Greek-speaking/classicist Dopers! Help me with this quote!

Factual Questions
1

OK, so I’m at the Whole Foods doing my grocery shopping, and I end up in the express lane two places behind a very attractive young lady who, I notice, has a quote tattooed on her shoulder, curling around towards the scapula from a place that, for modesty’s sake, was covered - but only barely. As discreetly as I could – aw, who am I kidding? I stared at it brazenly – I read, in what I assumed is a dialect of ancient Greek,

(I may be misremembering it slightly.) Best I can guess, it translates “…two makes three, and from a third, a fourth”. It was followed by an inverted triangle of six dots.

So - what’s the quote, and where’s it from? I want to see if I can memorize the passage it’s in so as to maybe score some flirt points if I ever run across her again.

2

“One becomes two, two becomes three, and out of the third comes the one as the fourth.”

Axiom of Maria (The Prophetess), a precept in alchemy

3

OK, I see the sentence in English. Does anyone have any clue what this supposed to mean? And what motivation would someone have for tattooing it her shoulder?

4

WAG:

Uuuummmm, alchemy?

The four that it speaks of is probably the Four elements; fire, earth, air and water. Couldn’t tell you which two make three and from which comes the fourth though.

5

Why didn’t you ask her about the tattoo yourself? I could not possibly think of a more appropriate way to start flirting with this “attractive young lady.”

6

I don’t pick up many women, but even I know she probaby gets guys asking about it all the time, and that it would be a lot more impressive to show her you already know what it means.

BTW, I wanted to ask if it was written in Greek characters or Roman.

7

You’ll note that I said I was two people behind her instead of right next to her. It’s kinda crass to flirt with people in between you. At least in my opinion - although who knows? The young lady in between us was rather attractive as well… two might indeed have become three.

Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

commasense, you hit the nail on the head. I’m half tempted to say “Hello, Maria” if I see her again just to see if her name is Maria as well. It was written in Greek, but my iMac doesn’t seem to handle Greek characters very well so I had to transliterate it.