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
by Bob Larson

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