A portable altar was set up at the place of burial or cremation, and sacrifice was made in the presence of the deceased, usually to Ceres, Rome's principal grain, harvest and field goddess. As far as Cicero was concerned, a burial was not religious and a grave was not a grave unless a sow had been sacrificed. Ceres was a doorwarden between the realms of the upperworld and the underworld, the living and the dead, and the shade of the deceased could not pass into the underworld or afterlife without her consent. The sacrificial victim was consecrated by sprinkling with "mola salsa", a sacred mixture of salt and grain or flour, then stunned or killed with an axe or hammer, turned on its back and gutted. The guts ("exta") were placed in an earthenware pot.