 It was usually sealed by a stone lid known as the "lapis manalis".On August 24, October 5 and November 8, it was opened with the official announcement ""mundus patet"" ("the "mundus" is open"), and offerings were made there to agricultural or underworld deities, including Ceres as goddess of the fruitful earth and guardian of its underworld portals.Its opening offered the spirits of the dead temporary leave from the underworld, to roam lawfully among the living, in what Warde Fowler describes as ‘holidays, so to speak, for the ghosts’.