It has also been said that the true inwardness and faith of the religion of Mithras was in these mysteries only gradually and with great caution revealed to the initiates, whose fitness for them was tested at every step[957]. It may be so, but it is plain that the Mithraist was informed at the outset of at least a good many of the tenets of the faith. The whole Legend of Mithras, so far as we know it, must have been known to the initiate soon after entering the Mithraic chapel, since we have ourselves gathered it mainly from the different scenes depicted on the borders of the great central group of the Tauroctony. So, too, the mystic banquet or Mithraic Sacrament which, if the Heddernheim monuments stood alone, we might consider was concealed from the eyes of the lower initiates until the proper moment came, also forms one of the subsidiary scenes of the great altar piece in the chapels at Sarmizegetusa, Bononia and many other places[958]. In a bas-relief at Sarrebourg, moreover, the two principal persons at the banquet, _i.e._ Mithras and the Sun, are shown surrounded by other figures wearing the masks of crows and perhaps lions[959], which looks as if initiates of all grades were admitted to the sacramental banquet. One can therefore make no profitable conjecture as to what particular doctrines were taught in the particular degrees, though there seems much likelihood in M. Cumont’s statement that the initiates were thought to take rank in the next world according to the degree that they had received in this[960]. The belief that “those who have received humble mysteries shall have humble places and those that have received exalted mysteries exalted places” in the next world was, we may be sure, too profitable a one for the priests of Mithras to be neglected by them. It certainly explains the extraordinary order for the planetary spheres adopted by Origen[961], according to which the souls which had taken the lowest degree would go to the heaven of Saturn, slowest and most unlucky of the planets, while those perfected in the faith would enter the glorious house of the Sun.