The Dark Night of The Human Soul: Breaking the Spell of Wetiko
Colonization is not just history—it’s a virus dominating our world today... This is how we begin to heal.
“Wetiko is a mind-virus that feeds on separation.” – Paul Levy
We are living through dark times. Just one look at the headlines reveals the depth of our planetary crisis: systematic genocide in Gaza, the sectarian murders of over a thousand Druze in Syria, rising authoritarianism in the U.S., the painfully ironic destruction of 8 miles of rainforest in Brazil to build a highway to COP. It’s hard not to get addicted to the gravity of this moment, to spiral into the endless feed of despair—swiping one outrageous scene after another. It’s as if the conflicts of the world are converging—spiraling around a center point of infinite density: a black hole of human consciousness.
This black hole is the colonial experiment, rooted in the story of separation. It has ravaged nearly every land on Earth. We see its fingerprints in Israel and Palestine, in the genocide of Indigenous peoples across the Americas, in the war on Ukraine, in the desecration of the Congo Basin at the hands of foreign oil companies. We see it in our schools, our prisons, our economic systems—and in our very relationship to the land.
We have internalized the false belief that land is separate from us, and therefore can be owned, controlled, and most often—destroyed. As Robin Wall Kimmerer writes, “In a consumer society, contentment is a radical proposition. Recognizing abundance rather than scarcity undermines an economy that thrives by creating unmet desires.”
The colonial mind perceives lack where there is already abundance. In all of nature there is a quiet balance between species. The rainforest supports such a vast diversity of life to thrive. Why do human societies continually create the conditions for a small group of elites to thrive while the others struggle for their survival?
It is the root of colonial greed that fuels the endless hunger, violence and hatred of our modern world. It says “My life is more valuable than yours” and perpetuates the cycle of extraction from the oil well to the exhaust pipes—taking the blood and bones of our ancestors and consuming enormous amounts of energy just to satisfy the desires of the flesh.
Indigenous wisdom traditions from across Turtle Island have long named this force: Wetiko. Paul Levy describes Wetiko as “a collective psychosis—a mind-virus that insinuates itself into our psyche and compels us to act against our own deepest interests.” It is the virus that drove the conquest of the Americas, the enslavement of Africans, the clearcutting of rainforest to build churches. It is the force that drove Hitler to systematically exterminate Jews—and that drives governments today to dehumanize and eliminate the “other. ”
Wetiko feeds on fear, control, and domination. It divides us. It consumes us. It seeks to centralize power at all costs, turning the Earth into an empire of mechanistic slavery. And yet: if we dare to name it, we can begin to reclaim our agency. We can stop projecting the virus onto others and start noticing where it has taken root in us—in our mind, in our bodies, in our ancestry.
This naming is not about intellectual understanding—it is the first step in developing immunity within the body. As Resmaa Menakem teaches, “Healing does not happen in the cognitive brain. It happens in the body.” The trauma of colonization lives in our nervous systems, in our tissues and in our very DNA. It lives in our inherited responses to stress, to conflict, to belonging. To break the spell of Wetiko, we must descend from the head into the heart—and then deeper, into the gut, into the bones, and ultimately into the soil of the land from which we came.
It is here in the story of our land and in our ancestry that we begin to find the clues to unearth the hold of this virus on our mind.
As descendants of colonial powers, we are called to reckon—with our power, with our privilege, with our complicity. We must understand the systems that raised us, the comfort that emerged from conquest. We must move from being a savior to standing in solidarity. We must act in service of justice—not to save others, but to become human again by reconciling the atrocities and pain of our ancestors.
It is time for white western men to step out of the lime light and into the background to support up-and-coming leaders from the global south who have endured the violence and persecution of the colonizer and have cultivated a heart of forgiveness and healing. It is the fierce and nurturing power of the feminine that we need in this time, to gather and to hold the pain of our shared humanity—to make room for a new society that reconciles its grief together.
As descendants of colonized peoples, we are called to protect our boundaries, our homes, and our cultures. We are called to speak truth without fear, to remember who we are, to stand in dignity with our siblings across the Earth. We must recover our memories, our rituals, our connection to what cannot be stolen. We need to peel back the layers and labels of the colonizer, the feeling that we are ‘less than’, the sense that our dreams are impossible. We can heal our sexual trauma and rediscover the immense creative force within us that is calling forth healing and beauty for our world. We can rediscover ourselves through art, music and dance—the very fabric of the society that colonizers sought to tear apart.
Just as the human gut relies on a diverse microbiome for healthy functioning, we too need to cultivate diversity of expression amongst our people to allow the flourishing of all cultures across all lands as equally valuable and beautiful.
Many Indigenous prophecies speak of a time when the black jaguar will return—a time of deep remembering and planetary initiation. We are in that time now. The jaguar prowls at the edge of our dreams, asking us to see with new eyes. To choose presence over numbness. To walk as if the Earth were alive—because she is.
Wetiko can only survive in a disconnected world. Every time we remember the land, the body, the breath—we weaken its hold. Every time we create beauty, tend to grief, welcome the stranger—we reclaim a little more of what was lost.
As often as we scroll the feed of outrage, we must touch the soil. As often as we spiral into anger, we must return to stillness. As often as we feel alone, we must remember the mycelial web of our belonging.
If you find yourself lost and confused, you are not alone.
If you find yourself overwhelmed, you are not alone.
You are human.
You are awakening from the dream.
You are breaking the spell of Wetiko.
As one person breaks the spell in one moment, it carves a pathway for others to follow.
Let us remember together.
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An Invitation to Practice
Go outside. Stand with your feet touching bare Earth. Close your eyes. Feel the weight of your body. Bounce your knees and let you hands drop against your legs. Notice your breath.
See if you feel called to offer something to the land, first, as a a gift: a song, a tear, a seed or a promise...
Ask the land in return, silently, “What do I need to heal to become a better ancestor?”
Wait for the answer. It may come as a word, a feeling, or silence.
Stay a little longer and listen to the sounds of nature. The birds. The bees. The wind.
This is how we remember. This is how we begin again.