He took the key and opened the minor door, and entered from the Hall of the Fire into the Courtyard. [The Kohanim] entered behind him with two torches of fire in their hands, and they would split into two groups: These walked in the colonnade toward the east, and these walked in the colonnade toward the west. They would check as they walked until they reached the place of preparation of the chavitin. [The two groups] met one another; they would say: “It is well; all is well.” They appointed “makers of chavitin” to make the chavitin.

The one chosen to remove ash from the Altar would [go to] remove the ash, and they would say to him: “Be careful not to touch the utensil until you sanctify your hands and feet from the Laver; and behold, the shovel is placed in the corner, between the ramp and the Altar, west of the ramp.”  No person entered with him, and [there was] no lamp in his hand. Rather, he walked by the light of the pyre. [The Kohanim] neither saw him nor heard the sound of his [footsteps], until they heard the sound of the wood that Ben Katin fashioned into a wheel for the Laver, and they would say: “The time has come!”  He sanctified his hands and feet from the Laver; he took the silver shovel and ascended to the top of the Altar, and he cleared the coals to this side and to that side, and then scooped from the innermost consumed [coals], and he descended. [When] he reached the floor, he would turn his face to the north; he walked to the east of the ramp about ten amos. He piled the coals upon the floor at a distance of three handbreadths from the ramp, the place where they would deposit the crop of the bird [olah] and the ashes of the Inner Altar and [of] the Menorah.