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and the Wanton Wiccan Woman
by Brother Bob Larson
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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.
Excerpt from:
UFOs and the Alien Agenda
Back to Brother Whitley's Main Page
1997 by Bob Larson
Thomas Nelson Publishers
ISBN 0-7852-7182-1
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