Every individual and organization which watches the freakish Religious
Reigh knows who Bob Larson is, what he advocates, and what his fraud-ridden
past has been. Most of us fondly recall the time when on one of his
call-in shows he pretended to put his "Satan" god (a ringer he
had hired to call into the show) on hold while going to a commercial break.
<chuckle> And no, he's serious. That episode was a riot because
his "Satan" god was "possessing" the caller and was
threatening to kill him -- and valliant Bob Larson, intrepid schollar and
fearless lunatic that he is -- was there to "save" him.
It seems that Christianity is comprised almost entirely of lunatics
these days, huh?
Oh: If you don't know who the Strieber guy is, as mentioned, he's the nut
who experienced hypnopompic hallucinations one night and contrived what
was later to become the "alien abduction" craze which is all the
rage among uneducated nuts these days.
This clown knows zero about his own religion, leave alone the
life-affirming religions he's been programmed to unthinkingly hate. He
wants to pretend that all life-affirming religions -- because they're
anti-thema to his cult's ideologies -- are some how connected with
his "Satan" god. But then we're talking about a guy who is about
as insane as Marian "Pat" ROBert$on is so anything his twisted
imagination comes up with is bound to be pretty freakish. - flr.
Whitley and the Wanton Wiccan Woman
My personal confrontation with the occult powers behind both witchcraft
and UFOs happened during the airing of an Oprah television show on which
I appeared. I was on the set with an unlikely assortment of guests.
Seated to my far right was Laurie Cabot, the official witch of Salem,
Massachusetts. To her left, right next to me, was fiction writer Whitley
Strieber, author of the book about alien abduction, Communion.
Cabot looked like a witch, with dyed coal black hair and a long, flowing
black dress and cape. Her eyes were plastered with mascara. On her eyelids
she had painted strange black designs that spilled upward into her eyebrows.
A half dozen charms and amulets, with occult symbols, dangled around her
neck. Every finger of each hand sported one or more rings with odd emblems,
tokens of her involvement in the world of magic.
Cabot presented her usual defense of witchcraft. "We believe that God
exists in all things, in rocks, and stones, and trees, and within each one
of us," she told Oprah. "We practice meditation, healing, and balance, not
demons and the devil. We're all part of the god and goddess."
Whitley Strieber was dressed in a conservative gray business suit. With his
cropped hair, pallid complexion, and austere glasses he looked like a serious
accountant instead of a best-selling author. He smiled politely and
answered Oprah's questions about his latest novel.
When my turn came to speak to Oprah, I immediately condemned witchcraft as
the work of the devil, clearly denounced in the Bible as an abomination to
God.
Strieber instantly ganged up with Cabot to exonerate witchcraft and attack
me. When he argued in defense of the occult, I shot back to Oprah, "Read
the front page of Strieber's latest book. It's an apologetic for witchcraft.
He represents an ideology of Satan that wants people to end up in hell. I
want to know what witchcraft has ever done to benefit humanity, like build
a hospital."
"Witchcraft can't do that, because it's so small and innocent," Strieber
responded with a saccharine sound in his voice that mocked me. "I've learned
so much about real reverence from these people, more than I ever learned from
my Christian Catholic home. I admire Laurie Cabot because she has the
courage to be on this show."
"It's called publicity, not courage," I butted in. "Cabot is here to make
witchcraft look good. They need the publicity." I paused. "The real issue
is where we're going when we die."
Strieber was furious. He again interrupted me. "Witches are doing something
good, something wonderful," he insisted.
"Well, if we're going to talk about religion, let's find out what witches
really believe," I said to Oprah. "I want to know what the witchcraft sexual
ethic is, I want to know how they deal with the problem of suffering, how
they deal with the nature of eternity ...not all this warm and fuzzy
gobbledygook."
"What's your ethic? You tell us first!" Strieber said, running interference
for Cabot.
"Read the Ten Commandments," I shot back. "You're the one who is supposed
to be a good Catholic. You should know."
"What is it that you have against witches?" Oprah asked me.
"What matters is that there's an eternity, there's a heaven, there's a
hell ..."
"That's what you believe," Oprah said, as she challenged me before I
finished.
"The Bible teaches in Romans 1:20 that everyone is morally accountable
because the nature of God has been revealed through creation ..."
"That's your interpretation," Oprah insisted. By now I was beginning to
feel like it was not just two, but three against one.
"I want to defend Christianity, as a Catholic," Strieber chimed in. "It's
getting a bad rap. Christianity is about gentleness and acceptance. It's
not about being closed-minded and being afraid of witches!"
Oprah went to a quick break. At that moment, whatever decorum Cabot and
Strieber had maintained while the cameras were on was lost. The phony
smiles disappeared instantly. Both launched into a verbal attack on me.
Laurie Cabot leaned forward in her chair and fixed her intense, dark eyes
on me. She waved her hands furiously. Her long, ratted black hair flew
in every direction as she launched into a tirade. "Your bigoted, right-wing
brand of fundamentalism is what burned my ancestors at the stake ...It's
people like you who are the real danger to America. The hate you dish out
makes people persecute me just because I'm a witch!"
I glanced at Oprah. Even though she has consistently endorsed New Age
practices and has cozied up to the paranormal at every available chance,
her church background began to show through. I sensed she felt
uncomfortable for me. She stood about thirty feet away with her arms
folded, holding her cordless microphone in one hand. She hesitantly took
a step toward the stage to intervene, but not in time. Whitley Strieber
picked up where Cabot left off.
Strieber's eyes dilated and the veins on his neck stood out. Beads of
perspiration formed on his brow. He screamed at me," How dare you attack
Laurie and me. Your (expletive deleted) bigotry is what's really evil.
I know that witchcraft is good, and you have no right to say it is satanic."
Unlike many other opponents of Christianity whom I have debated, Strieber
could not tolerate any departure from his viewpoint. His rigid body and
flinching countenance revealed his utter need for control. Now he became
so animated that Oprah headed toward the stage to intervene in what looked
like an exchange that might come to blows. Just as Strieber got out of his
chair and started toward me, the television floor director signaled the
return from the commercial break.
Oprah seemed relieved that she didn't have to intervene since the show was
back on the air. Strieber calmed down somewhat but continued to glare at
me out the corner of his eye whenever he sensed I was looking his way. What
came from his lips, and his spirit, was beyond human indignation.
The format of Oprah's show did not permit me to reveal the depth of
Strieber's devotion to the occult. I wanted everyone to know that Strieber
was an unashamed advocate of the demonic supernatural, and had some strange
ideas about extraterrestrials.
Strieber told People magazine, "I'm 80 percent sure that [UFOs] are visitors
from another aspect of reality, not necessarily from another planet."
Strieber's emphatic views have developed a cult-like following. Thousands
of people who read his book met in what they called Communion groups to
channel spirits and discuss their abduction experiences.
Though he was on Oprah to promote one of his other fictional works, Whitley
Strieber's real fame has come from his book Communion, which describes his
alien encounters. He claims that on September 26, 1985, he was awakened in
his upstate New York cabin to find a strange being at the bedroom doorway.
Strieber says he then blacked out and later found himself in a small room,
surrounded by tiny humanoids. One of the creatures inserted a hair-thin
needle into his brain, probing and poking. Finally, he was transported back
into the bedroom where his wife still slept peacefully.
Afterward, Dr. Donald E Kline, Director of Research for the New York State
Psychiatric Institute, took Strieber through a series of hypnosis sessions,
in which he recalled his abduction in lavish detail. Strieber claims that
he still gets occasional visits from these unidentified humanoids.
Whom or what did Strieber meet? He isn't sure, but chalks the identity up
to "an elaborate encounter with intelligent non- human beings ... goblins
or demons or visitors."
Why did it happen? Again Strieber is uncertain. He only knows that "what
is happening is that visitors are actually here, or that the human mind is
creating something that, incredibly, is close to a physical reality ... not
presently understood by science."
Whom might these visitors be? They are beings with "eyes that seem to stare
into the deepest core of being. And those eyes are asking for something,
perhaps even demanding it ... it seems to me that it seeks the very depth
of the soul; it seeks communion "
Having faced Strieber eyeball-to-eyeball, I have no doubts about the
identity of those beings. Is it coincidental that he so vehemently
vindicates witchcraft? Without any intimidation on my part, why was he
so enraged by my presence on Oprah? His description of being in the
presence of extraterrestrials has a fiendish quality. "I felt I was under
the exact and detailed control of whomever had me," Strieber wrote in
Communion. I believe the beings who abducted him were the demons he
suggested they might be, and their hatred of God influenced his conduct
on the Oprah show.
[eof]
Now when I read this article I wondered if the author ever stopped for a
minute to realize he was the one to trigger and escalate the emotional
intensity with his opening commentary....
"When my turn came to speak to Oprah, I immediately condemned witchcraft
as the work of the devil, clearly denounced in the Bible as an abomination
to God."
Sounds like a showboat to me.
He may have valid points but he is not going to win any open ears with this
crash and burn style, not at least when no other panel members were using
this tactic prior to his outburst. Maybe he thought he was on Jerry Springer?
;-)
Cheers, Mike
Return to The Skeptic Tank's main Index page.
by Bob Larson
Commentary appended by Mike Pell, Sat 20 Dec 97 9:54:
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