Another Threefold Classification of the Ways Up

[sdi]

I've spent a lot of time pondering Hera/Athene/Aphrodite as exemplary of the ways up, but it occurs to me that there's another way of looking at it, in terms of how many mirrors one sees God in...

#	Plotinos	Smullyan	Description
1	φιλόσοφος (philosopher)	positivism	sees the All in oneself
2	ἐρωτικός (lover)	mysticism	sees the All in another
many	μουσικός (scholar/scientist/artist/aesthete)	empiricism	sees the All in the All

I don't properly remember where I saw Raymond Smullyan's classification of the three ways. (Perhaps it was in Who Knows: a Study of Religious Consciousness?) In any case, he emphasizes that they are complementary rather than in conflict.

Very speculatively, I wonder if these lead upward at different rates? Hesiod's Muses were Watery, so perhaps the μουσικός is the patient but less demanding way of getting to the next "rung" on the ladder; I am utterly devoted to the Airy angels, and wonder if that's where I am being led; and Plotinos, of course, had eyes only for the Highest. (It is also the case that Fire is the "1" level of the tetractys; Air the "2" level of the tetractys; and Water remains in the material level of "many.") This would account for Plotinos's relative ordering of the three paths.