Whether they were thought to go further still, we can only guess. It should be noticed that the mystic ladder of Mithras had _eight_ steps, and we have seen that when the soul had climbed through the seven planetary spheres there was still before her the heaven of the fixed stars. The Sun seems in Origen’s account of the Mithraic faith to have formed the last world to be traversed before this highest heaven could be reached; and it was through the disk of the Sun that the ancients thought the gods descended to and reascended from the earth. This idea appears plainly in the Papyrus quoted above, where the Mithraist is represented as an eagle who flies upwards “and alone” to heaven and there beholds all things[962]. He prays that he may, in spite of his mortal and corruptible nature, behold with immortal eyes after having been hallowed with holy hallowings, “the deathless aeon, lord of the fiery crowns,” and that “the corruptible nature of mortals” which has been imposed upon him by “inexorable Necessity” may depart from him. “Then,” says the author of the fragment—which, it will be remembered, claims to be a revelation given by the archangel of the great Sun-God Mithras—the initiate “will see the gods who rule each day and hour ascending to heaven and others descending, and the path of the visible gods through the disk of the god my father will appear.” He describes the machinery of nature by which the winds are produced, which seems to be figured on some of the Mithraic monuments, and which reminds one of the physics supposed to be revealed in the Enochian literature. Then, after certain spells have been recited, the initiate sees the disk of the Sun, which opens, disclosing “doors of fire and the world of the gods within them.” Then follow more invocations to the gods of the seven planetary worlds who appear in due course, and presumably give him admission to their realms. After another invocation, in what may possibly be some Asianic or Anatolian language very much corrupted, the initiate beholds “a young god, beautiful, with fiery hair, in white tunic and purple mantle, and having on his head a crown of fire,” who seems to be Helios or Sol, the driver of the sun’s chariot on the Mithraic monuments. He is saluted as “Mighty in strength, mighty ruler, greatest king of gods! O Sun, lord of heaven and earth, God of Gods!” Next appear “seven virgins in linen robes having the heads of serpents,” who are called “the seven Fortunes of heaven” and are, as M. Georges Lafaye surmises, the seven stars of the constellation of the Great Bear[963]. They are followed by seven male gods also dressed in linen robes and with golden crowns, but equipped with the heads of black bulls, who are called “the rulers of the Pole.” These are they, we are told, who send upon the impious thunders and lightnings and earthquakes. And so we are led at last to the apparition of “a god of extraordinary stature, having a glance of fire, young and golden-haired, in white