Menti Celesti

The Menti Celesti were a group of deities which the ancient Gallifreyans worshipped during the Pythia's rule. They were made up of the leading Eternals, including Pain, Time, Death, (PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible) Life, and Fate. (PROSE: Hark! The Herald Angels Sing)

Death once explained to Timothy Dean that she and her many sisters were the dreams of Time Lords, leaking across the universe and occasionally given form by beings such as the Timewyrm. She also mentioned that they appeared to some Time Lords in nightmares or near-death experiences and made deals, sometimes even making the Time Lord their Champion. (PROSE: Human Nature) One incarnation of Death gained her form as the daughter of Jasmine Surprise Cwej-Hutchings and Ricky McIlveen. (PROSE: Happy Endings)

The Hermit once told the First Doctor to fast for three days and three nights to make supplications to the Menti Celesti. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Revelation) The worship of the Menti Celesti was controversial on Gallifrey, as some Time Lords objected to the mass celebration of Eternals, who were, after all, another species. (PROSE: Happy Endings)

Prior to the War in Heaven, all the goddesses save Death fled the Spiral Politic in their six-folded home, (PROSE: Hark! The Herald Angels Sing) and the Celestial Intervention Agency transformed themselves into beings of thought called Celestis. (PROSE: Alien Bodies)

Behind the scenes

 * The name "Menti Celesti" is taken from La Calisto, a 1651 opera with a libretto by Giovanni Faustini. In its original context it was simply an Italian phrase, meaning "heavenly minds", and was the name of a divine choir that was part of the narrative. In Italian, the second word is not pronounced like the English word "celestial" but as /t͡ʃeˈlɛ.sti/ (chuh-LESS-tee).
 * Mags L. Halliday's A Handful of Silver from the 1999 charity anthology Perfect Timing 2 asserted that there was another Gallifreyan Goddess named Fate. Chris McKeon's unlicensed 2008 completion of Craig Hinton's Time's Champion similarly introduced Life and Hope. Life and Fate later appeared in Jayce Black's Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, from the Faction Paradox series.
 * The Menti Celesti have obvious similarities to the Endless as depicted in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman comics, whose original run was contemporary with the Virgin New Adventures; these were implicitly acknowledged in Happy Endings, where Bernice Summerfield and Jason Kane's wedding is attended by Death in an incarnation who looks and acts like Gaiman's Death, down to repeating one of her most famous quotes. However, Gaiman's Endless were of mixed genders (with Destruction, Destiny and Dream being male) unlike the seemingly all-female Menti Celesti, and explicitly limited to a group of seven, leaving no room for Time, Fate, Life and Pain.