Is Wetiko the Next Pandemic?

Within the New Age, there is a belief that:

for several thousands of years human beings have suffered from a plague, a disease worse than leprosy, a sickness worse than malaria, a malady much more terrible than smallpox.”¹

According to its adherents, this disease is called the Wetiko mind virus and is the source of all evil on earth. As we enter the third year of the Coronavirus pandemic, it’s hard to imagine a “psychic disease” would be considered our greatest threat, but many people who believe this are highly educated, articulate people who are setting the narrative for the mental health industry today. Deception is no respecter of persons, intellect, or education.

But is this true? Does a mind virus really plague humanity? The Ancestral Healing Movement argues that it is not the pandemic of sin that causes the world’s problems, as the canonical Bible says, but a mercurial spirit that lives within all of us.

Cloaking itself in our form, this predator gets under our skin and ‘puts us on’ as a disguise, fooling us to ‘buy’ into its false version of who we are.”²

While Satan may be the ruler of this world and thus does tempt us to sin, Scripture is unambiguous that we cannot defeat him by our own power, but this is exactly what is taught in the Ancestral Healing Movement

1 John 5:18-19 tells us,

no one who is born of God sins; but He who was born of God keeps him, and the evil one does not touch him. We know that we are of God, and that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.

The Ancestral Healing Movement is doing nothing to save those who are suffering today when they reject Biblical truth. While their intentions may be good, they lead people to Satan, not God.

Sadly, the arguments put forth by this movement’s research are not new and go back to the lies Satan told Eve in Genesis 3 — “you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:5). Satan hates God’s children and wants them to continue living in misery, so he lies and says that we can fix our own problems. Wetiko is a lie and is a spiritual cancer within the hearts of all who believe it. It is the true pandemic that has and will continue to plague humanity.

Background

Indigenous people have been tracking this supposed “psychic” mind virus “Wetiko” for many centuries.³ It is a Cree term that refers to a diabolically wicked person or spirit who terrorizes others. When indigenous communities came into contact with the first European pilgrims, the Native Americans said Wetiko infected them. It was a tribe of the Cree in Canada who used this concept for the first time. However, the Ojibwa, for example, already were using the well-known term “windigo.”⁴

Jack D. Forbes (1934—2011) — one of the founders of the Native American movement during the early sixties — once said, “Tragically, the history of the world for the past 2,000 years is, in great part, the story of the epidemiology of the Wetiko disease” and “to a considerable degree, the development of the Wetiko disease corresponds to the rise of what Europeans choose to call civilization. This is no mere coincidence.”⁵

Modern civilization suffers from the overly one-sided dominance of the rational, intellectual mind, a one-sidedness that seemingly disconnects us from nature, from empathy, and from ourselves. Due to its disassociation from the whole, Wetiko is a disturber of the peace of humanity and the natural world, a sickness which spawns aggression and is capable of inciting violence amongst living beings. The Wetiko virus is the root cause of the inhumanity in human nature, or shall we say, our seemingly inhuman nature.⁶

Paul Levy – the founder of the Awakening in the Dream Community in Portland, OR, and a Princeton graduate. According to Paul Levy, the Wetiko mind virus,

is at the very root of the collective madness and corresponding evil that we, as a human species, are collectively acting out on the world stage.”⁷

Within the mental health community, there is a growing belief that ancestral trauma caused by genocide, slavery, and abuse has led to the loss of indigenous languages, culture, and traditions; thus, contributing to disparities in health, education, and economics. This trauma has also led to elevated rates of PTSD, depression, diabetes, addiction, suicide, and sexual violence — especially in Native American communities.⁸

Within his treatment plan for ancestral trauma, Levy merges Eastern and Western spiritual traditions, evolutionary mysticism, shamanism, quantum physics, transpersonal psychology, and the insights of C. G. Jung to show how to alchemically extract the healing remedy from the poisonous mind-virus Wetiko.⁹ He argues that within the Wetiko virus itself lies the vaccine that will save the world from itself — we just have to be willing to accept that it’s there and be ready to address the problem of evil. If you reject this idea, you are shutting down the source of clues to understanding your own behavior.

To Levy and others in this movement, when man examines his own mind, which Wetiko controls, he will recognize that being selfish and self-centered is counterproductive to our human potential. When a man is ignorant of his interconnectedness to all of mankind, he allows the Wetiko spirit to destroy his creation and blind him to his own divinity. Within this movement, sin is not considered something from which we need God to save us as the Bible teaches, but rather something from which we need to save ourselves.

Within the ancestral healing community, man is entirely dependent upon his own work to be saved from his selfishness and greed. This movement rejects the Spirit of the Lord that transforms us into the image of God and says instead, we are god and can fix society ourselves. They do not understand the mercy of our Lord, nor do they want to accept the fact that we are lost without Him.

They reject the teachings of the Apostle Paul, which tells us, Christ,

saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit. (2 Cor 5:17)

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. (Eph 6: 12-13)

Just Another Form of Gnosticism

Wetiko is just another form of Gnosticism and is equated with the Gnostic belief of a counterfeit spirit. God the Creator is not responsible for sin, and neither is man. It is the fault of the counterfeit spirit and his minions (“Archons”). The Wetiko spirit or the “Archons” separate us from our divine consciousness and thus prevents us from recognizing our true nature.¹⁰

We, as parts of the collective conscience — or Pleroma in Gnosticism — can create our own universe of utopia and control our own evolution. However, like a vampire, Wetiko steals our life force and causes us to become individualistic and selfish. This is not our nature, but instead, we live in an illusion of the physical world, unaware of our true self. Once we are enlightened to the fact that we are all spirit and interconnected on a divine level, we will no longer be under the control of Wetiko. Gnosis, or knowledge of our creative ability as part of the divine, acts as sunlight on the vampire of Wetiko and kills it.¹¹

Gnosticism was an outgrowth of the early Docetism heresy that promoted the idea that Jesus might have been divine but denied His full humanity.¹² Obstinate Docetists

taught that Jesus was only a phantasm or an illusion, appearing to be human but having no body at all. Other forms of Docetism taught that Jesus had a ‘heavenly’ body of some type but not a real, natural body of flesh.¹³

The problem with Docetism is that it denies the core truths of the gospel, namely, the death and resurrection of Christ. If Jesus did not have a real body, then He did not really die (Docetism teaches that His suffering on the cross was mere illusion). And, if Jesus had no physical body, He could not have risen bodily from the dead. Without the actual death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we have no salvation, we are still in our sins, and our faith is futile (1 Corinthians 15:17). Docetism also denies the ascension of Christ (since He had no real body to make the ascent).¹⁴

The Mental Health Industry and the Occult

Many of today’s mental health professionals use guided meditations to address ancestral trauma and, thus, the Wetiko virus lie. They encourage their patients to visualize their late ancestors and to have conversations with them! Psychology appears to have swung from mid-century modernism — where any spiritual experience was considered not scientific and thus psychotic — to post-modern, spiritism where patients are encouraged to embrace spirits as part of the healing process. However, Scripture tells us to test the spirits, and if they deny Christ, they are of the antichrist (1 John 4: 1-3). How many people are being drawn further into the occult by this practice?

Dr. Renee Linklater — acting director of the Aboriginal Engagement and Outreach for the Provincial System Support Program at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto — argues in her book Decolonizing Trauma Work: Indigenous Stories and Strategies that indigenous cultures believe there are helpful spirits and not-so-helpful spirits. A helpful spirit may be an ancestor or spiritual helper or guide, and a not-so-helpful spirit could be a wounded spirit that is antagonistic and toxic.¹⁵ Linklater claims that,

Learning about spiritual experiences can expand our connections within Creation. In some situations, it can challenge our assumptions and transform our knowledge constructs. ¹⁶

By quoting other mental health professionals, Linklater continues to say that channeling spirits is a healthy practice that affirms indigenous culture and faith and thus should be promoted by the mental health professional.

I acknowledge that she walks with somebody and that’s okay. I could see a big change in her. I could see the relief. . . she cried because she’s never ever had anybody say it was okay . . . it was always wrong.” Janice S.¹⁷

“I most often try to remember that we are Spirits on a human journey. There are other Spirits on a journey that are not human. . . . I try to bring them literally into relationship with other beings —— like trees. There’s nothing in the world more grounding for someone who is frightened or distressed by their difficulties in dealing with multiple realities.” Yvon L.¹⁸

Linklater believes that there is a direct link to the health of Indigenous peoples and their connection to the land as it is alive with Spirits. She also believes that it’s important to treat someone else’s reality — no matter how bizarre — it is just as true as anyone else’s as long as the patient is not hurting themselves or others.¹⁹ But is it helpful to let someone remain in their delusions? To allow them to think there is no truth and thus no actual reality? How can this be a stabilizing force in such a chaotic world?

Where Does Our Salvation Come From?

Scripture provides the only source of truth and says,

whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. (Philippians 4:8)

Humanity needs a solid foundation in order for peace to thrive (Matt 7:24-27). Deluding people into thinking that their sin is not the source of their problems and thus letting them believe they do not need a Savior is not a recipe for robust mental health.

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. (1 Corinthians 15: 3-5)

This early creed, relayed by the apostle Paul to the church at Corinth, was likely circulating around Christendom as early as two to seven years after Jesus’ resurrection, thus dispelling the myth that the church rejected the gnostic gospels as canon for nefarious reasons.²⁰ Christ’s atoning work on the cross was not an invention of the apostle Paul as Muslims, and progressive Christians like to argue. He did not come to enlighten us to our divine nature as Levy and others in the New Age movement would suggest. He came to redeem the world from Satan, the great accuser according to Revelation 12:10.

If we want to ensure peace in our lives and not give Satan an inch, we must fasten the belt of truth, put on the breastplate of righteousness (Eph 6:14), and get in His word.

you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work (2 Tim 3:15-17)Î©

Stephanie Potts and her husband Jim live in Dayton, Ohio and have been married for 20 years. She worked with the federal government for 15 years as an intelligence analyst and then entered full-time Christian service in 2015. She first joined Haven Ministries in Denver, Colorado, in 2015 and then transferred to Midwest Christian Outreach, Inc in 2021. She received her Bachelor’s degree from Florida State University in Political Science and International Relations and received her masters degree in Geographic Information Systems from Penn State University. She is currently working towards her master’s degree in Christian Apologetics through Southern Evangelical Seminary. She specializes in evangelizing to people involved in the New Age, to Muslims, and Native Americans. Stephanie’s personal website: rainbowapologetics.com

Is Wetiko the Next Pandemic?

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