1Kgs 10:19

“There are seven orders arranged by degrees up to the priesthood, in which is the standing of the orders, because it belongs to the priesthood to consecrate the Sacrament of the body of Christ, in which is the fullness of all graces; whence the other six are as it were subordinate and like certain steps by which one ascends to the throne of Solomon; and they are six on account of the perfection of the number, because six is the first perfect number, and because the perfection and sufficiency of the office of ministering so requires. For it is necessary that some minister as if from a more remote position, some from a nearer, and some from the nearest, so that nothing is lacking in the ordered ministry.”

“The seventh and last column of wisdom is simplicity in intention. Concerning this it is said that "King Solomon made a great throne of ivory," and he made in it "six steps." The other columns are round about, but this one is the most principal and at the summit. The Apostle speaks saying: "Seek the things that are above;" and in Ecclesiastes: "What has the wise man more than the fool, and what has the poor man, except to go thither where life is?" Surely, where Christ is, and when Christ shall appear, life shall appear.”

“Just as God completed the whole world in six days and rested on the seventh, so the lesser world may be led in most orderly fashion through six stages of successive illuminations to the repose of contemplation. As a figure of this, one ascended by six steps to the throne of Solomon; the Seraphim that Isaiah saw had six wings; after six days the Lord called Moses from the midst of the cloud, and Christ after six days, as is said in Matthew, led the disciples up the mountain and was transfigured before them.”

“These six considerations having therefore been traversed, as if they were the six steps of the throne of the true Solomon, by which one arrives at peace, where the true peaceful one rests in a peaceful mind as in an interior Jerusalem; and as if also the six wings of the Cherub, by which the mind of the true contemplative, filled with the illumination of supernal wisdom, may be borne upward; and as if also the first six days, in which the mind must be exercised, so that it may at last arrive at the sabbath of rest; after our mind has contemplated God outside itself through vestiges and in the vestiges, within itself through the image and in the image, above itself through the similitude of the divine light shining upon us and in that light itself, insofar as is possible according to the state of wayfaring and the exercise of our mind; when at last in the sixth step it has arrived at this point, that it contemplates in the first and highest principle and the mediator of God and men, Jesus Christ, those things whose likenesses can in no way be found in creatures, and which exceed all keenness of the human intellect: it remains that, in contemplating these things, it should transcend and pass beyond not only this sensible world, but also itself; in which passing over, Christ is the way and the door, Christ is the ladder and the vehicle, as it were the mercy seat placed upon the ark of God and the mystery hidden from the ages.”