Undreaming Wétiko?
In my mental health journey, I’ve explored many of the world’s healing systems in my attempt to both explain why I feel the way I do and how to best maintain my system in a way that is fit for purpose. To this end, I’ve been particularly keen in exploring the many of the worlds ancient shamanistic beliefs as I venture along my journey inwards.
Whilst this article won’t be preachy or overtly religious, I do want to highlight a particular author I’ve found and his newest book that I’ve found quite helpful in giving me the language and sentence structure in making this journey inwards. That author is Paul Levy. The book, out a few months ago, is Undreaming Wetiko: Breaking the Spell of the Nightmare Mind-Virus. The title sounds heavy. But the knowledge contained within it’s pages is quite profound.
But first, a few definitions to get us going. Here's a brief overview of the concept of wetiko in Native American shamanism:
Wetiko (also spelled wétiko, or wendigo) is an Algonquian word meaning "cannibal" or "evil person". In indigenous American shamanic traditions, wetiko refers to a destructive spirit or force that can possess humans and turn them into cannibals or monsters. It is seen as a sickness of the soul or mind.
The wetiko concept has been particularly associated with the Cree and Ojibwe tribes in Canada. According to their traditions, wetiko can take over a person's mind (a mind virus) and compel them to act in greedy, exploitative, cruel or antisocial ways. Shamans would treat wetiko sickness through healing rituals and ceremonies aimed at exorcising the evil spirit from the afflicted person. They believed wetiko could spread like an illness or virus if left unchecked in society.
Some scholars interpret wetiko as a metaphor for greed, materialism, and social disconnection in modern society. The idea is that wetiko symbolizes a disorder of the spirit brought on by capitalistic and colonialist values that promote self-interest over community.
The concept of wetiko illness and possession is still relevant in many Native American cultures today. It continues to be seen as a threat that must be treated and cured through traditional spiritual practices and values.
I have been particularly curious about the concept of wetiko, or the Nightmare Mind-Virus, especially in light of my being autistic. There is this conception that autism (literally, self-ism) necessarily involves a disconnecting from people and societies. But I think there’s something deeper to it. In going down this road, exploring wetiko, I really wanted to explore Levy’s concept of multigenerational trauma given that autistics have been traumatized since ever since.
According to Levy, wetiko messes up the infected person's ability to see themselves as a connected part of a balanced world. Instead, it raises their selfish ego to be in charge. This false separation of self from nature makes wetiko like cannibalism. It allows—and even tells—the infected person to consume way more than they need in a blind, murderous frenzy of self-importance. Levy, trying to find language suitable for Western audiences, describes it as ‘mean ego sickness’—the ego unrestrained by reason and limits, acting with the evil logic of the cancer cell. He uses the term wetiko as it is the original, and reminds us of the wisdom in indigenous cultures, for those open to hearing it.
Thus, wetiko can name both the sickness and the infected body; a person can be infected by wetiko or, if it's far along, can personify the disease: ‘a wetiko’ or ‘a wendigo.’ This is also true for cultures and systems - like western capitalism; all can be described as wetiko if they routinely show these traits.
Taking an autistic deep dive on the idea of wetiko, you’ll find that the majority of indigenous cultures have such a concept, archtype, or character. In Siberian shamanism, for example, there is the concept of kunen, which refers to a destructive, cannibalistic spirit that can possess humans. This is very similar to the wetiko concept.
Some Polynesian cultures have myths about people being possessed by dangerous disease-bearing spirits and becoming ‘half-ghost.’ This resembles wetiko possession. In Bantu cultures in Africa, there are beliefs in different types of witchcraft that can turn people into hostile, predatory entities, not unlike the wetiko concept. Ancient Sumerian mythology contains references to sinister spirits called utukku that could violently possess people and cause social disorder. This parallels wetiko in certain ways. In Malaysian folklore, the idea of the mythical pontianak vampire has similarities to wetiko. It is an evil female entity that preys on people and consumes their energy. The notion of djinn or jinn in Islamic cultures resembles wetiko in some respects, djinn can sometimes possess humans and drive them to destructive behaviors. In Hindu mythology, concepts like asura and rakshasa refer to malicious supernatural beings that create havoc and imbalance in the world.
So whilst wetiko is uniquely indigenous American, its core idea of an evil, possessive spirit dates back to many ancient cultures across the world. This speaks to certain universal human traits and experiences.
There is also evidence of this in the Christian Bible’s Old Testament. The biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 18-19 depicts the destruction of these two cities by God. A common or traditional interpretation is that the cities were destroyed primarily due to the sin of homosexuality among their inhabitants. However, an alternative perspective, based on textual analysis of the original language of the source documents, focuses more on viewing their sins as greed, lack of care for the poor, and hostility towards foreigners.
Looking at the context, when Abraham pleads with God not to destroy Sodom if righteous people are found there, God agrees to spare the city for the sake of even 10 righteous people. This indicates the destruction was not inevitable, but rather a punishment for widespread unrighteousness.
Later in the story, when two angels visit Abraham's nephew Lot in Sodom, the men of the city surround Lot's house and demand he bring out his visitors so they can "know" them, implying sexual assault. This demonstrates profound inhospitality and aggression towards these foreign visitors, rather than hospitality and protection.
Overall, this alternative interpretation sees God punishing Sodom and Gomorrah primarily for their general unrighteousness, lack of care for others, extreme inhospitality, aggression, and attempted violence toward foreigners. Their greed, neglect of the poor and weak, and hostility to outsiders went against God's standards of justice and righteousness. Their general wickedness and pride led to impenitence, sealing their destruction.
The sins of Sodom and Gomorrah in this view serve as a warning against religious hypocrisy, lack of charity, and abusing outsiders. The biblical story emphasizes God's just punishment of those who violate moral laws related to justice, equality, and care for all people, including the marginalized. This interpretation sees those as the main reasons these cities were ultimately destroyed. In today’s view, we would call the deeds of the people of these cities … evil.
From this brief history lesson, we then must ask: what is evil?
Going back to the cultures that helped us with the definitions of wetiko, we find that many indigenous American cultures shared the concept of ‘living in balance’ with nature and community. Things that upset that balance, like greed and antagonism, were seen as spiritually harmful - and thus evil.
In Chinese philosophy, there is a strong emphasis on harmony, unity, and balance as ideals. Evil there is seen as anything that disrupts or works against those ideals. Disharmony is considered damaging. This is why the goal of the Chinese diagnostic system, as relates to autism for example, is to restore and support the autistic person’s ability to engage with family and community.
Ancient Egyptian culture valued ma'at, which represented truth, order, and justice. They believed the world depended on ma'at, and its opposite, isfet (chaos), was considered an evil force. Zoroastrianism, an ancient Persian religion, saw chaos and disorder as leering from the forces of evil and falsehood. The good god Ahura Mazda represented orderly creation. Similarly, Hinduism teaches that dharma upholds cosmic and social order. Adharma is disorder, instability and the disturbing of dharma, thus associated with harm. Ancient Mesopotamian myths portrayed chaos and disintegration as part of the monstrous forces of Tiamat and other destructive deities.
More recently, the Greek philosopher Plato felt that moral evil arises from inner disorder and lack of self-control, which fractures the personality. In Christianity, the devil is sometimes portrayed as sowing seeds of social disorder and disruption among humans.
So the common theme here is that many of the world’s cultures tend to view evil as anything that disturbs unity, stability, order, and balance in the human mind or the outside world (society). Thus, evil breeds dis-integration and dis-order.
Dis-order can be defined in a few different ways:
Lack of order or regular arrangement; confusion. A state of disorder is characterized by unpredictability, randomness, and lack of organization.
Disruption of normal physical or mental functions; an illness or abnormal state. A body or mind experiencing disorder is not functioning as it should.
Lawlessness or public disturbance. Social disorder involves behaviours that disrupt public safety and community norms.
A lack of civic obedience or neglect of civic duties. Political/civic disorder can come from not following established rules.
Disturbance of the peace. Disorderly conduct intentionally causes public disruption.
Lack of personal self-control. Individual disorder reflects inner instability or an inability to regulate one's behaviour.
In general, the west defines disorder as a lack of organization, unpredictability, dysfunction or instability, either in a physical system, mental state, society or environment. It implies a breakdown of order, balance, and healthy patterns. The opposite of disorder is order - a stable, coherent, predictable system functioning as expected. Thus, disorder is characterized by irregularity, confusion, unrest and a loss of control. It disrupts the proper working of processes, whether internally in an organism or externally in a social or ecological setting.
… which is why I don’t like referring to what we call autism as a disorder. Rather, I prefer referring to it as a ‘way of proceeding,’ or a ‘place.’
To wrap up this infodump, as I read Levy’s book, I couldn’t help but think that wetiko was behind this obsession with separating, with ‘othering’ autistic people by society at large. This treatment of autism and autistics, this trauma, has been happening for generations. It’s now such a part of us that we don’t see it for what it is. Yet, Levy points to the way forward. He illustrates how within wetiko we can find the source code necessary to reverse engineer the ‘cure.’ Not a cure for us, or for autism, but a cure for the separateness that society enforces upon us because of their perception of us as being ‘other.’ It turns out, the ‘cure,’ or the way forward necessarily involves our being our authentic unmasked selves - leaning heavily into our strengths and unleashing our creativity. It involves creating community and supports for each other - joining together and helping each other heal.
How can we do this? What kind of vision does it take? Science, answers Levy in a recent podcast. He explained that the path forward can be found in realizing / recognizing our place in the universe - all of us, not just autistics. He argued that rather than seeing each of us as distinct units in space / time, we might take the quantum physics view the universe as a unified field where all things are seamlessly interconnected. The parts are not separate from the whole.
This position really resonated with me as I’ve previously published on the autistic perception of time, and that view also appears in my book.
At the quantum level, particles can become entangled and remain connected even when separated by vast distances. This highlights the interconnectedness of everything. It shows itself in our world in how we can instantly reconnect with friends even after spending months / years apart - picking right up where we left off in our relationships.
The quantum field contains all possibilities and potentialities. It is an undivided wholeness from which the apparent separateness of individual forms emerges. Our anxiety can be seen as our very limited brain trying to sort through these possibilities and potentialities in the moment, and as a response to wetiko’s attempt to separate us from our personal choice matrix. In my book, I explain this in terms of a bully disturbing a kid’s lining up of their trucks. The panic comes from trying to bring order back towards one’s Quality World Picture, and the lack of the ability to see the path given these possibilities and potentialities.
From the quantum perspective, the cosmos is seen as a seamless, indivisible totality. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. All divisions and dualities are ultimately illusory. I wrote about this here in terms of autism as place. Our place is a place of ‘being,’ as opposed to a more wetiko-oriented pace of ‘having.’
Quantum physics suggests that consciousness is integral to this unified field, rather than an accidental byproduct of material processes. Mind and matter are two aspects of the same underlying reality. Those of us with alexythemic systems know this intuitively. We feel it at a fundamental level.
So, the key to ‘healing the world’ does indeed lie in us connecting authentically. This quantum view can also include concepts like takiwatanga, the Maori word for autism (meaning in his/her own space and time). If the quantum field contains all spaces and all times, then we are indeed all connected - seamlessly. With that view, we could start to build communities of care all over the world.
What do you think? Would such a life be possible in our world? Who knows. But, I’m at least willing to try. This Substack and my book is an attempt at a start.