Maria Prophetissa, otherwise known as Maria the Prophet or Mary the Jewess, was an early alchemist from around the 1st-3rd century AD. She is credited with the invention of several kinds of chemical apparatus and is considered to be the first true alchemist of the Western world. She is also credited with the alchemical precept, The Axiom of Maria: “One becomes two, two becomes three, and out of the third comes the one as the fourth.”
