In another time, another place, an alicorn Princess sent her faithful student a final test– an unfinished spell by the greatest unicorn mage in Equestrian history. After a near-disastrous first effort, the student finally solved the riddle of the spell, completed it, and was transformed (as her mentor had planned) into an alicorn princess.

This is not that time and place.

In this time and place, when Twilight received a certain notebook by a certain Starswirl the Bearded from a certain Princess, she actually had half a clue as to what she was doing the FIRST time…

The canon version seemed to be more about fulfilling one pony’s destiny…which made it seem like the spell was about exploiting five other ponies to ascend oneself. Starswirl, I suspect, was a jerkass.