We will use a real-world physics metaphor to describe it, but remember, it's only a metaphor. Try not to orchestrate this process according to your expectations from the material world. Instead, let it happen on its own. Don't intervene in this process, observe and let it happen by supplying it with Fire and Water from outside.
If it doesn't happen, it's possible you can't yet see it or you lost the balance between Water and Fire. In any case, make sure to keep the balance of steady streams.

• Water and Fire meet in the center.
• Fire, cooled down by Water, solidifies into the raw dark state of the Earth, which is like the slag that runs out of the fire and takes the second from the bottom part of the egg. Water, after contact with a hot Fire, evaporates into heavy clouds of steam and smoke, the raw state of the Air, and takes the second from the top level.
• It's now dark inside because Earth does not emit nor conduct light from the Fire.
• The middle level is the horizon - a borderline of Emptiness between Air and Earth.

Primordial Fire has the quality of density, like lava.
Now Earth is a solidity that is the isolated and condensed density of Fire.

Primordial Water has the quality of transparency.
Now Air is the lightest essence of Water's transparency but in a disturbed, impure state of stormy clouds.

Air and Earth are the second pair of opposites:
— Opaque solidity vs ethereal transparency.

And there is no light anymore; Earth is hiding fire beneath it. Dark is not bad. Soil is dark, and the darker it is, the better.

Hagalaz Rune

Dark clouds are swirling above the dark soil: a storm is coming.
White, white hail, icy seeds of the Order, is being sown from the Air to the raw Earth.
Light has no way to come from, it's trapped underneath, yet sudden flashes illuminate the dark sky. Blue-white roots of lightnings tear through the darkness of the Air and hit seeds of hailstones.

Nourished by roots of lightnings, sprouts of thunderstones grow from the seeds of hail down into the Earth and bear fruit in first underground crystals.

Hagalaz rune takes its place.

Where is lightning coming from? It's the energy of the Fire the Water accumulates when it evaporates into the Air. The same energy makes the initial raw Air stormy. So even if the Fire is locked below the dark Earth, still its energy strikes back to the Earth from the Air above in the form of lightning.

Thanks to this power, lightning projects the principle of Order from hailstones down to the Earth. When hit by lightning, hailstones melt back into the Water and then instantly evaporate, but lightning energy, after going through the Water crystal, is modulated by its orderly structure. That's why it triggers the birth of order deep in the chaotic Earth.

You see a descending bar of this rune transiting from the Air down to the Earth and directly connecting the vertical axes of the first and last phases of the Philosopher's Stone.
Hagalaz is the most important and powerful rune of Creation even if it represents so wild and destructive forces.

Its name means "hail," and hail is the aspect of a thunderstorm, closely connected to lightning, thunder, and sparks made from stones hitting each other. The god Thor, not yet born at this moment, will inherit this power and significance.

As a Lodestone, Earth gets magnetized by lightning and strives towards the North Pole and Polaris, supporting also the basis of a guidance aspect of the Tiwaz rune.

Let's do it:

• Place your left hand on the level of the chest with a palm turned down - it will be your hand of the Air.
• Place your right hand at the level of your belly with your palm turned up - it will be your hand of the Earth.
• With your breast full of Air hold on for a moment and sync along all your vertical axis - it's a left vertical bar of the Hagalaz rune.
• Exhale and transit your focus from the Air to the Earth level.
• At the same time notice how something is being projected from the center of the left upper palm down to the center of the right palm. This is a diagonal descending bar of Hagalaz.
• Again hold your breath for a moment and sync along your axis finishing the right vertical bar.
• Breathe in and repeat.

Your goal is to plant the Order of Heaven into the Earth.

Naudiz Rune

Hagalaz rune describes a wild action of conceivement of the order in the depth of the Earth. Once it's finished and the disturbing energy of the Fire is discharged from the Air in the form of lightning, the Air calms down. We see that in its initial raw form, it was a mixture of the Water essence and a heavier smoky part that originates from the interaction of Water and hot Earth.

Now it's time for Naudiz rune:

Previously, in the Algiz rune, we saw how initial raw and dark lead clouds are transformed into a clear sky. The transformation was happening in the center, but we had no idea why.

Now, in the Naudiz rune, you see what is happening there from the back side. In a calmer Air that is not swirling and mixing anymore, the lighter component, the pure Water essence of transparency moves upward as we saw in Algiz.
But the heavier, earthy component of the Air moves down and slips deeper into the Earth between rocks to reach and feed growing crystals.

This slow ascetic process of nurturing your crystal takes time and perseverance.

Naudiz rune name means need, distress, constraint, and oppression.

It looks like the "Isa" rune of Ice crossed by a diagonal bar descending from Air to Earth level.

Something is translating from the Air through the middle point of Emptiness down to the Earth.

It's similar to the Hagalaz rune, but instead of states before and after, the vertical axis of Simultaneity emphasizes the center point of transcendence through the horizon border between Air and Earth. The original pair of opposites, Water and Fire, interact with each other directly and tangibly. But the interaction between Air and Earth is much more subtle and elusive. Both Air and Earth are not so reactive and intensive, they don't rush toward each other and do not oppose. Instead, they coexist rather peacefully and inertly.

Isa is the rune of Order; Ice is the crystal itself.
But now we have a new type of crystal, made of Earth, not of Water.
It's strong and hard and not melting from Fire's heat.
This crystal is transparent,
so it now conducts Light, the spirit of the Fire.

Let's practice the Naudiz rune.

• We will use a gesture of two open palms turned upward and pointing to the top-left.
• Place the left palm at a higher position near your heart
• place the right palm at a lower position approximately at the level of your liver.
• Both palms resemble the descending diagonal of the Naudiz rune while our spine will play the role of its vertical.

You can also use breathing. The entire rune is a long breath out with a small pause in the middle.

• With your breast full of air start slowly and calmly breathing out, focusing your attention on the breast level of the Air and your left-top palm.
• It may feel like soft and tender streams of air blowing down and you support one of these streams sliding in your left palm down to your solar plexus.
• In the middle pause, when you tracked your stream of Air down to the solar plexus - reactivate the state of resonance across all five worlds along your vertical axis and keep sliding down into the belly level of the Earth while supporting this thread of Air by your right palm.

This rune is very practical when you need to constrain yourself, remain sober, fight an addiction, or hold impulsive reactions.

As part of your Creation use this rune to nurture the embryo of your crystal until it will grow big enough so its bottom will touch the Fire and its tip break through the surface of the horizon so it will start conducting the spirit of the Fire - the Light.

It's probably a small seed of crystal at the beginning, and it keeps growing and refining as much as you keep growing and refining it. But even with a small seed, you are already starting to break through the darkness…

Dagaz Rune

Another, the most dramatic side to look from at the heart of the Stone. It describes the moment when slowly accumulated hidden changes reach critical mass and the entire system suddenly restructures.

Conceived during the Hagalaz phase by a seed of hailstone, projected by lightning into the depth of the Earth, Crystal was nurtured by a heavier, earthy fraction of the Air, settled from above once the storm calmed down and Naudiz phase began. It was a dark night because Fire was hidden by raw, chaotic Earth. But crystal was growing quietly underground, turning dark and raw Earth into hard and transparent.

The moment when the tip of the crystal makes a hole in the horizon and the first rays of the Light break into the Air - the Night turns into the Day.

The Crystal, the Earth evolved to the higher state, can now conduct Light - the spirit of the Fire. It holds heat and density down and extracts the Light quality from the Fire.

Light is light both in the meaning of shine and weight - all the heaviness left as a perfect hardness of Crystal.

There is a rune for this transformation called Dagaz.

It means "Day" and "Dawn". You see it shares one of the diagonals with Naudiz, showing the transition of transparency from the Air to the Earth.

And it has another, ascending diagonal, which below the horizon represents density of the Earth growing into hardness while it gets closer to the surface, so the transition of the Light from the Earth to the Air becomes possible after reaching the critical center point.

The transformation happens at the point of intersection of the ascendance of Hardness and the descendance of Transparency, in the very center of the entire Philosopher's Stone.

In my opinion, the best description, which grasps the essence of this rune, is written by Russian poet Andrei Bely (Andrew White) in the "Northern Symphony - first, heroic" more than a hundred years ago:

42. …And then I finally heard something like a running horse…
43. Somebody was racing at me from a distant hill, trampling the poor earth with hooves.
44. I was amazed to realize that the centaur Bucentaur was flying toward me… held hands over head, spread apart… smiled with a lightning smile… a little scary.
45. His raven black body trampled the spent earth, swinging his tail.
46. In his deep melodious voice, the centaur shouted to me that from the hill he had seen the rosy sky…
47. …That from there is visible dawn…
48. And so the centaur Bucentaur shouted to me in his melodious voice, as he rushed past me like a whirlwind.
49. …And flying into the distance, the mad centaur was shouting that from the hill he had seen the rosy sky…
50. …That from there is visible dawn…

To do the Dagaz I suggest using the gesture of two vertical palms facing each other at the level of the solar plexus. Each palm will represent the vertical bar of the Dagaz rune with fingertips as the Air of the breast and wrists as the Earth of the belly.

This Rune is made of simultaneity.

• With a chest full of Air hold a brief pause and tune into the level of Air and Earth feeling the fingertips and wrist of your left palm.
• Slowly breathe out and slide your split attention from the two starting points of fingertips and wrist of left palm to the single point of the center between your palms in front of your solar plexus.
• Keep exhaling and seamlessly, without pause, pass the center point and continue double attention point movement to the right palm.
• Finish at two points, fingertips and wrist of the right palm, and hold your breath a bit to resonate with Air and Earth as suggested by the right vertical bar of the Dagaz rune.
• Breathe in freely and repeat.

As usual, we use breathing only in the beginning, when we learn rune step by step. Once you can feel and produce states of simultaneity in both hands and a double-crossing stream in between - you do it as a whole integral process not attached to breathing.

While doing the Dagaz rune you may start feeling the warm, smooth, and sleek surface of your crystal between your wrists. After a while an amazing breakthrough of Light from the center may flush at you. Enjoy.