The Three Gates are the ways that we, practitioners, enter the Path of Transformation. It is how we gain the power to change our lives. Each Gate is an initial approach we might take to enter the greater spiritual world and discover the deeper self. I have discussed them elsewhere as the Priest, Magician, and Shaman; these are the three initial ways to begin training.

The Path of Transformation is the way of all magic and spirituality. In other words, these ways of entering apply just as much to a Christian mystic as they do to a Sun-and-Moon witch, a deep martial artist, or a sorcerer.

These three Gates are not distinguished by their everyday attributes, but by the relationship between the new practitioner and his own spirit. In other words, it is not the name that defines the category. These approaches are spontaneously occurring variations.

When it comes to talking about the realm of the spirit, it is vital that we rely on experience, not just on what people have said before. We cannot say that a Christian Methodist priest and a Zhengyi Daoist priest are both “priests” in the same way, just because we use the word “priest” for both. Instead we must understand how people come to the Path. How we begin our journey truly does shape our experiences throughout.