bore it
into the Temple" seems to mean that He assumed a body of manifestation.

(38) The veil which surrounded the Pleroma or World of Divine Ideas was
called "Stauros" (Cross) and Horos (Boundary). _Cp._ Hippolytus (vi.
3):

"Now it is called 'Boundary' because it bounds off the Deficiency from
the Fullness [so as to make it] exterior to it. It is called Partaker
because it partakes of the Deficiency as well; and it is called 'Cross'
because it hath been fixed immovably and unchangeably, so that nothing
of the Deficiency should be able to approach the aeons within the
Fullness."

See also the "Gnostic Crucifixion," 9, 10, 11 (Acts of John): "[The
Cross] is the defining (or delimitation) of all things, both the firm
necessity of things fixed from things unstable, and the harmony of
wisdom. And as it is Wisdom in Harmony, there are those on the Right
and those on the Left--powers, authorities, principalities and daemons,
energies, threats, powers of wrath, slanderings--and the Lower Root
from which hath come forth the things in genesis. This, then, is the
Cross which by the Word hath been the means of 'Cross-beaming' all
things--at the same time separating off the things that proceed from
genesis and those below from those above, and also compacting them all
into one."

The "Mantle" in which the Man is clad and which severs and orders all
things is evidently another aspect of the same idea.

The use of the term "veil" is suggestive, as the term is so often
employed in Hellenistic Mysticism in connection with "Initiation."
Finally, it is just worth noting that it is possible that what Origen
has to say about the self-limitation of God is influenced by the
tradition concerning the Horos or "Boundary."

(39) This is undoubtedly a reference to the Mystical Crucifixion so
often mentioned in previous notes. It is the Master Symbol of the
Unitive State, of the reconciliation and union of God and Man, and of
the participation of the individual in the Universal. Its presence at
this point of the text is most suggestive. The candidate, "the Birth
of Matter," stands, mystically at any rate, before the Veil at the Foot
of the Cross. To pass the Veil and to enter into the Fullness means
being united with the Master in His Passion and Crucifixion.

The Cross is evidently a Tau, and I suggest that the frontispiece may
represent this Mystery, the Crucifixion of the AEon, O, upon Staurus,
the Cross and the Master being