The Seven Spheres & Heavens
Hermeticism teaches that the soul's journey back to the divine involves ascending through the seven heavens. These heavens correspond to the seven classical planets and represent stages of spiritual purification and enlightenment. As the soul transcends each heavenly sphere, it sheds the material influences and attachments associated with that level, progressively aligning itself with the divine order. This process symbolizes the soul's return to its divine origin, ultimately seeking unity with The One—the source of all existence.
"Man must overcome the seven planets and transmute them into soul powers. Their negative forces are the seven deadly sins, which are overcome by a symbolic struggle with demons and dragons and, in turn, are transmuted into seven cardinal virtues. This is the key to alchemy, for from the seven base metals, first spiritualized and brought together as a secret compound, is produced the philosophers stone, the purified soul." ― Manly P. Hall - The Secret Teachings of All Ages
The heavens were divided into seven spheres, each of which was conjoined with a planet. A sort of ladder, composed of eight superposed gates, the first seven of which were constructed of different metals, was the symbolic suggestion in the temples, of the road to be followed to reach the supreme region of the fixed stars. To pass from one story to the next, each time the wayfarer had to enter a gate guarded by an angel of Ormazd. The initiates alone, to whom the appropriate formulas had been taught, knew how to appease these inexorable guardians. As the soul traversed these different zones, it rid itself, as one would of garments, of the passions and faculties that it had received in its descent to the earth. It abandoned to the Moon its vital and nutritive energy, to Mercury its desires, to Venus its wicked appetites, to the Sun its intellectual capacities, to Mars its love of war, to Jupiter its ambitious dreams, to Saturn its inclinations. It was naked, stripped of every vice and every sensibility, when it penetrated the eighth heaven to enjoy there, as an essence supreme, and in the eternal light that bathed the gods, beatitude without end." "The most potent of these sidereal deities, those which were most often invoked and for which were reserved the richest offerings, were the Planets. Conformably to astrological theories, the planets were endowed with virtues and qualities for which it is frequently difficult for us to discover adequate reasons. Each of the planetary bodies presided over a day of the week, to each some one metal was consecrated, each was associated with some one degree in the initiation, and their number has caused a special religious potency to be attributed to the number seven. In descending from the empyrean to the earth, the souls, it was thought, successively received from them their passions and qualities." — The Mysteries of Mithra, by Franz Cumont, c. 1903
The rise of philosophers from one floor to another also resembles certain rituals of the Eleusian Mysteries and the Mitra rites, in which the candidate ascended the seven steps of a ladder or the seven steps of the pyramid to signify the liberation of the Influences of the Planetary Governors.
Man becomes master of the seven spheres only when he transmutes the impulses he receives from them. He who masters the seven worlds and meets with the Divine Source of his own nature consumes the Hermetic Marriage.
— Manly P. Hall