The Threefold Path of the Soul
BY NICOLE LAU
The soul's journey follows a threefold pattern across all mystical traditions: purgation, illumination, and union. Whether called the via purgativa, via illuminativa, and via unitiva (Christian mysticism), or sattva, rajas, and tamas (Hinduism), or nigredo, albedo, and rubedo (alchemy), the pattern is the same. Understanding this threefold path reveals the universal structure of spiritual transformation.
The Three Stages: Universal Pattern
Every authentic spiritual path describes three stages:
- Purgation (Purification): Cleansing, letting go, descent into darkness
- Illumination (Enlightenment): Seeing truth, receiving light, understanding
- Union (Integration): Merging with the divine, wholeness, completion
These are not arbitrary divisions—they're the natural phases of transformation from fragmentation to wholeness.
Stage One: Purgation (The Dark Phase)
The first stage is descent, cleansing, and letting go:
What Happens
- Confronting shadow: Facing what you've denied or repressed
- Releasing attachments: Letting go of what no longer serves
- Ego dissolution: The false self begins to break down
- Purification: Burning away impurities, illusions, and lies
- Descent: Going into the underworld, the unconscious, the darkness
The Experience
- Painful, difficult, often feels like crisis
- Loss, grief, confusion, disorientation
- The dark night of the soul
- Everything you thought you knew is questioned
- Feels like dying (because the old self is dying)
The Work
- Shadow work and integration
- Releasing false identities and beliefs
- Facing fears and wounds
- Surrendering control
- Enduring the darkness without fleeing
Across Traditions
- Christian: Via purgativa, the purgative way
- Alchemical: Nigredo, the blackening
- Kabbalistic: Descent through the qlippoth
- Buddhist: Confronting dukkha (suffering)
- Shamanic: Dismemberment, descent to the Lower World
Stage Two: Illumination (The Light Phase)
The second stage is seeing, understanding, and receiving light:
What Happens
- Insight and clarity: Seeing truth you couldn't see before
- Receiving light: Divine grace, spiritual understanding
- Awakening: Consciousness expands and deepens
- Vision: Seeing reality as it is, not as you wish
- Understanding: The meaning of your suffering becomes clear
The Experience
- Relief after the darkness
- Joy, peace, clarity
- Feeling connected to something greater
- Insights and revelations
- Sense of purpose and meaning
The Work
- Integrating insights
- Developing spiritual practices
- Cultivating virtues and wisdom
- Serving others from your understanding
- Maintaining the light without clinging to it
Across Traditions
- Christian: Via illuminativa, the illuminative way
- Alchemical: Albedo, the whitening
- Kabbalistic: Receiving light from the upper sephiroth
- Buddhist: Prajna (wisdom), seeing emptiness
- Shamanic: Journey to the Upper World, receiving vision
Stage Three: Union (The Integration Phase)
The third stage is merging, wholeness, and completion:
What Happens
- Union with the divine: Experiencing oneness, non-duality
- Integration: Dark and light, shadow and spirit unified
- Wholeness: All parts of self integrated
- Embodiment: Spiritual realization lived in daily life
- Service: Giving back from your wholeness
The Experience
- Peace beyond understanding
- Love without object
- Being and doing unified
- No separation between self and divine
- Ordinary life becomes sacred
The Work
- Living from wholeness
- Maintaining union in daily life
- Serving others and the world
- Embodying what you've realized
- Becoming a bridge for others
Across Traditions
- Christian: Via unitiva, the unitive way
- Alchemical: Rubedo, the reddening; the philosopher's stone
- Kabbalistic: Devekut, cleaving to God
- Buddhist: Nirvana, enlightenment
- Shamanic: Return to the Middle World as a healed healer
Why Three Stages?
The threefold pattern appears because transformation requires:
- Destruction: The old must die (purgation)
- Revelation: Truth must be seen (illumination)
- Creation: The new must be born (union)
This is the universal pattern of death and rebirth, thesis-antithesis-synthesis, solve et coagula.
The Spiral Nature
The three stages are not linear—they spiral:
- You don't complete purgation once and move on forever
- Each level of growth requires new purgation, illumination, and union
- You spiral through the three stages at deeper levels
- What was illumination at one level becomes purgation at the next
The path is a spiral, not a ladder.
Common Mistakes
Skipping Purgation
- Trying to jump straight to illumination or union
- Spiritual bypassing—using spirituality to avoid shadow work
- Result: Unstable, ungrounded spirituality
Getting Stuck in Purgation
- Endless shadow work without moving to illumination
- Identifying with woundedness
- Result: Perpetual victimhood, no transformation
Clinging to Illumination
- Attachment to peak experiences and insights
- Spiritual materialism—collecting experiences
- Result: Inflation, dissociation from ordinary life
Practical Application: Where Are You?
To work with the threefold path:
- Identify your current stage: Are you in purgation, illumination, or union?
- Do the appropriate work: Each stage requires different practices
- Don't skip stages: You must go through all three
- Trust the process: Purgation leads to illumination leads to union
- Expect spiraling: You'll return to each stage at deeper levels
- Integrate all three: The goal is not to escape purgation but to include all three
The soul's journey is threefold: you must descend into darkness (purgation), receive light (illumination), and embody wholeness (union). This is not one-time but cyclical—you spiral through these three stages at ever-deeper levels. Where are you now? In the darkness of purgation? In the light of illumination? In the wholeness of union? Trust the stage you're in. Do its work. The path unfolds naturally.
