How we must beat the ‘mind-virus’ to save our world

‘In its full-blown form, wetiko disease turns people into ghosts, demons, zombies, vampires and members of the living dead.’ Paul Levy

To Native Americans, ‘wetiko’ is a cannibalistic spirit capable of taking over people’s minds, subverting life’s purpose to selfishness, cupidity and acquisitiveness, undermining innate powers of creativity, and rendering the human race its own worst enemy.

In Wetiko: Healing the mind-virus that plagues our world (Inner Traditions / Sacred Planet, US $19.99 / UK £15, December, 2021), Paul Levy explores deeply the concept as it manifests itself under different guises in the teachings of the Kabbalah, Hawaiian Kahuna shamanism, Buddhism and mystical Christianity, as well as through esoterica and the wisdom traditions.

He discusses how artists, philosophers and spiritual practices through time have been ‘creatively symbolising this deadly pathogen of the psyche so as to help us see it and heal it’. To quote Bob Dylan, we find it blowing in the ‘idiot wind … from the Grand Coulee Dam to the Capitol’.

In particular, Levy reveals how visionary thinkers such as Carl Jung, whose depth psychology pervades Wetiko, the English philosopher and novelist Colin Wilson (see below), the Indian guru and poet Sri Aurobindo, the American science fiction author Philip…