The Artificer

Every Sunday school student knows Cain was the son of Adam and Eve. Beyond Cain Biblical genealogy is well-defined, but not such common knowledge. For the record, the sons of the generations following Cain were Enoch, Irad, Mehujael, Methushael, and Lamech.

Lamech, was the first known polygamist. His first wife was Adah and his second was Zillah, with whom, he had a son and a daughter. Their daughter's name was Naamah.

Naamah's brother was a man who gets sparse mention in the Masonic ritual, yet who is familiar to all Master Masons. His name was Tubalcain, an eighth generation descendant of Adam himself.

So who was this man we've all heard about? There are several ideas about the origin of his name. Some believe the second part of his name merely suggests his lineage in the line of Adam's son Cain. Others claim the first part to be derived from ybl (Y-B-L), meaning "to produce." The second part stems from the Aramaic qainaya (Q-A-I-N-A-Y-A ) meaning "metalworker." There are other suggested origins, but these seem most likely since they refer to his occupation, that of working with metals.

Living up to his name, Tubalcain became a metalworker, forging tools out of bronze and iron. He is said, in fact, to have been the inventor of the forge, indicating he was the first skilled artificer in metals. The Bible also says he was an instructor of other metal craftsmen.

Tubalcain's father Lamech was a follower of Cain's wicked and murderous ways. Genesis 4:23-24 tells us a young man committed a seemingly small offense against him and Lamech not only killed him but bragged about it to his wives. Knowing God marked Cain with a sign and promised seven times vengence on anyone who killed Cain for murdering Abel, Lamech boasted God would likewise protect him seventy times seven, a claim which, unlike with Cain, did not come from God, but from Lamech's bloated ego.

Any vengance upon the wicked sons of Cain, including Lamech, did not pass to Tubalcain, who significantly impacted history with his discoveries in the art of metalworking. His cultural contributions are said therefore to be an illustration of the grace of God at work.

Tubalcain… you might simply say he was the eighth man from Adam, and the first known artificer in metals.

For the Whence Came You podcast, this is Steve Harrison with the Masonic Minute.

They Paved Paradise

Masonic education is all the rage with the crowd I run with; and this is, by the way, a good thing. I seem to hear more about Masonic education now than ever before ("ever before" being defined as since I joined the Craft 19 years ago).

We may not always stop to think that "Masonic education" is a broad term that can take many forms. It can be a deep, spiritual, esoteric subject that, frankly, sometimes winds up being over my head. Or it can be something lightweight – maybe an account of something a Brother did or even a funny anecdote. Usually the subject falls somewhere in between. Doesn't matter. Whatever form it takes, Masonic education is the hot topic du jour. Hallelujah. When we are new to the degrees and are asked what it is we want, we respond that we want light, and progressively more of it. In other words, our Masonic journey is a search for enlightenment; and the path for that journey is education. Keep it coming.

However, I hear a lot of dissent about some of the other things we do: "Oh, man, not another bean dinner," or "what's with all the service projects, what are we, the Rotary?" (No offense meant to the Rotary, a fine organization, but different than the Freemasons).

See, I like those things, too. The bean dinners, the meals before the meetings and all the social events give me a chance to get together with my Brothers and informally kick things around. Those conversations usually aren't very heavy but they're enjoyable. The social interaction we have with our Brothers is an important part of what our fraternity is. We don't want our organization to be all joking and no substance but I also wouldn't want to exclude it. All work and no play makes Hiram a dull boy.

Also, there are the service projects. In my area we help with the Child Identification Program (MoCHIP) which, in the past decade has helped return at least eight missing or abducted children to their homes, out of about a quarter million registered. That and other projects give the Brothers a sens of fulfillment. You know, it's the old, "it is better to give than receive" thing. Community service – let's have more of that, too.

So, recapping, when we get together as Brothers, we're doing a broad range of things: We have social interaction at our events; we help make our communities better places through our service projects; and we seek enlightenment.

Freemasonry needs all of these. In fact, couldn't we call our social interaction Brotherly Love, our community service Relief and our quest for enlightenment a search for Truth? Brotherly Love, Relief and Truth. Where have I heard that before?

We are more than Masonic education, and that is outright blasphemy to some. During this scary epidemic when we sit cooped up in our houses held hostage by a tiny unseen enemy, that fact may be more apparent than ever before. We have books and Internet and can have just about as much Masonic education as we want to dig out on our own. Those Lodge service projects are more or less on hold; and those social events, apart from a few online meetings for some, are non-existent. What is truth without its close companions brotherly love and relief? And now, at least temporarily, those companions are out of reach. We miss them. As the song says, "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot. Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone?"

Meet, Act, and Part — Denslow

My appearance on the Meet, Act, and Part podcast April 6, 2020:

A Tipping Point

Several months ago I wrote a piece for the Midnight Freemasons blog entitled, "The Meeting." In that article I speculated what it would be like in the future to visit my Lodge and attend a meeting in a virtual reality setting. There I saw old friends who were doing the same thing from afar, and for our Masonic education that night we got nothing less than a walking tour of the Loge des Neuf Sœurs as it appeared when Benjamin Franklin was in attendance. While some of the technology needed to do that is available today, it's not at the level I discussed in the article. We'll have to wait awhile before we can do things like that… or will we?

Unless you just landed on earth from a trip to the planet Neptune or some other far off place in the galaxy, you know that we are living in a strange, historic and even scary time as this Covid-19 menace, the Coronavirus, circulates among us. Many of us live trapped in our residences as we practice "social distancing" to ward off the disease.

We've become a nation of hermits. Every in-person Masonic meeting has been postponed or canceled. The week before this all came to a head I personally had five – count 'em five – Masonic meetings and that, in the following days abruptly became zero. You may have had the same experience and now we're all going through our own series of withdrawal pangs. What to do?

Well, we're a fraternity of intelligent guys who are well-aware of ways to keep up with events, check on our Brothers, friends and their families. This is, after all the age of social media. We also know ways to keep up with our Masonic education with a number of online facilities like the podcast you're listening to, the Masonic Roundtable, and a host of others.

Of course many of these tools put us in a position of practicing our Masonic craft in isolation. Sometimes this is a good thing, but other times, a little goes a long way. In our quest for Brotherly Love, Relief and Truth, the Brotherly Love aspect can fall behind if we can't get together.

So what about that little foray into science fiction I wrote about a couple years ago? Brothers, we're just about there. Oh, we didn't take a group tour of the loge des Noeuf Soeurs but just the other night I sat down in my office in my own home and attended a meeting hosted by the Scottish Rite in St. Louis.

Twenty-nine of us got together and heard a presentation and had a discussion about the Seventh Degree. It wasn't just one Brother presenting and the rest listening. It was all of us participating. We may be trapped at home but there are creative ways for us to get out and share that brotherhood we crave. My hat's off to my St. Louis Brothers for doing this. I understand they plan to make it a regular thing and I think this kind of thing will catch on.

Not only that, this may be a tipping point. I'm guessing these online discussions facilitated by technologies like Zoom and others, will be here to stay as yet another tool in our quest for Masonic education. The technology is there, it's fairly simple to use. Check it out. Set up your own meetings. It's a good alternative as we weather the storm. Stay safe, Brothers, and let's use everything technology offers to keep the social aspects of our fraternity alive for the duration.