The grades · an org chart in a cosmology's clothes

0°=0 Neophyte, then Zelator, Theoricus, Practicus, Philosophus up the lower Tree; the Portal as a veil; then the Second Order — Adeptus Minor, Major, Exemptus; then the Third, which was not attainable in the flesh.

Read one way it is an ascent through the Tree. Read the other way it is the staff structure of a Victorian society — officers, regalia, dues, examinations, a formal hierarchy of who may initiate whom. The sephirot are the paint; the ladder is the building.