“For Strieber, in any case, what the visitors are probably about is not invasion, but a profound and sufficiently gradual change in our worldview and our souls”—Jeffrey Kripal
Herein we continue, from part 1, part 2, considering Whitley Strieber who has been the poster child for UFO and alien related subjects of decades just as much as the grey/gray alien has been the poster child for the same. We will consider statements about Strieber made by his acquaintance the self-professed possessed professor Jeffrey Kripal’s book Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal (a book which I reviewed here).
It is interesting that Kripal admits to be possessed by the Hindu goddess Kali. Likewise, Strieber has undergone the same basic experience with another goddess.
One of the most well-known and influential depictions of an alien is that of the gray/grey on the cover of Strieber’s book Communion. It bears an amazing likeness to another (in)famous illustration; what of LAM by Aleister Crowley.
Within Strieber’s tale this being is a female whom he describes as being “spider-like.” He has also noted that after his initial experience with visitors such as she, he felt “a state of extreme terror and excitement” and this “somehow involved a provocative, even devastating, female figure.” Also, “Strieber often compares the old bald gray goddess who could both inspire and sexually arouse him to a bug, and, later in his work, to a spider” (p. 311).
And he has much more to say about her such as that related by Kripal (p. 310) as he notes that Strieber described “the nonhuman woman as old and bald with bulging eyes, floppy lips, and yellow-brown skin”:
“Strieber confesses that he does not know if the being is even a woman, and yet he continues to call her a woman, sometimes, not always, even capitalizing her presence as ‘Her.’ A bit later in the book, now back in his cabin, he reflects before the fireplace on his hypnosis session and the memories of this female presence that the session called up in him. Seven hymnlike pages follow.
She appears, staring at him with those astonishing eyes: ‘Sitting before me was the most astonishing being I have ever seen in my life, made the more astonishing by the fact that I knew her. I say her, but I don’t know why. To me this is a woman, perhaps because her movements are so graceful, perhaps because she has created states of sexual arousal in me….She had those amazing, electrifying eyes…the huge, staring eyes of the old gods.’”
Thus, already we have the manifestation of a non-human being, perceived as female, about whom Strieber writes hymn-like pages referring, having the term her generally capitalized (as is often done in referring to God and Jesus) and she starred like the old gods.
This is theme upon which Kripal focuses as, he too, was taken with Kali’s large bug eyes (which, he notes, also are mimicked in Spiderman; recall that the visitor is “spider like”):
“Strieber wonders whether there are any connections between his experiences ‘and the mystic walk of the shaman, or the night ride of the witch.’ There are. The owl, he notes, was the personal symbol of the Greek goddess of wisdom, Athena. The owl’s Latin designation, moreover, as strix is also related to later European words for ‘witch…Even further back. Strieber will associate the owl with the wisdom of Ishtar, the ancient Mesopotamian ‘Eye-Goddess’ with the huge, staring eyes. He wonders out loud about what Ishtar really looked like, and if these ancient gods and goddesses were not similar to the semidivine beings imagined by the very modern visionaries who have formed the contactee cults.”
And this all comes to a point as Kripal continues:
“It is at this point that Strieber traces the origins of the alien and the UFO back not to contemporary pulp fiction, but into the furthest reaches of the history of religions, complete with possible memories of a past life (or lives); that is, in my own terms now…‘The closest thing I have been able to find to an unadorned image of these beings is not from some modern science-fiction movie, it is rather the age-old, glaring face of Ishtar. Paint her eyes entirely black, remove her hair, and there is my image as it hangs before me now in my mind’s eye, the ancient and terrible one, the bringer of wisdom, the ruthless questioner. Do my memories come from my own life, or from other lives lived long.’”
That “Strieber traces the origins of the alien and the UFO back…into the furthest reaches of the history of religions” is very telling as the very same demons who disguised themselves as ancient gods and goddesses may very well be doing the same today but in the guise of aliens instead.
Note the very telling statement in p. 300:
“It is as if the visitors. Strieber suggests, have decided that the U.S. government (which, since the late 1940s, has treated them as targets to shoot down), our religious institutions (which, with precious few exceptions [including Strieber’s own initial identification], have treated them as ‘demons’), and our media (which has chosen, with the professional scoffers, a strategy of public ridicule) are more or less incompetent.
In such a situation, Strieber speculates, direct one-on-one intervention would become a reasonable strategy to effect specieswide change. This is why, Strieber suggests, the visitors quickly ceased to rely exclusively on their, theatre in the sky, and began to interact with the human unconscious via the deposits of dream, myth, and out-of-body experience.
Put in my own terms, the visitors (which, again, may be us) are ignoring our left-brain reason and working instead on our right-brain mythmaking, that is, on our Super-Story. They are not, convincing, us. They are rewriting and retelling us.”
Well, both Kripal and Strieber had experiences with goddesses with whom they had sexual experiences and who rewrote them (Kripal claims to have devoted all of his works subsequent to his possession to her will…and he is a college professor, by the way).
Furthermore, Kripal writes (pp. 304-305):
“I am also, frankly, drawn to his land my own Roman Catholicism. [Strieber’s book] Communion, after all, can be read as a most unusual and most original Roman Catholic mystical text. His major abduction occurred just after Christmas, and there is no more Catholic a title than Communion. But if it is a Catholic mystical text, it is one that turns the orthodox sexual structures of traditional Roman Catholic mysticism on their head.
How? Through an erotically charged communion with an alien ‘Her.’ Remarkably, there is no Christ as bridegroom of the feminized soul here, which is precisely what, one would expect in a traditional Catholic mystical work. Nor is there a Blessed Virgin Mary, whose blessedness resides primarily in her immaculately white virginity.
But there is, as we shall soon see, an Ishtar and a long history of sacred sex with subtle beings, be they fairies, elves, or alien visitors.
It is this deep (hetero) sexual structure. I want to suggest, that constitutes Whitley Strieber’s deepest heresy and his most original spiritual move. It is also, I suspect, why he originally turned to the ancient pre-Christian world of Mesopotamian religion, and to Asia, to find precedents for his remarkable experiences. There is, after all, no divine feminine in Catholicism with whom a male mystic can unite. None. Where else could he turn, then?”
Well, within Catholicism there may not be any sacred sexual union with Mary but there most certainly is a divine feminine in Catholicism with whom a male mystic can unite; the Catholic Mary. The real, historical and biblical Mary is not the Catholic Mary; the former was a natural born humble servant of YHVH who recognized her need for salvation and the latter was born immaculate, was sinless her entire life, was assumed into heaven, can hear prayers, grants petitions, dispenses graces, etc. and, most importantly is the Queen of Heaven.
Queen of Heaven is an Old Testament and historical term for an abominable idol. Essentially, Catholicism has turned Mary into a goddess and likely got influenced to do so via a long history of goddesses whose name is basically changed throughout history (see the video here). This time around she is celibate but, well, then again, largely, her priests are not so; there is that to consider. For more on all of these points, and more, see:
Mary in Roman Catholicism, part 14 – Queen of Heaven?
Lastly, it may be of interest to note that “Strieber suggests, the visitors…interact with the human unconscious via…out-of-body experience.” Well, it just so happens, as long as we are talking about correlations between alien/visitors and gods/goddesses: according to the Qur’an, Allah essentially abducts us while we sleep as per Surah 39:42,
“It is Allah that takes the ‘Nafs’ (of men) at death [nafs is the self, psyche, ego or soul]; and those that die not (He takes) during their sleep: those on whom He has passed the decree of death, He keeps back (from returning to life), but the rest He sends (to their bodies) for a term appointed. Verily in this are Signs for those who reflect.”
In the next segment we will consider just what Strieber and the visitors have to do with Zen Buddhism, Chinese Taoism, Indo-Tibetan Tantra, the face of Mars, the Egyptian god Horus and much more.