When people think of The Neverending Story, they often remember a childhood fantasy, a flying dragon, a crumbling world, and a lonely boy reading a mysterious book. But beneath its surface, the tale reveals something far deeper. It is not just a story for children. It is a symbolic journey that mirrors the inner path of the magician, the seeker, the one who dares to look inward and reshape reality through the power of imagination, will, and love.
This isn’t just a fairy tale. It’s a grimoire in disguise.
The Boy Outside the World
The story begins not in Fantasia, but in a gray, ordinary world. Bastian, a shy, grieving boy, lives under the weight of loss and invisibility. He is mocked, dismissed, and unseen. For many, this stage is all too familiar. It is the moment before the path begins, the time when something feels missing but we do not yet know what we’re looking for. In the language of magick, this is the inertia before initiation, the silence before the first ritual is ever performed.1
This mundane world mirrors the condition described in alchemical texts as the nigredo, or black phase, the darkness before the transformation begins. The initiate feels a call but does not yet know the nature of what is calling. Bastian’s grief and isolation serve as the catalyst. Like many who approach the occult arts, his journey begins not in joy but in suffering. This suffering carves a space in the soul that becomes the womb of the Work.
In alchemical and esoteric traditions, nigredo is often described as the initial stage in the transformative process of spiritual development. The term, Latin for “blackness,” symbolizes the phase of dissolution, decay, and inner darkness that precedes renewal and rebirth. It is commonly referred to as the “dark night of the soul,” a period marked by confusion, despair, and the breakdown of old patterns and illusions.
Psychologically, nigredo represents the encounter with the shadow self, the parts of our unconscious mind and personality that we have repressed or denied. This confrontation can be deeply unsettling because it forces the seeker to face their fears, doubts, guilt, and unresolved pain. It is a necessary purification process, stripping away false identities and ego-driven attachments to reveal the raw material of the true self.
In the context of the magician’s journey, nigredo often manifests as a profound sense of loss or alienation, a “dark night” when the old worldview crumbles and the initiate feels lost or invisible, much like Bastian at the beginning of The Neverending Story. This phase is crucial because it creates the fertile void in which new growth becomes possible. Without descending into darkness, the light of insight and spiritual awakening cannot be truly appreciated or integrated.
Understanding nigredo as an essential and inevitable step helps practitioners embrace hardship and uncertainty as part of their spiritual path. It is not failure or punishment, but a profound initiation into deeper self-awareness. The darkness is both an ending and a beginning, a necessary passage through which the magician is tested and refined before emerging stronger and more whole.
Bastian escapes into a book, into The Neverending Story. But what he doesn’t realize is that he isn’t reading a story, he’s entering it. This, too, is familiar to the magician. The first time we read a magical text or perform a banishing ritual, we may think we’re play-acting. But the current begins to pull us in. We are no longer observers. We become participants in the inner world. Magick starts to respond.2
Fantasia and the Astral World
Fantasia, the realm within the book, is a world made of human imagination. It is vast, strange, and fragile. The Nothing is devouring it, not a monster, but a force of forgetting, hopelessness, and meaninglessness. In magical terms, Fantasia is the astral realm, the inner symbolic universe shaped by consciousness. It lives as long as we dream, create, and believe.3
As magicians know, the astral is not a metaphor. It is a liminal space of real work, inhabited by real forces, even if those forces are interior. Fantasia is filled with living symbols, creatures that represent aspects of the psyche, the collective unconscious, and the forces of nature and story.
The magician works with these same forces. Sigils, spirits, symbols, and rituals all draw on the imaginative realm. When we perform magick, we act in Fantasia. We engage the world behind the world. And we see, just like in the story, that imagination is not pretend. It is a force. It shapes not only our dreams, but our beliefs, our behavior, and ultimately our experience of reality.4
When the Nothing eats away at Fantasia, it is no different than when doubt, despair, or materialism eat away at our inner fire. The magician, like Atreyu, must ride straight into that destruction, trusting not in comfort, but in courage and purpose.
The Nothing as a Metaphor for Inner Void and Spiritual Erosion
In The Neverending Story, The Nothing is a creeping force of annihilation that devours Fantasia, the realm of imagination and possibility. It is not portrayed as a tangible villain but as an absence, an emptiness that erases meaning, memory, and hope. This makes The Nothing a powerful metaphor for the inner void that every magician, mystic, must confront on their journey.
Spiritually, The Nothing represents the corrosive effects of doubt, despair, and materialism on the soul’s vitality. When a person loses faith in themselves, their vision, or the greater mysteries they seek to engage, the inner world begins to collapse. The rich spiritual experience that once sustained their journey unravels, leaving a bleak emptiness in its place.
This erosion is especially dangerous for the magician because magick depends fundamentally on the power of belief and imaginative engagement. The active Will fuels the astral realm, and when The Nothing spreads, it silences that Will, stifling creativity and spiritual momentum. In practical terms, it can feel like spiritual burnout, cynicism, or being trapped in a mundane existence that seems devoid of meaning.
Materialism, the excessive focus on physical, external realities at the expense of inner life, plays a significant role in feeding The Nothing. When the world is reduced solely to measurable, tangible things, the mystical dimensions shrink or vanish. The Nothing grows stronger as the sacred is forgotten, and with it, the magician’s connection to higher purpose dims.
Yet, the story of Atreyu teaches us the path through this annihilating void. The magician must face The Nothing directly, not retreat from it. This requires courage because The Nothing offers no comfort, no easy answers, only an abyss of loss. The magician’s task is to ride into the heart of this emptiness, holding fast to purpose and the conviction that something beyond destruction endures.
This act is itself a magical operation, an act of will that reclaims agency amid dissolution. By confronting The Nothing, the magician refuses to be erased or defined by loss. Instead, they awaken new possibilities, rekindle the inner fire, and begin the process of creation anew. This mirrors the core of many spiritual teachings, that true transformation arises from facing death and despair, emerging renewed on the other side.
In essence, The Nothing is not just external destruction but the existential challenge every seeker must overcome. It is a test of faith in the unseen, a confrontation with the void within. Only by meeting it head-on can the magician restore Fantasia, and by extension, their own soul, to vibrant life.
Atreyu and the Inner Warrior
Atreyu, the boy hero in the story, is sent to find a cure for the dying Childlike Empress. He journeys through dangerous landscapes, each one representing a trial. These are the same initiatory gates the magician must pass through fear, temptation, despair, and the unknown.5
In many ways, Atreyu is Bastian’s magical double, the spiritual body that takes action while the everyday self watches and waits. This duality reflects the doctrine of the Body of Light or Magical Personality, emphasized in Thelemic and Golden Dawn practices. The magician must develop a subtle body capable of navigating the inner worlds, often symbolized as the hero of an inner myth.
Atreyu is the part of the self that steps forward when Will awakens. He represents the disciplined seeker. He is the one who acts, who moves into danger without knowing how the story will end. When we begin magical work, we are Atreyu. We take on the burden of questing, of asking questions most are afraid to ask.
And like Atreyu, we are tested. We lose. We fail. We face ourselves in the Mirror Gate, which shows “the true self,” often to our horror. At this moment, the magical path demands truth. Not fantasy, not ego, but honesty. This is the work of the magician, not to control the world, but to confront the self.6
The Childlike Empress and the Higher Self
The Childlike Empress is not a ruler in the usual sense. She does not command armies or solve problems. She is Fantasia. She is the soul of the world. When she grows sick, the world begins to fall apart. In mystical terms, she is the Higher Self, the divine spark that holds our individual myth together.7
Her silence and stillness are central. She does not direct the story, she is the story’s center. She represents that which cannot be acted upon, only recognized. Many esoteric systems describe this aspect of the soul: the Atman in Vedanta, the Holy Guardian Angel in Thelema, or the daimon of Neoplatonism. To know this Self is to restore the integrity of the world around you.
Bastian cannot meet her until he crosses the threshold. Until he speaks her name, she remains unreachable. This is a profound truth for the magician. The Higher Self does not impose. It waits. It calls softly. It asks us to choose it. Only when we claim that part of ourselves, give it a name, a voice, a reality, does it reveal itself.8
When Bastian calls her by name, reality cracks open. This is initiation in its purest form. The magician, having faced despair, finally accepts the sacred role. Bastian, once a hidden boy, now becomes a creator. He is no longer reading the story. He is writing it.
Creation Through Will and Word
At the end of the tale, Bastian is handed a single grain of sand, all that remains of Fantasia. He is told that by speaking, he can rebuild it. What he imagines, becomes. This is not fantasy. This is magick.
This moment mirrors the Thelemic understanding of the True Will. Once the magician knows who they are, they are not bound by the limits of the world around them. They become co-creators of reality. Their words carry power because they speak from the center of self-knowledge. Not from ego, but from alignment with something deeper.9
The connection between word and creation runs throughout magical traditions. From the Logos of Hermeticism, to the Sepher Yetzirah’s account of letters forming reality, to the Hindu Vak concept of divine speech, the power of spoken intention is seen as generative. Bastian’s world arises from speech because his Will is now unified with his imagination and his heart. This is the fruit of initiation.
This is why the magical path requires so much preparation. If you create from illusion, your creations collapse. But if you create from Will, from love under Will, what you build endures.
The Spiral of Becoming: Myth, Magick, and the Self in The Neverending Story
The reason The Neverending Story resonates so deeply is because it is a ritual in narrative form. It calls the reader inward. It mirrors their doubts and dreams. It teaches that imagination is sacred, that stories are real, and that every seeker must eventually become the author of their own myth.
For the magician, this is the whole path. We begin by reading the book. We end by writing it. We begin by watching. We end by doing. The journey does not finish. It transforms. Every magical operation, every act of invocation or initiation, moves the magician further along the spiral of self-becoming.
The story never ends because the magician is always becoming.
Footnotes
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Israel Regardie, The Tree of Life (Llewellyn Publications, 2008), p. 15.
Regardie describes the initial phase of spiritual awakening as one marked by confusion and psychic inertia. This state corresponds to the nigredo in alchemy, symbolizing the necessary darkness and dissolution before transformation can begin. ↩︎ -
Aleister Crowley, Liber O vel Manus et Sagittae, in The Equinox, Vol. I, No. 8 (1911), reprinted in The Equinox: Volume III, edited by Hymenaeus Beta (Weiser Books, 1990), p. 32.
Crowley emphasizes ritual practice as the gateway that moves a practitioner from intellectual curiosity to active participation in the magical currents underlying reality. ↩︎ -
Dion Fortune, The Mystical Qabalah (Rider, 1991 edition), p. 40.
Fortune explains the astral plane as an actual realm shaped by thought and emotion, inhabited by psychic energies and entities supporting the idea that Fantasia represents this mutable, symbolic space. ↩︎ -
Aleister Crowley, Magick Without Tears, Letter VII, in Magick Without Tears (Weiser Books, 1990), p. 72.
Crowley affirms imagination as the essential key to all magical operations, underscoring that creative visualization and symbolic action affect reality on multiple levels. ↩︎ -
Israel Regardie, The Golden Dawn (Llewellyn Publications, 1991), p. 125; Franz Bardon, Initiation Into Hermetics (Magical Press, 2001), p. 80.
Both texts detail initiatory trials and stages the magician must face, including encounters with fear, temptation, and the unknown, paralleling Atreyu’s journey. ↩︎ -
Carl Jung, The Archetypes and The Collective Unconscious (Princeton University Press, 1981), p. 98.
Jung’s concept of the shadow and confrontation with the true self resonates with the Mirror Gate episode, highlighting the necessity of integrating unconscious aspects for wholeness. ↩︎ -
Edward Edinger, Ego and Archetype (Shambhala Publications, 1992), p. 83.
Edinger explores the Self archetype as the center of psychic totality a fitting parallel to the Childlike Empress as the soul of Fantasia, representing divine unity within. ↩︎ -
E.A. Wallis Budge (trans.), The Egyptian Book of the Dead (Dover Publications, 1967), p. 45; Hans Dieter Betz (ed.), The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation (University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 110; Aleister Crowley, Liber Samekh, in The Equinox, Vol. I, No. 8 (1911), reprinted in The Equinox: Volume III (Weiser Books, 1990), p. 10.
These sources show the power of naming in magic by naming a spirit or aspect of self, the magician establishes connection and authority, crucial for invoking the Higher Self. ↩︎ - Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law (Liber AL vel Legis), in The Equinox, Vol. I, No. 6 (1913), reprinted in The Equinox: Volume I (Weiser Books, 1990), pp. 50–51. Crowley teaches that the True Will is central to magical creation, and that words, when aligned with will, manifest reality echoing Bastian’s creative speech rebuilding Fantasia. ↩︎
