Moloch Has the Wetiko Disease

I first heard of Moloch in my late 20s

when I read Allen Ginsberg's poem Howl.

The third stanza in Part II of that poem reads: 'Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men!'

Whatever, or whoever, Moloch was, I certainly understood to be frightening character. It wasn’t until much later in my life that I learnt more of Moloch, and indeed, the meaning of Howl itself.

Moloch is a judgmental and nasty diety, mentioned in Leviticus 18 where the Lord supposedly tells Moses that, 'you shall not let any of your descendants pass through the fires of Molech.' Moloch demanded child sacrifice by fire. 

Most often Moloch is understood to be a Canaanite god although some scholars claim that Moloch is a form of sacrificial practice. If Moloch is a practice then it is not known to which diety. Whether a god or a sacrificial practice, Moloch is something to be feared.

Images of Moloch began to become popular in the 18/19th centuries, depicted as a bull (or lion) headed creature with wings and arms outstretched over a fire on which children were placed and sacrificed.

John Milton, in his epic poem Paradise Lost, describes Moloch as a 'horrid king besmeared with blood of human sacrifice and parent's tears.'

Moloch the loveless! Indeed.

In Howl, as I later learned, Ginsberg casts Moloch as industrial civilization where poets, artists, radicals, jazz musicians, psychiatric patients, and other outcasts are sacrificed (like children.)

Since the 19th century Moloch has been used as a metaphor for social, economic, and military oppression. 

In this century Moloch is often cast as a metaphor for our current predicament. For example the best-selling author, sarah wilson, describes Moloch as an invisible "force" that 'arises in competitive scenarios that sees us (often unwittingly) give away or destroy what we hold dear in exchange for a short-term gain but that, ultimately, will leave us all categorically fucked.'

No matter whether we encounter Moloch in the Bible, in the poetry of Milton or Ginsberg, or in the words of sarah wilson, Moloch is an apt metaphor for the current intertwined complex crises we are experiencing. We could name this time of multiple crises a polycrisis, a metacrisis, a predicament, or simply as a right-royal mess. 

Collectively we are sacrificing what is dear to us for short-term gain, and often doing so without recognizing or understanding the dangers of doing so.

Moloch infected

For many centuries Moloch has been infected with the wetiko disease, although only recently has this been diagnosed by the indigenous peoples of Great Turtle Island who have known of the disease for many generations.

Jack Forbes (of Powhatan-Renape and Lenape descent) defines wetiko as 'the disease of cannibalism (mental and emotional as much as physical) without sacredness and with no respect for the cycle of life and death.'

Forbes went on to claim forthrightly that the disease was understood as being of an individual and sporadic nature, and 'not part of a system of cruelty.' He also recognized that not all Europeans show wetiko tendencies, but that the European culture is the major carrier of the disease.

Moloch has been requiring child sacrifice in the lands of the Bible and Europe for millenia. Moloch and his (unwitting) followers became infected with the wetiko disease many generations ago and now, as sarah wilson warns, is demanding the sacrifice of our world in a cannibalistic, wetiko infected, orgy of exploitation and destruction in the name of progress and uninhibited growth.

Can a more appropriate metaphor than Moloch infected with the wetiko disease be named to signify the social, environmental, and personal collapses we are witnessing?

Sadly, being able to name these does not mean that Moloch can be exiled nor that wetiko can be cured easily.

However, it is a start.