The Path of Ascent
How the soul returns through the planetary spheres to its divine source.
At death, the enlightened soul ascends through the planetary spheres, surrendering at each level the qualities gained from that sphere, until it reaches the eighth sphere (the fixed stars) and beyond to God. This is the Hermetic path of return.
And then, naked of all the activities of the spheres, he enters the nature of the Eighth.
This teaching influenced later Gnostic and mystical traditions.
Corpus Hermeticum
Written about in
- What Hermeticism says about illness and the body failing
At death the soul is described rising through the planetary spheres, surrendering at each level the quality it took from there, until it stands naked of all their activities. The picture is of shedding done in stages. It offers order, not reprieve.