There were seven grades of initiation, each with its symbol and magic name. The first stage was that of the Raven (corax), the second that of the Hidden One (κρύφιος), and the third that of the Soldier (miles). These first three degrees seem to have been preliminary, so that the initiate was not admitted to full participation in the privileges of the sacred community until he had been inducted into the fourth degree, the Lion (leo). The succeeding degrees were the Persian (Persa), the Courier of the Sun (ἡλιοδρόμος), and the Father (pater); the head of a number of Mithraic communities was apparently the Pater Patrum. Each stage had its proper initiatory ceremonies, admission to which required abstinence, lustrations and ablutions, and many symbolic acts. The courage and constancy of the neophyte were tested; oaths were administered to him; a seal was set on his forehead; he was bound to secrecy; and doubtless many other vows were required. The candidate for the degree of the Soldier was presented with a crown which he was expected to thrust aside and to say that Mithras was his only crown. He was made to feel that he had enlisted for a sacred warfare against the powers of evil and to realize that perfect purity was the goal toward which the faithful must strive. Apparently the culminating point of the tests and trials which the neophyte underwent was a symbolic death in which he died at the hands of the priest and rose again into a new and purified existence. Such rites are common in similar mysteries, but there is some reason to suspect that in Mithraism the symbolic act had an especially terrifying nature. The religious life of the devotees was fed by meetings held in the half-underground chapels. A part of the services evidently consisted of a sacred communion, which, with consecrated cup and loaf, recalled the sacred meal which Mithras had once celebrated with the Sun after he had completed his service upon the earth. This is shown on a relief discovered some years since at Konjica in Dalmatia, in which Mithras and the Sun are shown reclining at table, where they are served by attendants, one of whom wears a Phrygian cap, another a mask of a crow, a third that of a lion, while the head of the fourth is hopelessly mutilated.[292] It was believed that this mystic communion on earth gave the devotees strength and wisdom, that it imparted the power necessary to combat the emissaries of evil, and conferred immortality upon those who partook of it. The parallelism with the Christian eucharist is self-evident, and it is not strange that the church fathers claimed that the Mithraists had stolen from Christianity.