~ 77 ~
hardly necessary to say that we only know Celsus' treatise by what Origen says of it, and we cannot always be sure that he represents it fairly. But the passage in question seems to be a definite quotation and may be taken to represent justly at any rate what Celsus, a non-Mithraist, had been told about Mithraistic belief. According to this the pilgrimage of the human soul from a lower to a higher state was symbolized by a ladder composed of seven portals with an eighth at the top. These seven portals were represented by different metals each corresponding to a planet, and the order in which these came was Saturn, Venus, Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, Moon, Sun. Celsus, says Origen, 'to shew off his learning' added 'unnecessary' explanations of the order of the planets, and as one of the explanations is described as connected with the theory of music, we may fairly assume that it is the same as the first of Dion's two explanations. Here then, as in Bologna, we have the week-order reversed, but with the difference that, whereas that began with the Sun and ended with the Moon, here we begin with Saturn and end with the Sun. In the one case the week begins with Sunday and ends with Monday, in the other it begins with Saturday and ends with Sunday. Apart from this somewhat serious departure from the normal week, we have to remember that the date is late for our present purpose. It is true that though Origen is supposed to have
