in our brain in the course of our lives. When we carry unresolved trauma, it has a way of separating us from the immediacy of the moment, and in all we do we are continuously attempting to work the trauma through.
There is more trauma than ever at this time, just as there is more wetiko being enacted every day. Trauma alienates us from ourselves and from others, but it can also catalyze the deeper process of initiation into the making of the wounded healer or shaman archetype. When this happens, a deeper part of the psyche is being mobilized, opening the door to a call from something beyond. Each of us must answer that call, together with others who have the eyes to see and the ears to hear.
In addition to wetikos, there are countless shamans in training, wounded healers and bodhisattvas being invited by the Universe to consciously participate in our collective evolution. Our challenge is in our relationship with the darkness, or wetiko. Our salvation is in our relationship with the light.
The antidote to wetiko is this: When you penetrate to the heart of darkness and surrender all the ways you have protected against it, you dissolve the lie of separateness and you rediscover light, which is love.
May I face and embrace my own darkness in the service of the light.
May I take ownership for what is happening in the world, that I may contribute to it’s transformation.
