The seven · the walls between

The seven planetary spheres — Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn — which the whole ancient world agreed stood between earth and the fixed stars, and which the Gnostics alone read as WALLS. Each has a ruler, a gate and a toll; the descending soul picks up a garment of some quality at each one and must give it back on the way up.

The direct structural twin of the Merkavah's seven heikhalot — same number, same gatekeepers, same requirement to produce the right word at the door — with the framing exactly reversed: a prison escaped, or a throne room entered.