Night of Pan

Within the system of Thelema, the Night of Pan, or N.O.X., is a mystical state that represents the stage of ego-death in the process of spiritual attainment.

The playful and lecherous Pan is the Greek god of nature, lust, and the masculine generative power. The Greek word Pan also translates as All, and so he is “a symbol of the Universal, a personification of Nature; both Pangenetor, "all-begetter," and Panphage, "all-devourer" (Sabazius, 1995). Therefore, Pan is both the giver and the taker of life, and his Night is that time of symbolic death where the adept experiences unification with the All through the ecstatic destruction of the ego-self. In a more general sense, it is the state where one transcends all limitations and experiences oneness with the universe.

In the A.'.A.'. system of attainment, after the adept has achieved the Knowledge and Conversation with his Holy Guardian Angel, he then must cross the great Abyss, where he meets Choronzon, who will tempt him to hold on to his subjective self and become trapped in his realm of illusion. To escape the Abyss, the adept gives up his deepest sense of earthly identity, in the symbolic gesture of pouring out his blood into the Cup of Babalon. The adept then becomes as a Babe in the Womb of Babalon—impregnated by Pan—and his lifeless Self becomes as a pile of dust, taking rest in the City of the Pyramids, which lies under the Night of Pan. This is why it is called Night—it represents the lightless Womb, and also the time before the dawning of the new Sun (or rather, the new Self). He then waits in this sublime state until he is ready to move on to the next stage, and become “born” again from the Great Mother of Babalon, begotten by Pan.

Aleister Crowley identifies this process as one of Love. He explains in Little Essays Towards Truth:

It is also described in the mystical text Liber VII:

Finally, Crowley writes of the Night of Pan in his The Book of Lies, in the chapter "Sabbath of the Goat":

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