Yes, it's true: I first met Old Hornie in the woods when I was 16.

And no, I'm not going to tell you about it.

I suspect that many (if not most) of us have experienced something like this: the Encounter that changes everything that comes after.

You might think that more of us would talk about these Meetings. In a community like the pagan community, which lacks (for the most part) central accreditation, such narratives would serve to establish credibility.

But in my experience, people mostly don't want to talk about these things. A holy silence surrounds them. For me, that unwillingness to talk is precisely one of the hallmarks of authentic encounter.

Those who have had such experiences can testify that these are some of the most intimate moments that any life can have. They're much like sex. Most of us don't go on and on about our most intimate sexual experiences, either.

And that's not just coyness. Such things are, in many ways, ineffable. If describable at all, the naked experience is approachable only clothed in metaphor.

It happened. It changed me forever. Really, what can you say?

That's the way it is with Mysteries. There are the apórrhêta, the things you don't tell; and the árrhêta, the things you can't tell.

In my youth, I met Himself in the woods; nor was I the first. So too have many, many, down the years.

The stories live in holy silence.

To read them, only look into our eyes.

Baroness Kessler: I have more than 10,000 volumes in my collection, all of them dealing with just one subject: the Devil.

Corso: Why the Devil?

Baroness: I saw him one day. I was 14 years old, and I saw him in the garden justly as plainly as I see you now. It was love at first sight.

Corso: You know, three hundred years ago, you'd have been burned at the stake for saying something like that.

Baroness: Three hundred years ago, I wouldn't have said it!

Roman Polanski, The Ninth Gate (1999)