Having said these things, you will see doors opening, and coming out of the deep seven maidens in fine linen, having the faces of asps. These are called the Fortunes of heaven, holding golden scepters.

The doors open and the visionary population of heaven begins to arrive, and it arrives in sevens — as it will, again and again, to the end of the rite: seven maidens now, seven bull-faced gods next, the number of the planets and of the vowels the initiate has been intoning. These first are ouranoû Týchai, the Fortunes of heaven — the planetary powers that fix a life's luck, here made into serpent-faced girls in the priestly linen of Egypt, each gripping a golden brabeîon, the wand or prize that marks an office. The detail that lingers is 'the faces of asps.' The asp — the Egyptian cobra, the uraeus that rears on the pharaoh's brow — is a sign of royalty and of deadly protective power, and to give it to the Fortunes is to say these are not gentle fates. Beautiful, linen-clad, golden-handed, and cobra-faced: the rite never lets its heaven be merely lovely. What comes up 'out of the deep' has a serpent's head.