“Before any of our modern teachers thought of evolution, the ancients taught us, through Hermes, that nothing can be abrupt in nature; that she never proceeds by jumps and starts, that everything in her works is slow harmony, and that there is nothing sudden – not even violent death.
The slow development from preexisting forms was a doctrine with the Rosicrucian Illuminati. The Tres Matres showed Hermes the mysterious progress of their work, before they condescended to reveal themselves to mediaeval alchemists.
Now, in the Hermetic dialect, these three mothers are the symbol of light, heat, electricity, or magnetism, the two latter being as convertible as the whole of the forces or agents which have a place assigned them in the modern “Force-correlation.”
Synesius mentions books of stone which he found in the temple of Memphis, on which was engraved the following sentence: “One nature delights in another, one nature overcomes another, one nature overrules another, and the whole of them are one.””
H. P. Blavatsky