that 'God gives you good tidings of John, of the intellect in act, confirming, Jesus of the heart, believing in him, as he is Word from God, sanctified as he is above the world of bodies and material generation, a lord, to all kinds of faculties, and one chaste, preventing his soul from engaging [his] corporeal nature or clothing himself in the natures of the corporeal faculties, and a prophet, informing [as he will] of forms of gnosis and universal truths and teaching virtuous character traits and correct manners of governance by the command of the Truth; of the righteous', of the dispersions and disengagement that by virtue of their acts merit being among those brought near to the divine presence after the reflection [sc. Zachariah] had attained the old age of the limit of its [creational] stage but had not reached the ability to perceive the holy truths and the universal gnoses; while his wife, who constituted the nature of the ego-centric spirit being the locus for the disposal of reflection, barren by [pure] disengaged light. The indication of that, namely, the indication of the actualisation of the disengaged light and its becoming manifested by the pure soul is the abstention [by Zachariah] from communing with the corporeal faculties as these seek to actualise their demands and desires as well as [abstaining from] mixing with them with regard to the surpluses of their pleasures and lusts for three days, each day constituting a full decade of the [various] stages of his life, ten years [in all], except for gesturing to them by some subtle token, commanding them to [perform] the glorification specific to each one of them - without drawing near to any of them with regard to their goals - and occupying himself for three days, the duration of which is thirty years starting from the age of discernment which is [after] the first ten [years], with the remembrance of his Lord in the sanctuary of the brain and [with] the glorification specific to that always. Likewise the angels of the spiritual faculties said to Mary of the pure wholesome soul:
