Whitley
and the Wanton Wiccan Woman (Cabot, Laurie )
by Brother Bob Larson
Excerpt from:
UFOs and the Alien Agenda
1997 by Bob Larson
Thomas Nelson Publishers
ISBN 0-7852-7182-1
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.
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