APRIL 29, 2018

It was a full moon and I had just recently began having a serious interest in magic practition. So I decided to go explore this island nearby my home where many people have told stories of having mystical or paranormal experiences.

I had never been there before, so I went about an hour before sunset to get acquainted with the layout of the island. So I wouldn’t get lost when the sun went down. This was around 8pm. There were still a few people left on the island, people go there to fish or to ride their bikes or walk around the island. But as the sun went down people began to pack up and go home.

When the sun had finally set I did one final lap around the island to see if anyone was still there. Just to be aware of other people for safety reasons. There didn’t appear to be anyone left on the island besides me.

I was walking up the center path of the island from the entrance. There’s this semi circle field of waist high grass about 120 feet across surrounded by woods on the right hand side of the path I was walking. The moon was huge in the sky above the field, it was definitely the best view of it on the whole island. I just stood and stared at the moon from the edge of the clearing for a little while. Soon movement in the tree line farthest from me, clear on the other end of the field, grabbed my attention.

There was a man standing just out of the moonlight at the edge of the field. Hidden partially by the darkness between the trees and by the tall grass. He was naked as far as I could see although his waist looked dark and almost fuzzy. I looked up to his face, he was staring directly at me and as I looked higher I could see that he had a full and huge rack of deer antlers sprouting from his head.

At first I was in complete shock of what I was looking at, then the strongest sense of fear I have ever experienced began to lay over me like a blanket. I was frozen in fear and could not move my body at all. Suddenly against my will I began walking towards him. I couldn’t stop, I had no control over my own body, as if he was compelling me to go to him. I had this overwhelming sense that if I went with him or if he was able to abduct me, that I would never return to the life I had known. I began to cry and summoned all of my willpower to turn away from him. Up until this point I had not been able to Avert his eyes.

I could only turn away for a second before he had control over me again. My head snapped around and I was moving toward him again. I was about halfway across the field to him when I once again was able to turn away. This time without a second thought I began to run, I ran for about 10 minutes until I made it to my car, got in, and locked the doors.

I sat there for a while giving myself a chance to calm down. I felt like I was safe from whatever had just happened, and that it wasn’t going to come after me. I then received a message from a friend of mine extending an invitation to join her and her coven for their full moon ritual. That night was the first time i had ever done ritual magic. And it was the first time I had ever done group magic. I always reference that night as the beginning of my magical practice.

I never stopped thinking about what happened that night. I did a ton of research and reached out to other local practitioners and my indigenous community to get some outside insight and opinions. I have come to the conclusion that it was the green man taking on the form of the celtic deity Cernunnos. The green man takes on many forms and I believe two of those forms are Pan and Cernunnos. The green man has roots with the fae and I consider him to be a fae deity. I’ve come to believe that this was a test, I have since had a few other interactions with the green man and all of them have been fruitful so I suppose I passed the test. I truly believe that I encountered a higher being that night, I felt true power coming from this entity and it terrified me. I now understand what prey animals feel when they are trapped under the eyes of a predator. This hasn’t been my only experience with something I consider to be a deity but it was my first.

Submitted by Lillie