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 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).
[full citation needed] 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 Nuit, the Thelemic personification of the infinite and boundless expanse of the universe, through the ecstatic destruction of the ego-self.
In the A∴A∴ system of attainment, after the adept has achieved the Knowledge and Conversation with their Holy Guardian Angel, they then must cross the great Abyss, where they meet Choronzon, who will tempt them to hold on to their subjective self and become trapped in their realm of illusion.
To escape the Abyss, the adept gives up their deepest sense of earthly identity, in the symbolic gesture of pouring out their blood into the Cup of Babalon.
The adept then becomes as a Babe in the Womb of Babalon—impregnated by Pan—and their lifeless Self becomes as a pile of dust, taking rest in the City of the Pyramids, which lies under the Night of Pan.
He explains in his 1938 book Little Essays Toward Truth: The truly magical operations of Love are therefore the Trances, more especially those of Understanding; as will readily have been appreciated by those who have made a careful Qabalistic study of the nature of Binah.