Wétiko is a parasitic, possessing spirit or thought-formThought-form. A human-created living being: an ideology, religion, corporation, conspiracy theory or platform that has taken on a life of its own. Genuinely alive, but soul-less in the deep sense: natural things alone are full of Soul. More about this of greed, selfishness and excessive consumption, which Therapeutic Shamanism sees at the heart of Taker cultureTaker culture. Daniel Quinn’s term for the totalitarian agricultural, owning, surplus-driven way of life that takes everything and leaves nothing, and calls itself ‘civilisation’. Cultural, not innate, which is why it can be changed. Used interchangeably with ‘Fallen culture’. Read the full answer. It got its hold on us through the soul-lossSoul-loss. The sending-away of parts of the self in order to survive: through shock or trauma, or (the chief modern cause) exiling our own parts to fit in. With Power-loss, one of the two root causes of shamanic illness. Read the full answer and Power-lossPower-loss. Disconnection from nature, the web of life and our place in it: like being unplugged from the national grid. One of the two root causes of shamanic illness, healed by reconnection (not by soul retrieval), beginning with the Power Animal bond. Read the full answer of our disconnection from the natural world. Co-wétiko, a Therapeutic Shamanism term, is its ungrounded counterpart: escapist, fantastical spirituality that props wétiko up, whose cure is restoring the balance between right-brain vision and left-brain critical thinking.
What is wétiko? #
“Wetiko is a parasitic spirit or thought-form. It is highly destructive and is motivated by greed, selfishness and excessive consumption. It infects people like a virus, literally possessing them.”1
It is “the biggest one” of the non-human spirits that possess people. Once it has taken hold of someone, it steers them into a lifestyle that is predatory and parasitic on others, “essentially cannibalising other people, and indeed all the other Peoples, for its own ends.” It “tells the host that they are above nature, not part of nature. It elevates the ego.” It is the driving force behind totalitarian agriculture, totalitarian warfare, colonialism, social inequality, our over-consumption and the Anthropocene extinction.2
Wétiko is a middle-world spirit. “It does not exist in the Upper or Lower Worlds. But it is rampant in the middle-world”.3
Where does the word come from? #
Because we killed our shamans in the West, we lost our own terminology, and so have to adopt words from other cultures, as we did with the word ‘shaman’ itself. The word ‘wetiko’ comes from the Algonquin peoples of North America, and was popularised by Paul Levy in Dispelling Wetiko and by Jack Forbes in Columbus and Other Cannibals. Levy also calls it “malignant egophrenia”.4
See Who is Paul Levy, and what does he mean by wetiko?
How did it take hold of us? #
Wétiko “has always been with us. Shamans say it is a very ancient spirit.” It was the shamans’ knowledge of it that kept it in check, and any sign of it “was slapped down and rooted out in hunter-gatherer societies”.
When we disconnected ourselves from the natural world and Mother EarthMother Earth. The sacred Feminine pole: pure potential, from whom all the Peoples arise. The Lower-World is her realm, and she is all the realms: “The Earth is indeed our Mother.” More about this, we suffered massive collective Power-loss, and when we domesticated ourselves we suffered collective soul-loss. “Suffering from massive soul-loss and power-loss, society as a whole became wide open to being infected by wetiko, and wetiko seized its chance.”5
See What are Taker and Leaver cultures?
Is it only a problem for psychopaths? #
“In reality though, wetiko is something that infects all of us to some degree. It is not so much ‘us against the psychopaths’ as ‘all of us against wetiko’.” Wétiko “is any time we take more than our fair share, or when we act with disregard or a lack of compassion for others.”6
People who have been fully taken over are another matter. Hunter-gatherer tribes would first tease anyone showing signs of selfishness, then publicly shame them, then call them to council, and as a last resort cast them out. Unlike other possessing spirits, wétiko “cannot simply be dealt with by shamanic depossessionDe-possession. The healing for a full entity takeover: persuading or compelling the possessing entity out, then disposing of it, and always addressing the underlying soul-loss and Power-loss that let it in. More about this”. For such people, the only way to curb their behaviour is for the rest of us, collectively, to put limits on what they are allowed to do.7
What is co-wétiko? #
Co-wétiko is the Therapeutic Shamanism term for wétiko’s ungrounded counterpart: escapist, fantastical, “none of it’s real” spirituality that props wétiko up. Its cure is restoring the balance between right-brain vision and left-brain critical thinking.
The same balance applies without the word: “Central to shamanic practice is bringing both hemispheres of the brain into balance, so that neither has dominance.” And to overemphasise or inflate the Upper-WorldUpper-World. The realm of Father Sky and of Spirit: spacious, rarefied and clear, layered in tiers, offering not escape but perspective. Not better than the Lower-World: we ascend rooted, and bring the gifts back down. Read the full answer “just leads to a top-heavy, imbalanced and ungrounded spirituality”.8
See Who is Iain McGilchrist, and what do the two halves of the brain have to do with animism? and What is spiritual bypassing, and how can psychotherapy help prevent it?
What helps? #
Overcoming wétiko needs both inner and outer action. “We have to personally wake up to it, and become aware of it within ourselves; name it, and then choose to act differently in our own personal lives.” Equally, we have to wake up to it in society, name it, resist it and spread awareness of it.
We also need to be tough on its causes. “For hundreds of thousands of years, shamanism kept us safe from wetiko, and it is also shamanism that can save us”. Shamanic healing is equipped to deal with what causes a wétiko infection in the first place, soul-loss and Power-loss, and so to treat “not just the symptoms but the underlying cause.”9
For those of us not fully consumed by wétiko, “the cure starts with ‘the Great RememberingGreat Remembering. The counter-movement to the Great Forgetting: the recovery of the buried animist knowledge, already underway. Therapeutic Shamanism understands itself as part of it. Read the full answer’, with understanding that the way we are now is not ‘human nature’ but a recent infection.” It means learning from our hunter-gatherer ancestors, cultivating compassion, acting considerately, reining in our consumption, and trying to be a Leaver rather than a Taker.10
