the tale of the first blacksmith, Tubal Cain, mentioned in Genesis as “the forger of all instruments bronze and iron.” (Genesis 4:22)
“Ye shall understand that this son Tubal Cain was [the] founder of smiths’ craft, and of other crafts of metal, that is to say, of iron, of brass, of gold, and of silver…” - Masonic Cooke Manuscript, dated around 1490
From
Tubal Cain with others prophesied God’s plan to take vengeance on Mankind for their sins. But whether or not it came by way of fire or water, they knew they must devise a way to “save the sciences that they [had] found . . .” After taking counsel, they turned to two stones in which to inscribe their sciences for posterity, should all that mankind had built and knew be lost to a catastrophe. Thus the wise Jabal, most cunning in science, inscribed “in the II pillars all the science[s], and crafts . . .”
“And after this flood many years, as the chronicle telleth, these II pillars were found, and as the Pilicronicon saith, that a great clerk that [was] called Pythagoras found that one, and Hermes, the philosopher, found that other, and they taught forth the sciences that they found therein written.”
So it was that Pythagoras and Hermes entered the Masonic tradition. Hermes was at once “the philosopher” or “father of wise men,” and Pythagoras is depicted an early inheritor of ancient wisdom.