Archons

First published April 11, 2013.

Paul Levy discusses his book Dispelling Wetiko -- Breaking the Curse of Evil.

There is a contagious psycho-spiritual disease of the human soul, a parasite of the mind, that is currently manifesting itself in the form of unprecedented conflicts and crises on a global scale. This collective psychosis or mental virus -- which Native Americans have called wetiko - covertly operates through the unconscious blind spots in the human psyche, rendering us oblivious to our own madness and compelling us to act against our own best interests.

Wetiko distorts our perceptions by stealth and subterfuge, acting through us while simultaneously remaining hidden. Unconstrained by conventional laws of time and space, this 'bug' in the system deceives us by working with the projective tendencies of our mind to appear external to and other than ourselves. Thus, the conflicts and crises which threaten the collapse of political, social and economic systems, and perhaps even of the biosphere itself, are nothing less than a revelation of our own internal darkness, the side of our nature that we all too often deny. Quantum physics is now revealing to us the dreamlike nature of reality and, as with our dreams at night, events in the so-called waking world are symbolically reflecting a condition deep within the psyche of humanity.

Drawing on insights from Jungian psychology, shamanism, alchemy, spiritual wisdom traditions, and personal experience, Levy shows us that hidden within the venom of wetiko is both a profound truth and an antidote, which once recognized can help us awaken and restore sanity to society. Whether wetiko destroys our species or catalyses a deeper process of global awakening depends upon recognizing what it is revealing to us about ourselves.

Paul Levy is a pioneer in the field of spiritual emergence and an innovator in the field of dreaming. A Tibetan Buddhist practitioner for over thirty years, he has studied with some of the greatest spiritual masters of Tibet and Burma. He is the author of The Madness of George W Bush: A Reflection of Our Collective Psychosis, as well as Wetiko: The Greatest Epidemic Sickness Known to Humanity.

Word History: Elves, goblins, and trolls seem to be timeless creations of the distant past, but gremlins were born in the 20th century. In fact, gremlin is first recorded only in the 1920s, as a Royal Air Force term for a low-ranking officer or enlisted man saddled with oppressive assignments. Said to have been invented by members of the Royal Naval Air Service in World War I, gremlin is used in works written in the 1940s for "an imaginary gnomelike creature who causes difficulties in aircraft." The word seems likely to have been influenced by goblin, but accounts of its origin are various and none are certain. One source calls in Fremlin beer bottles to explain the word; another, the Irish Gaelic word gruaimín, "ill-humored little fellow." Whatever the word's origin, it is certain that gremlins have taken on a life of their own.