Every culture has experienced cannibalism, headhunting and parasites. This intrusive painting is about those things but thankfully it’s all metaphorical. In this painting I use figures of speech to convey malignant narcissism and greedy tendencies as a psychic virus. While no specific group or person is targeted it is important to be aware of the dangers of being egocentric and that it puts everybody at risk.
An ancient parasite has been interfering with our optimum self moderating programing since the beginning of time. This is not an original idea and can be found as a theme through many Science fiction and horror stories. One specific example is The Mind Parasites by Colin Wilson worth checking out. However there are more real life examples. I found details in Sigmund Freud’s Totem and Taboo: Resemblances Between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics that offered a general outline on taboo as a psychic contagion.
Anyone who has violated a taboo becomes taboo himself because he possesses the dangerous quality of tempting others to follow his example: why should he be allowed to do what is forbidden to others? Thus he is truly contagious in that every example encourages imitation, and for that reason he himself must be shunned.
Freuds statement makes me think of the origin of the scapegoat and the spiritual cleanse that shares a polarity with transgressions of the community. An organized ritual allows a contamination of an object to later be sacrificed.
How did the Wendigo archetype institute and set in motion such a horrible malware on the consciousness of humanity?
First and foremost the Wendigo represents a defense against becoming selfish. An example not to follow. It is no one’s ambition to become cannibalistic or maladaptive but abrupt experience overwhelms an unactualized mind. This is usually caused by trauma experience. An experience by all accounts that leaves a brain feeling abandoned. With no one else around to understand. While left defenseless against the brains own intense fear, a sudden disconnection occurs.
By looking in a mirror day after day one moves more progressively towards a reduplicative hallucination. An elaborate state where one see themselves as an apparition. This double tells the vulnerable self a story about how much stronger and more valuable it is than the other. it tells the other self it is the reflection that is important. Across this imbalanced relationship the double forever feeds off of one traumatic moment. As a kind of psychic parasitic disease, the reflection commandeers the entire body while holding the suffering self hostage. This painful body tries to fight but not being fully rehabilitated to control it’s own operations, instead seeks to control other brains.
Robert A. Brightman an American anthropologist describes the Wendigo as
“The wendigo (/ˈwɛndɪɡoʊ/)(also wetiko) Ojibwa wintikö. Cree wihtiköw is a mythological man-eating creature or evil spirit from the folklore of the First Nations Algonquian tribes based in the northern forests of Nova Scotia, the East Coast of Canada, and Great Lakes Region of Canada and the United States. The wendigo is described as a monster with some characteristics of a human or as a spirit who has possessed a human being and made them become monstrous. Its influence is said to invoke acts of murder, insatiable greed, cannibalism and the cultural taboos against such behaviors”
From Brightman’s statement we get a profile of a very unrelenting and maladaptive personality who is controlled by a psychotic spirit whose strategy relates to a person in the same parasitic mode a protozoa relates to a host. There is an invisible influence.
At the very top of my painting is an example of the Woodland Style. Inside the face is a very filtered cosmogram that offers a limited preview of a Peyote ceremony I was invited too. I choose the Bidu and moon cipher to act on behalf of an meaningful experience. The full night ceremony continues to make a deep impression on me. This impression is similar to my discussion in Astrology and Cosmograms . I review the root Loa as comparable to a strong radio signal filled with intelligent information and the brain as land-based radio station. In the painting this Loa voice scrolls from the lips to a wireless phone. This sudden illumination is delivered by a lightening bolt brightening a picture tube with a whirling log message. The subliminal effects directly communicates with the Mooladhara Chakra, the chair where the Kundalini sits. At it’s immature stage the Mooladhara is completely egotistical, security driven and possessive. These traits when pressed by scarcity and megalomania create a Wendigo.
Mitchell Pluto 