(37) This looks as if in this system the Fruit of the Plêrôma was also the Father of the Fullnesses. The phrase "He made a world and bore it into the Temple" seems to mean that He assumed a body of manifestation.
(38) The veil which surrounded the Plêrôma 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 æons within the Fullness."
See also the "Gnôstic 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 Æon, O, upon Staurus, the Cross and the Master being One, AΩ and AΩ. The meaning of XMI is unknown. It has been suggested that it is (with EIC ΘΕΟΣ) a symbol of the Trinity in Unity, or a veil of the Divine Name.
(40) The terms I have translated as "Sole Unstainable," "Sole [Foundation]-stone of Adamant" are "Amiantos," "Adamantos." Besides meaning "unstainable," Amiantos was the name of a pale green stone. Readers interested in the legend of the Graal will recall that the Graal is represented as a green stone in the "Parzival" of Von Eschenbach. "Adamantos" is "diamond." Here and in the account of the Monad as the Metropolis of Monogenes, "filled with men of every race and with all the statues of the king," there is a curious parallel to be found to a happening in the life of Saint Theresa. "Being once in prayer," she says, "the Diamond was represented to me like a flash; although I saw nothing formed, still, it was a representation with all clearness how all things are seen in God, and how all are contained in Him.... Let us say that the Divinity is like a very lustrous Diamond, larger than all the world, or like a mirror—and all that we do is seen in this Diamond, it being so fashioned that it includes everything within itself, because there is nothing but what is contained in this magnitude."
I have ventured to insert [Foundation] because I think that there is a punning allusion to "Adamas." Cp. Naasene Document: "The 'rock' means Adamas. This is the corner-stone ... which I insert in the foundation of Zion. By this he means allegorically the plasm of man. For Adamas, who is inserted in the inner Man, and the foundations of Zion are ... the wall and palisade (sc. Horos) in which is the inner Man."