And there come forward also seven other gods, having the faces of black bulls, in linen loincloths, holding seven golden diadems. These are the ones called the Pole-lords of heaven,

After the seven serpent-faced maidens, seven bull-faced gods — and the pairing is deliberate. If the Fortunes were the planets as fate, these are the planets as force: the polokrátores, 'pole-lords,' the powers that grip and turn the axis of the sky. The rite has climbed from the sun (Helios, seen earlier) toward the fixed pole itself, and now meets the muscle that works it. The bull is not a random beast here. This is the Mithras Liturgy, and the bull is Mithras's own animal — the one the god is shown slaying on a thousand carved reliefs across the Roman world, the tauroctony from which life pours. To face seven black bulls at the pole of heaven, in a Mithraic text, is to stand among the god's proper creatures. They wear the Egyptian priest's linen and carry golden diadḗmata, the fillets of royalty — Persian sky-lords in Egyptian dress, holding Greek crowns. The whole eastern Mediterranean is in this one sentence, wearing each other's clothes.