The Mask is Finally Removed From Bill Schnoebelen - Concluding Remarks

This is final part and conclusion taken from my long article, “Are Witches Dupes of Satan”, which I wrote as a response to a book published by my ex-high priest, Bill Schnoebelen. The book was entitled “Wicca; Satan’s Little White Lie,” and it has bedeviled the witchcraft community ever since it was first published by Chick publications. This is where I examine Bill’s real motives for writing his book. I reveal the real person behind the edifice - a person who is deeply flawed, troubled, and even mentally disturbed. This is a person that we should pity if it were not for the damage that he has wrought upon the occult community.

When I read Bill’s book, it became obvious that he was very bitter and even angry about his past failings as a Wiccan High Priest and occultist. He portrayed himself as a man who was betrayed and corrupted by the dark agencies within the Witch Cult. No matter how altruistic or righteous he behaved in his role as a spiritual elder, guide and teacher, he was bound to fail. He now believes that the true faith was lurking behind that failure, that God had brought him through the darkness, despair and the evil corruption of his Wiccan and Satanic adventure for the sole purpose of making him an instrument of persecution and accusation against the adherents of a threatening and pernicious creed, which even today is corrupting young people and leading them into the uncompromising embrace of the Devil. Bill’s message is very clear, if you’re a Witch and you aren’t a deliberate devotee of Satan, then you are merely the unwitting dupe of a terrible Satanic conspiracy. Bill’s Christian ministry specializes in bringing one time members of the craft back into the fold of the faithful. He and his wife have assisted hundreds of individuals to cope with their broken and destroyed lives, rebuilding them with the salvation, love and grace of Jesus Christ.

Of course, I myself have never met anyone who had ruined their lives and their families by being involved in an earth based religion. In fact, I would find it rather strange if such things happened. What Bill is saying is that people who get involved in Wicca or Neopaganism also become drug addicts and criminals in a cavernous underground of human suffering, malicious deeds and dark soulless activities, too horrible to even mention (even though he mentions them at every opportunity). Yet there is absolutely no proof that any of Bill’s accusations are true. In fact, most of what he relates in his book either didn’t occur or has been so exaggerated and distorted as to be barely recognizable. Bill is telling a very dramatic tale, one that Stephen King would surely envy. The truth is far more humbling, boring and sad. That tale is how one individual who was gifted with so many talents, failed at everything that he tried to accomplish. However, Bill’s path should be an object lesson to us all, so we can now discuss the fatal mistakes that destroyed his dream of a Wiccan Camelot.

Bill is very bitterly opposed to Witchcraft, Paganism, magick, and the host of New Age occult practices and beliefs, as well as the perennial philosophy itself. Bill has turned his back on the adventure of self-discovery and the revelation of his own divine and spiritual heritage - one that all of humanity shares. In fact, Bill has become the nemesis against all forms of liberality, whether it be the so-called liberal press or the liberal political establishment, which supports a social agenda of secular humanism as a means to protect individual rights and religious practices from government interdiction.

He identifies secular humanism as the lax and overly tolerant social malaise that allowed dangerous forms of liberality to be promoted, including Witchcraft and Neopaganism. Bill has taken it upon himself to be the guardian of the new moral force in our society, one that will over-turn the rot instigated by secular humanism. However, this is really a rejection of liberality based upon Bill’s personal, spiritual and moral bankruptcy. It’s a way to explain that failure in a manner that allows him to deny any responsibility (“the Devil made me do it!”).

Bill and Sharon were responsible for exploiting and hurting the people who followed them. Because of their corrupting influences, they actually caused a few of them to fall into ruin and self destruction. It took Bill’s former coven members years to shed the stigma and the bitterness of the fall. I know this to be true, for I was one of them. Bill, himself, also reaped some of the bitterness that he sowed. Perhaps that may have changed him if he had taken full responsibility for it all.

However, Bill responded to this fall from grace by seeking a quick solution, so he first sought out the Mormons. Then when that did not deliver him from the crushing demands of his own petty ego, he found the one path where he could enjoy the status of a superstar and cash in on all of his years of occult study and practice. The earth based spiritual traditions could not give Bill the respect he required nor support him in the kind of lavish life style that he would feel was due to someone of his lofty rank, so he switched his spiritual allegiances until he found an organization that gave him what he required in life. This was no dramatic conversion on the road to Damascus as Bill would like us to believe, but a purely calculated move to accomplish and fulfill his material ambitions.

Such notoriety as Bill has acquired has its costs, as a reformed spiritual pervert, the leaders in Bill’s adopted spiritual community will certainly keep him under scrutiny in case of any observable relapses. Bill will never be wholly trusted by his new partners, since his list of infamous crimes and practices makes him tainted in eyes of good Christians, who never wavered in their faith to the exceptional degree that Bill did. He will be a controversy and will never really be accepted by these people. This is because they believe that no matter how dramatic a conversion to the true faith one experiences, the crimes of the past must still be accounted for. There is no guarantee of complete forgiveness by the Lord, no matter how pious one is from the moment of conversion to the end of one’s life. This also has all of the characteristics of the life story of a traitor, a person who, for whatever reasons, has cashed in on his former allies. He is never wholly accepted by his new allies and he is despised by his own people. For the rest of his life, he is never trusted nor wholly believed by anyone. Such a life is a lonely one and it’s a good thing that Bill has his faithful wife Sharon to keep him company for the long years ahead.

The final lesson in the tragedy of the life of Bill Schnoebelen is one that is both profound and deep, one that requires a great deal of wisdom to understand. Perhaps if Bill had spent more time trying to understand the spiritual wisdom of his own path in Witchcraft, he would have matured past the point of his own egoic excesses. But it is more likely that Bill would never have learned this subtle point, even if he were still involved in Witchcraft today. Bill’s most egregious failing is that he mistakenly believed that in order to grow and become enlightened, he had to submit himself to the darkness, in other words, he had to abrogate his will and open himself to whatever dark influences moved him. Bill believed that this was the only way to master his spiritual path. Because there was no one around to show him his error or dispute this aspiration, Bill got to experience the full measure of bitterness, perversity, darkness and despair that such a foolhardy act ultimately achieves.

We are taught that when we practice magick and intense forms of occultism, we should never practice alone. That a person should be subjected to the judgement of his or her peer group and in this manner, avoid the pitfalls of ego obsession and the distortion and bias caused by one’s inherent imperfections. Through others, we learn to objectify our own spiritual process and keep it from falling prey to dark unconscious motivations and personal power trips. The greatest lesson in Bill’s fall is that we do not submit ourselves to darkness. We should always submit ourselves to the highest spiritual love and instead, master the darkness and translate its fear and ignorance into acceptance and insight. What is sacrificed when an occultist gains the subtle domain of nondual consciousness is the petty ego, its infantile needs and false idols of selfhood. These are the things that the true aspirant renounces, offering them up to the ultimate and unknowable spiritual truth.

Bill was never able to give up his egoic pursuits. Even now, he continues to build an empire for his empty and shallow self to occupy. He has failed the ultimate test of adepthood, and for him, there will be no further growth until he is ultimately humbled and experiences the long overdue death of his petty ego. I, for one, will not wait for that day, since I believe that it will be very long in coming, if it ever comes at all.

Frater Barrabbas