I use ancestor-or-self::* to obtain the node sequence from some node
to the document root.
The outermost/top element of the document isn't interesting, so I add
a predicate, and I find that this works:
    [position() != last()]
Apparently, the sequence goes from leaf to root, which is the closing
tag order, as it should be.

The sequence returned by a path expression is always in document order so
(ancestor-or-self::*)[position()!=1]

[] in a step is a predicate
http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath20/#id-predicates

[] applied to a sequence is a filter
http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath20/#id-filter-expr

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