The ascent through the spheres

On the way home the soul passes back through the seven planetary spheres and gives up at each one what it took on the way down — growth and decay to the first, cunning to the second, ambition, arrogance, greed — and arrives at the eighth stripped of everything borrowed, to sing with the powers there.

The hekhalot shape, in Greek, in Egypt, with names to give at each gate. The rhyme is strong enough to be startling; the difference is that the Hermetic ascent is a shedding of vices, and the Merkavah ascent is a passage past guardians who may refuse you.