The final and most difficult (and really the only) trial of the magician is the Trial of Wills. Where he must learn to reject himself completely, including all of the knowledge he has acquired in the years of his apprenticeship in one fell swoop. Though he himself is the direct result of his past-learnt wisdoms, and the living proof of their knowing, he must teach himself the final object of magic - through willingly foregoing and forgetting everything he knows. To let go, through personal choice, of all systems, formulas and formal references by his own volition. Only through this process can the magician cease the mere practice of magic and begin to directly embody and become a symptom of the magical itself. The magician must be brought to the understanding, through this process of self-illumination, that the final lesson of magic is that magic, in and of itself, is not required. More precisely, that the practice of magic is not required - but rather the fine-tuning of the material, mental and spiritual densities (and their union through harmonization) is that which exhibits the qualities of the magical and the miraculous, regardless of effort or personal input - once they are amply integrated and embodied within the individual himself. The practice of magic, therefore, is not a continuous, monotonous and repetitive process, but rather an arduous and meticulous process of becoming. The Great Work is not one of becoming aware. It is one of simply becoming. That which is separate (knowing) from the knower only implies that it is yet to be integrated within the knower's being, therefore it is not, by any factual truth, truly known. The true and final essence of knowing is embodiment - through achieving to become the result of that which we have come to know over our lifetimes - to become the knowing itself, as the knowing becomes integrated into the channel-stream that are our energetic fields. Once the magician is able to achieve this state of non-separation with knowledge, utilizing the principle of unity and oneness (which is ever-present in all things), he will have inherited through it divine vision and higher intuition. The paradoxical function and purpose of learning the name of each planet, the perfect and delicate patterns and movements of the celestial bodies, of any and all exceptional scholarship - is to, ultimately, forget. And not to walk the pathways of life as a simple keeper of facts, carrying the burden of the memory of their outward forms and symbolic expressions... But to traverse life as the knower who embodies the wisdom of knowing itself. To become that which is derived from having known many things. To walk the earthly planes with the confidence and surety of one who has known the secret names of each and every star. It is through this state of willful forgetfulness that the magician imparts unto himself a mystical and miraculous halo. And the ability to cast and exert a most impeccable and sacred aura. He himself, in this perfected state of being, becomes living proof of having tasted the sap of the higher divinities. No longer the practitioner of the mystical - but its bearer. The glorious end-result of having known many things, yet unburdened from the weight of their knowing. ![[98073E67-1703-4E90-95D7-E1A023161D44.jpeg]] "I AM"