Wetiko is an Algonquin word for a cannibalistic spirit that is driven by greed, excess, and selfish consumption (in Ojibwa it is windigo, wintiko in Powhatan). It deludes its host into believing that cannibalizing the life-force of others (others in the broad sense, including animals and other forms of Gaian life) is a logical and morally upright way to live.
Wetiko short-circuits the individual's ability to see itself as an enmeshed and interdependent part of a balanced environment and raises the self-serving ego to supremacy. It is this false separation of self from nature that makes this cannibalism, rather than simple murder. It allows —indeed commands— the infected entity to consume far more than it needs in a blind, murderous daze of self-aggrandizement. Author Paul Levy, in an attempt to find language accessible for Western audiences, describes it as "malignant egophrenia"—the ego unchained from reason and limits, acting with the malevolent logic of the cancer cell.
A wetiko-free psyche has woke up to the existence of the wetiko pathogen. Turned onto wetiko's nonlocal and shape-shifting nature, both as it plays out in the world and within ourselves, we become aware of the very real tendency within ourselves of self-decepcion, on how we all have the potential to fool ourselves via the creative power of our own mind. This realization of our potential susceptibility to self-deception, which could lead to unwittingly becoming instruments for the devil of wetiko to act itself out through us, serves as a psychihc immunization, inculcating a true humility that safeguards against evil. Everyone, including ourselves, has the potentiality for falling into —and acting out— the unconscious. Because of our awareness of the possibility of pulling the wool over our own eyes, a relatively wetiko-free person cultivates on a daily basis the practice of mindfulness, which serves as a guardian of the gates of our psyche. In addition, to use religious terminology, because we are aware of our potential weakness and yetzer ha-ra (Hebrew for the "evil inclination" within us), we develop a relationship with and rely upon a "higher power" beyond our own limited ego, whether we call it God, the Self, our daemon, our true nature, or whichever of the thousands of names by which it is called. This is very different from when we are afflicted with wetiko, as we are then unconsciously identified with this higher power, which is the very stance which allows us to get away with murder.