The most common way to reach the Otherworlds, however, involves what’s often called stepping sideways. Using the Sphere of Spirit, a mage converts herself, and perhaps a handful of belongings, into ephemera: the elemental spirit matter that makes up that rarefied plane. This way, the voyager travels physically – transformed in essence, but more or less solid in the way that the spirit realm understands solidity.

Travelers who step sideways enter the Middle Umbra: that primal spirit realm embodying elemental Nature. Vividly real and yet fleetingly unreal, this Otherworldly layer presents a strange mirror to the world we know in our daily lives. I’ll go into more detail soon, but for now just remember that stepping sideways is probably the most familiar form of travel beyond the Gauntlet.

(There’s a long-standing metaphysical debate about Shallowings, stepping sideways, and the form a traveler attains when passing through the Gauntlet. A person who enters a Shallowing tends to appear in the Middle Umbra, as solid as he was on the other side. Does he become ephemera when he passes over, or does he remain material? As far as I’m aware, no one has ever been able to answer that question conclusively. For all practical purposes, then, let’s assume that our traveler is solid, even if his material form is actually spiritual in nature. If nothing else, that assumption makes one’s brain hurt a little bit less when contemplating the trip.)

Stepping sideways demands an in-depth understanding of the Spirit Arts (or its technomagickal variant, Dimensional Science), a traveling companion with such knowledge, or a mystic or hypertech device that can perform the necessary functions for you. Like astral travel, this isn’t an easy trip to make, especially not in the current age. In this regard, if nothing else, the Technocracy certainly has the upper hand. It might once have been a perfectly natural thing to cross over into the spirit realm, but that’s certainly not the case anymore.