Toto, I've got a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore...

ἦ τοι μὲν ξανθὸν Γανυμήδεα μητιέτα Ζεὺς
ἥρπασε ὃν διὰ κάλλος, ἵν᾽ ἀθανάτοισι μετείη
καί τε Διὸς κατὰ δῶμα θεοῖς ἐπιοινοχοεύοι,
θαῦμα ἰδεῖν, πάντεσσι τετιμένος ἀθανάτοισι,
χρυσέου ἐκ κρητῆρος ἀφύσσων νέκταρ ἐρυθρόν.
Τρῶα δὲ πένθος ἄλαστον ἔχε φρένας, οὐδέ τι ᾔδει,
ὅππη οἱ φίλον υἱὸν ἀνήρπασε θέσπις ἄελλα:

You know how most-clever Zeus spirited away blonde Ganumedes
because of his beauty, to be among the deathless ones
and serve wine to the gods in the house of Zeus,
a sight to behold as he is honored by all the immortals
as he draws crimson nectar from the golden bowl.
But incessant worry gripped the heart of Tros, since he didn't know
whither the heaven-sent cyclone had caught up his beloved boy.

(Aphrodite consoles Ankhises. Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 202–208, as translated—hopefully not too badly!—by yours truly. Yes, it really says "cyclone!")

Another Threefold Classification of the Ways Up

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.