“A learned Theosophist, a practicing physician of this country, one who has studied the occult sciences and alchemy for over thirty years, has succeeded in reducing the elements to their primal form, and made what is termed “the pre-Adamite earth.” It appears in the form of an earthly precipitate from pure water, which, on being disturbed, presents the most opalescent and vivid colors.
“The secret”, say the alchemists, as if enjoying the ignorance of the uninitiated, “is an amalgamation of the salt, sulphur, and mercury combined three times in Azoth, by a triple sublimation and a triple fixation.”
“How ridiculously absurd!”, will exclaim a learned modern chemist. Well, the disciples of the great Hermes understand the above, as well as a graduate of Harvard University comprehends the meaning of his Professor of Chemistry, when the latter says: “With one hydroxyl group we can only produce monatomic compounds; use two hydroxyl groups, and we can form around the same skeleton a number of diatomic compounds. Attach to the nucleus three hydroxyl groups, and there result triatomic compounds, among which is a very familiar substance Glycerin.”
Attach thyself”, says the alchemist, “to the four letters of the tetragram disposed in the following manner:
The letters of the ineffable name are there, although you mayest not discern them at first. The incommunicable axiom is kabalistically contained therein, and this is what is called the magic arcanum of the masters.”
The arcanum, the fourth emanation of the Akasa, the principle of LIFE, which is represented in its third transmutation by the fiery sun, the eye of the world, or of Osiris, as the Egyptians termed it. An eye tenderly watching its youngest daughter, wife, and sister, Isis, our mother earth. See what Hermes, the thrice-great master, says of her: Her father is the sun, her mother is the moon.” It attracts and caresses, and then repulses her by a projectile power.
It is for the Hermetic student to watch its motions, to catch its subtile currents, to guide and direct them with the help of the athanor, the Archimedean lever of the alchemist. What is this mysterious athanor? Can the physicist tell us, he who sees and examines it daily?
Aye, he sees; but does he comprehend the secret-ciphered characters traced by the divine finger on every sea-shell in the ocean’s deep; on every leaf that trembles in the breeze; in the bright star, whose stellar lines are in his sight, but so many more or less luminous lines of hydrogen?
“God geometrizes”, said Plato. “The laws of nature are the thoughts of God”; exclaimed Oersted, 2,000 years later. “His thoughts are immutable”, repeated the solitary student of Hermetic lore, “therefore it is in the perfect harmony and equilibrium of all things that we must seek the truth.”
And thus, proceeding from the indivisible unity, he found emanating from it two contrary forces, each acting through the other and producing equilibrium, and the three were but one, the Pythagorean Eternal Monad.
The primordial is a circle; the circle squaring itself from the four cardinal points becomes a quaternary, the perfect square, having at each of its four angles a letter of the mirific name, the sacred TETRAGRAM. It is the four Buddhas who came and have passed away; the Pythagorean tetractys, absorbed and resolved by the one eternal NO-BEING.”
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 