Wetiko: Healing the Mind-Virus That Plagues Our World

by Paul Levy, Larry Dossey (Foreword)

• Explores how wetiko covertly operates both out in the world and within our minds and how it underlies every form of self-destruction, both individual and collective • Reveals how wetiko’s power lies in our blindness to it and examines how people across the ages have symbolized wetiko to help see it and heal it • Examines the concept of wetiko as it appears in the teachings of the Kabbalah, Hawaiian Kahuna shamanism, mystical Christianity, and the work of C. G. Jung In its Native American meaning, wetiko is an evil cannibalistic spirit that can take over people’s minds, leading to selfshness, insatiable greed, and consumption as an end in itself, destructively turning our intrinsic creative genius against our own humanity. Revealing the presence of wetiko in our modern world behind every form of destruction our species is carrying out, both individual and collective, Paul Levy shows how this mind-virus is so embedded in our psyches that it is almost undetectable--and it is our blindness to it that gives wetiko its power. Yet, as Levy reveals in striking detail, by recognizing this highly contagious mind parasite, by seeing wetiko, we can break free from its hold and realize the vast creative powers of the human mind. Levy explores how artists, philosophers, and spiritual traditions across the ages have been creatively symbolizing this deadly pathogen of the psyche so as to help us see it and heal it. He examines the concept of wetiko as it appears in the teachings of the Kabbalah, Hawaiian kahuna shamanism, Buddhism, and mystical Christianity and through esoteric concepts like egregores, demons, counterfeiting spirits, and psychic vampires. He reveals how visionary thinkers such as C. G. Jung, Sri Aurobindo, Philip K. Dick, Colin Wilson, Nicolas Berdyaev, and Rene Girard each point to wetiko in their own unique and creative way. He explores how the projection of the shadow self--scapegoating --is the underlying psychological mechanism fueling wetiko and examines wetiko in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, showing that we can reframe the pandemic so as to receive the lessons and opportunities embedded in it. Revealing how the power of imagination can cure the wetiko mind-virus, Levy underscores how important it is for each of us to bring forth the creative spirit within us, which helps shed the light of consciousness on wetiko, taking away its power over us while simultaneously empowering ourselves.

Genres: Psychology, Spirituality, Nonfiction

342 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 23, 2021

Reviews

[Agnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this as an ARC (Advanced Reader Copy) in return for an honest review. I thank NetGalley, the publisher and the author for allowing me to read this title. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

According to Native American lore, the wetiko monster can only prey on human beings who, like itself, have indulged in excess. Thus human beings' propensity for excess makes them vulnerable to possession by, and transformation into, a wetiko. The way to "dispel" it is to see it. It is to recognize that its evil is not us but only force acting within the collective field of human minds. Doing this, it gets seen and it loses its power to hide its dirty work. To fight it would only further its ends. To see it clearly, to name it as something not-me, not-you is to render it powerless. A very insightful read.

[Tenzin Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some really interesting ideas here (including the concept of ideas being beings in themselves, that arnt created but discovered and competing for attention).

My conclusion is that reality / demons / good bad is the product of our consciousness & heaven/hell are actually manifestations of the mind.

Effectively, like mystics have pointed out before we exist in a dream like state where the physical reality is a projection of what our mind dreams up.

Hence, the quality of this dream determines our existence and like Jung has pointed out there is a unifying thread between creating one giant dream (collective unconscious).

This book did a good job of bringing that to light and connecting some of the dots.

Why the lower score? Repetition, fluff (like a lot of books he could have cut 30% of it out) and an amplification of the very “evil” he describes.

What do I mean by the last point? I believe in the cyclical nature of history (“it doesn’t repeat itself, it rhymes”) whereby everything we’ve seen has played itself out through the ages. Not the specifics but the the themes.

He mentions many times that were going through this collective insanity and it’s getting worse. Is it? It’s never been safer to be alive and sans WW3 breaking out id still much rather be alive now then 200 years ago when wars, revolutions and diseases were plaguing the globe.

I’m likely being pedantic but it felt like the premise of the book included selling me on how bad things are now hence the need to be aware of wetiko. Have you read history? It’s always been like this! I guess I have a sensitivity to extreme “the worlds ending” viewpoints without an objective look at what’s already happened.

Anyway, I’m ranting. He is actually a good writer but you could get everything you need out of the book reading the first 25%.

I will say, thank you for introducing me to the concept of wetiko. Labels in the mind of phenomena allow you to be more aware of it.

This was written stream of consciousness, errors abound, I’m sure.

[Grace · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m relieved to see a cogent articulation of how our denial of our own shadow material projects it outward into the “evil” we attribute to others and the world. He presents a clear case both for how we do this, the contagion with which it spreads, and how we can create an equally viral movement of healing. He describes this clearly in the first 20% or so of the book and then repeats it again and again from a variety of viewpoints for the remainder. I imagine he felt he needed to work that hard to persuade people, and because I already saw what he presented before reading the book, it felt tedious and redundant to me. I would have given the book 5 stars if it had been more concise, but I do recommend it for the perspective he brings. We can definitely use a more responsible, optimistic, unifying view of what ails us now.

[Ben G. Price · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the most recent in Paul Levy's book-length exploration of "Wetiko," the psychological demon / disease identified by Native American scholar Jack Forbes. Levy has gone far afield from where Forbes began in his identification of the pathological mentality afflicting the European colonizing culture. Levy finds a foothold for Wetiko (an Algonquin term, also known as Windingo etc) in Jungian psychology, but he also hypothesizes this "bug" is a trans-dimensional being, difficult to identify, but coterminous with the human psyche. Well-written. Challenging, in its multi-faceted nature. Whether or not Paul Levy is exactly right (something that is too much to ask of any author), his analysis offers a helpful way of understanding the otherwise inexplicable contagion of parasitic egoism in modern society.

[Dylan Orosz · Rating 4 out of 5]

~ my book review on Wetiko: Healing the Mind-Virus That Plagues Our World (2021) by Paul Levy.

“The warfare’s psychic now. Whoever controls the language, the images, controls the race.”
~ Allen Ginsberg

In Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988), there is an invisible world beyond ours consisting of towering labyrinthian corridors that channel unlucky travelers’ energies into a central three-dimensional rhombus known as the beating heart of Leviathan. Here is power and energy and order; discerning humans cannot help but be drawn to it. In truth, Leviathan is a cosmic being that has crucially intervened in the evolution of the ancient human psyche and manifests as a bridge into Hell. It doubles as the dark god of the Cenobites, otherworldly beings that use flesh, hunger, and maximalist desires to bind human souls into daemonic rituals of transformative pain x pleasure x death. Leviathan pulses with electrical energy and casts out myriad beams of anti-light; it is like an unhallowed lighthouse reaching constantly for wayward human souls. When its sublime spotlight makes contact with a human being, it reveals to them via vivid psychoactive re-experience all of the worst sins of their life. Leviathan is the source of both humanity’s ingenious technology and our penchant to use our power for the sake of war, control, and insatiable greed.

In Paul Levy’s 2021 book Wetiko: Healing the Mind-Virus That Plagues Our World, he outlines that the diabolical will of such a dark Leviathanic heart has become ascendant in modern human society. It is an egregore that goes by various names, his is ‘wetiko,’ and the concept represents a kind of contagious sickness that inhabits us — to accumulate, to control, and to see everything outside of us as an enemy combatant in a zero-sum game. That means other people, animals, plants, the environment of Earth itself — it is all separate and likely hostile to us in the end. Wetiko is the shadow force deep within the alligator lake of our psyche urging us to eat them before they eat us in turn.

Wetiko can represent each of the 7 deadly sins, but greed is perhaps best suited to describe wetiko in a nutshell. (Personified, wetiko is the vampire.)

Wetiko is the psychic force that pulls us over the edge, that takes us too far past equilibrium, that posits we can draw endlessly from nonrenewable resources — or manipulate others — without inevitable consequences for our bodies and souls.

Wetiko can be fed and reinforced by forces within and without; the modern man can see its exploitative influence and effects all around us. {Many people end up becoming the unwitting automatons of wetiko’s voracious will.}

Levy’s writing on the subject is consistently clear and frequently inspiring. He manages a strategic approach of *circumambulating* wetiko from a variety of angles, meaning he writes in spirals and may repeat himself in service of his thesis. It is an expansive topic that seems to require such wide and nigh alchemical mental overwatch. To lay the groundwork, he gets into Jungian psychology, the Kabbalah, and the fictional “mind parasite” conceptions of sci-fi writers Colin Wilson and Philip K. Dick. Later, he gets into direct examples of modern wetiko and especially the manner in which we can resist its influence through creative action.

Excerpt: The source of the problems confronting humanity are fundamentally not economic, political, or technological, but rather are to be found within the human psyche.

Once wetiko is studiously defined, Levy describes how it manifests in our world. Like a cancer of the soul, it drives us into war and over-extracting the environment — and in these ways and more — it thrives well in the economic formation of hyper-accelerated globalized capitalism. That being said, this is far from just a book about the ills of capitalism or a critique of an endless-growth-at-all-costs philosophy. Levy is hardly a Marxist and more of a spiritualist with a deep understanding of life’s dialectics, cause-and-effect relations, and the natural breakdowns of health that tend to develop while under a mass regime of such manufactured inequality and manipulative mind control mechanisms.

The American empire can be seen as the beating heart of the world economy as hegemon. We are also the primary abettors of the social and spiritual contagion that is wetiko. Much of Levy’s book becomes an exploration of how much of wetiko’s role as a deviant force within our midst is how it must continuously deceive us from within in order to prevent us from seeing what it has wrought, through our will, in the world around us.

Excerpt: The danger is when the pathological liar is in a position of power and is taken seriously by the wider public. Like Faust, the liar is bound to make a pact with the devil and slip off the straight path. In this, he takes those who are enabling him, as well as anyone under his sphere of influence, into the abyss too. To quote clairvoyant and spiritual teacher Rudolf Steiner, “This effect of ‘untruth as truth’ contains an enormous force of evil. And this force of evil is made full use of in various ways and by different interests.” The result of the systemic institutionalization of lies and untruths is a disabling of our discernment and a deadening of awareness, which serves the forces of darkness. Lying has become an accepted means of discourse among us the likes of which has never been known. Lying has gone pandemic in our world…The mind parasites are masters of deception, tricksters par excellence. Though this can sound like the ravings of a paranoid madman, it is actually the opposite—a clear-sighted articulation of what we’re up against. The part of us that thinks that any talk about mind parasites is crazy is the very part of us that is taken over by the mind parasites. In Weissman’s writings it was becoming clear to him that these mind parasites weren’t just messing with individual people’s minds, but were wreaking havoc through the collective unconsciousness of our species, a process that was playing out en masse in the world theater. In his papers he wrote that he felt no doubt whatsoever that all of the wars of the twentieth century were a deliberate contrivance of these vampires. It is as if “the beast” of war is a virulent collective incarnation—in living (and dying) flesh and blood—of these mind parasites writ large. If we look at the state of the world today, once we cultivate the eyes to see these psychic vampires, we notice their influence everywhere throughout our planetary “culture” (or lack thereof).

However, within wetiko itself is the cure and power to outshine its darkness and overcome its greedy proclivities. Just as in alchemy, or the Hero’s Journey, one must delve into the putrefying darkness of the soul in order to emerge with the elixir in hand. Wetiko can be likened to our vampiric void within; it acts as an entity that conjoins our worst impulses while also illuminating our unconscious imagination. And it is from our unconscious imagination that all the dreams, inspirations, discoveries, and the love of art and women and the beautiful sublime come from.

Thus, wetiko acts as a dueling & synthesizing force to awaken us to our true creative power and introduce us to the everlasting force of LOVE. {Key thesis: the state of compassionate *love* is our ultimate destination as humans and members of the collective World-Soul.}

Levy proclaims this realization of our inner creative power as human souls is our way out of the trajectory of catastrophe we seem to be on. Only by our cogent will and bold imagination can wetiko be identified and transcended. And only in this way can the modern human being evolve.

So even while wetiko uses our worst instincts to lead us to the cliffside, it is also instilling within us the capacity to fly.

Excerpt: It is an archetypal idea that a divine spirit was imprisoned in matter, and it was humanity’s divinely sanctioned role to somehow free this spirit. The Savior doesn’t come down from the celestial heavens, but rather, it arises from below, from the depths, from the unconscious. The Savior doesn’t come solely from the light, but through the darkness as well. Great discoveries invariably come from the depths, just as trees never grow from the sky downward, but from the Earth upward. No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell…In the same way that God has to become estranged from himself in order to become more fully who he is, according to the Kabbalah it was only after the vessels break that humanity’s potential to become fully itself is set in motion. It’s as if some form of destruction, deconstruction, or disintegration is a prerequisite for individuation and is necessary for the birth of the Self.

Paul Levy’s wetiko thoughtform is powerful and not for the faint of heart (or the pure rationalist). It is also rather reaffirming for those of us that can keenly feel the spiritual malaise and endless hunger around us. Wetiko is a multiform daemon in need of exorcism and that requires observation, study, and a furious imagination.

The answer to living underneath any damnable reign is to do your best to self-actualize, or become who you are truly meant to be. Today, Levy posits, this act of *individuation* must necessarily involve the presence of wetiko and its many gloaming emanations. {We’ve all encountered wetiko; we’ve all embodied it before.}

In the end, the interpenetrative force of wetiko demands of us that we awaken and become aware. Only from dawning awareness may we work to create a world outside of its dark dominion. Collective change is coming and continuous and already underway, of course. Levy’s words are a boon for those initiated into the belief that living another way on this planet is not only possible — it is inevitable. ~

Paul Levy’s previous book on the subject: Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil (2011)

Mega-Excerpt: One of the greatest and most challenging problems facing us today is that our reason alone is no longer sufficient to meet our problems. Once mass psychology (what Jung refers to as “a dangerous germ”) prevails and fear and emotion reach a certain pitch, the possibility of reason having any effect ceases. Once mass psychology gains enough momentum, a collective possession results that can quickly turn into a psychic epidemic. This psychic epidemic is none other than what is meant by the word wetiko.

+

Our overly intellectual and rationalistic attitude is a sickness. Our overly rationalistic worldview—what Berdyaev refers to as our “rationalistic madness” (folie raisonnante) and what Jung refers to as “rationalistic hubris”—has torn our consciousness from its transcendent roots, disabling our ability to respond to numinous symbols and ideas. Oftentimes, behind much over-rationalism is the quest for control. Interestingly, one of the deeper processes going on in the global body politic is the attempt to centralize power and control. We are desperately in need of the illumination of a holy and whole-making spirit, a spirit beyond our accepted reason, logic, intellect, and our habituated, conditioned way of thinking. Jung described a timeless archetypal force, Wotan, that became activated and infested Germany in the 1930s and 1940s as Nazism. The energy of Wotan—the ancient God of storm and frenzy—could seize and possess people (individually or collectively), inspiring a state of collective fury and transpersonal mania. The archetypal energy of Wotan is an unconscious factor that exists in latent form within the human psyche. Once it becomes catalyzed, it can influence people to fall under its spell and become its instruments. In this sense it is related to how wetiko manifests as a collective psychosis. For once Wotan/wetiko is enlivened, it seizes everything in its path and uproots and overthrows everything that is not firmly rooted. This same force expresses itself today in different forms of corruption, criminality, genocide, dispossession, systemic inequality, war, and the ravaging of natural and emotional worlds. It leads to narco-states, warlords, nonspiritual jihads, and inhospitable worlds that would typically stretch the limits of our imagination except for the fact that it’s manifesting as our present reality.

Original link: https://thresholds-of-transformation....

[Denise Hatcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book had a lot of interesting ideas. I always say that the good and bad go together, and, indirectly, I thought the author was writing about the same idea. He believes there is a mind-virus that threatens our future. Another term he uses is “mind parasite.” I call this concept karma and agree that life is much more complicated than most realize, and that our lives really are very inter-connected.

I found the chapters on covid especially interesting. I agree that it is tragic how many people died. I also agree that there are important life lessons we could have chosen to learn from the entire experience.

[Anmol · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a bit of a surprise for me, as I was recommended this by someone, and I have never really read anything about Native American spirituality, or Jungian archetypes before. So the constant reference to Jung was a bit difficult to get through. But from what I could understand, everything that is evil in the world is wetiko, but wetiko is necessary because evil is necessary in the divine play, so evil must be seen, recognised, accepted, and ultimately overcome. Now, everywhere the author sees evil becomes a discussion on wetiko. The chapters on the Kabbalah, Sri Aurobindo, and Philip K Dick were very interesting though. Can't say much else about this, except that it is incredibly repetitive, something that the author himself acknowledges.

[John Greene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paul Levy is to be commended for his persistence in trying to reach the minds of all his readers. That is what his battle is about, as wetiko blinds the minds of so many people. The book does re-emphasis points, retell things in different ways, and is less to the point than it could be. However, if it were, he would lose some of his audience. Wetiko is not that difficult to grasp if your mind is open to it, but applying it to yourself effectively can be a personal challenge that some people will not be up to. Understanding and commitment are just the start of rooting wetiko out of your personal life to make room for what is real.

[Dan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was prepared to give this a five star review and recommend it as one of the most important books one could read, but the ending devolved into something grotesque. VERY disappointed. So disappointed, in fact, that I immediately returned the second Wetiko book I bought from Audible of Levy's. I'm going to read The Enchantments of Mammon by Eugene McCarraher next to see if there are further insights into insatiable greed. I'll be tackling Columbus and Other Cannibals by Jack Forbes soon after. The Wetiko virus rings true, but the perspective on virology and public health from Levy was awful.

[Theresa Jump · Rating 5 out of 5]

Creatives! Feeling Stuck? Read this book!

Enlightening and inspiring!

This is a beautifully written book.

So much gold here! His take on 'scapegoating' is particularly important.

I appreciate Levy’s ability to integrate his personal experiences with many other schools of thought. One reviewer thought he was redundant. I didn’t find that at all. I found he was able to speak with authority while using examples from many other wisdom traditions.

Bravo!

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was just confusing. And circular - almost every chapter said the same thing but in a slightly different way. I think that IFS and Schwartz’ model for burdens, protectors, and exiles is a much better model for determining the sources of global disconnection and perversion of society/economy.

Would not recommend- just read the synopsis and you’ll know as much as if you read the whole book but be less confused.

[Readsa · Rating 4 out of 5]

At the end of 2024, one of the most interesting and profound books I have come across addressing the darkness in the world, all around us and in us. Very repetitive in the beginning, but stick to it or jump to the further 2/3rds and you will get a profound message that if spread could turn the tide on the disaster humanity is collectively pursuing.

[Timmy Connelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

"They wouldn't be so pessimistic if our world wasn't manifesting so darkly, and our world wouldn't be manifesting so darkly if they weren't so pessimistic."

Call it out by whatever name you like, but call it out on your self first.

[Cam Sinclair · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting book. Had never heard of this concept until I came across this book. Would recommend to anyone seeking a fuller understanding of some of the more occulted aspects of the human experience.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another way of explaining evil, they use the term wetiko instead of satan. Interesting and thought provoking!

[Jared Diehl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished this for our book club..lots on the shadow work that needs to be done and the unconscious!