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Who is Tubal Cain by Carol Stuart Jones and Blackthorn. June 2008
This isn’t by any means an exhaustive, exhausting, fully referenced academic piece. Here information from the most relevant sources for our purposes have been brought forward for interest’s sake, other material and opinions exist.
The name itself suggests much from it‘s Hebraic origin.
Tubal conveys the meanings of bringer/bearer and also ram’s horns,
while Cain translates as forger of the sword, or blacksmith.
Put together, (ram’s) horned bringer of smith craft, could be one rendition.
His stories are to be found in Judaic etc. scripture, particularly the suppressed apocryphal kind, and also in the legends of Free Masonry.
Where the reader is informed he “taught the use and working of metal ores and iron.”
Curiously some sources also describe him as a shepherd, this can be read as a metaphor for guardian of his flock, and certainly links in with having the ram as a totem. Alternatively since Cain killed Abel the shepherd it could also mean Cain and thence the line of Cain usurped the victims totem.
Tubal Cain is the 7th generation from Eve’s son Cain, the changeling, agriculturist, murderer and outcast.
His father is Lamekh = god’s servant, his mother is Zillah = darkness
and his sister is Naamah = pleasure.
Last in his line, he is murdered by his own father before he reproduces, but other versions of the tale exist, from Masonic texts for example where he and his son survive “the flood“ by hiding in the mines, and thus by assumption the line continues. The whole concept of “witch blood” hinges on this survival, Tubal Cain is seen as the ancestor of those with fire in their blood.
He has been identified by some to be the real life Ubaid King,
Mes Kalam Dug, who ruled in the cradle of civilisation in 3200BCE.
He could also be the inspiration for Hosheng / Haoshana, an early Persian mythic King, and also a form of Azazel, Enlil, Shiva, Vulcan, Thor and Wayland, to name but a few.
Unravelling millennia of folk tales and obfuscation is no easy matter.
In one sense these legends, preserved in oral traditions of story telling, long before committed to writ, describe man’s early technological developments, and the consequential progression from a hunter gatherer nomadic lifestyle, to settlement, the foundation of city states and kingship.
Reductionist argument would suggest that men became heroes, became gods… which is fine for personal alchemy. We adopt a faith in a spiritual element and by gods infer immortal Spirit.
Without a doubt the Jews adopted the legends of other peoples especially during the Babylonian captivity.
Here in the very place associated with the dawn of civilisation, legends inspired by the past ( Ubaid, Sumer ) abounded. The Jews produced a new vision of the Watchers, angelic beings who descended to
Earth of their own free will to impart the gifts of civilisation and found dynasties.
These powerful beings were at times depicted or envisaged bearing the horns or horned crown of their celestial dynasty, a pan ( ! ) global mark of divinity recognised since the dawn of humanity.
Their totems included many horned beasts, including, the goat, the ram, and strangely enough, the viper.
In the apocryphal book of Enoch we are informed the watcher Azazel = God has been made strong, “taught men to make swords and breastplates and made known to them the metals of the Earth and the art of working them; and bracelets and ornaments; and the use of antimony (stibium) and the beautifying of the eyelids; and all kinds of costly stones and all colouring tinctures.”
Aside from attractive eyeliner, antimony has another use. It is the essential alchemical ingredient in the process of producing the philosopher’s stone.
Azazel, the active force of Godhead, the master of the primal fire, is the father of alchemy, this is not the vulgar manufacture of gold from lead, nor advanced 21st century metallurgy, this is the process of human transformation, the accruing of spiritual wealth.
 In the Masonic text, “The Temple Legend” * Tubal Cain instructs Hiram
in alchemy;“…be without fear, I have rendered thee incombustible.
Cast thyself into the flames.” Hiram threw himself into the furnace, and where others would have found death he tasted ineffable delights.”
To 21stcentury readers this reads as a hellish experience. However fire has not always been regarded with such negativity.
Old beliefs are still held dear in orthodox Christianity where the world of eternal spirit is the “body” of God; like the Gnostics’ “divine container.”
This is envisaged as a fluid fire where the righteous, the people who have worked to be there experience bliss, and where the sinners experience torment.
Theology accepts that God is perfect hate as well as perfect love.
It’s not a massive leap of intellect to understand the link from here to Hell fire, devils and all that nonsense, but empowerment of the common man has never been favoured politics.
It’s no surprise then that Azazel / Tubal Cain has, over time, been identified variously with Satan, Iblis, and Lucifer the Light bearer.
Before the arrival of electricity there was no distinction between light and fire. Perhaps this name retains a memory of the truth, as does Sufi belief;
“Whoever does not learn adherence to Divine Unity from Iblis is an
unbeliever.” Ahmad Ghazali.
In the Alan Parker film “Angel Heart” Lucifer, played by Robert Deniro, asks only one thing of Harold Angel (Mickey Rourke) and that is - know thyself, it is Angel’s actions that damn him including his spiritual blindness.
We certainly hope to fare better;
“Tubal Cain forges our human personalities until we learn how to do it for ourselves. Only then can we partake of his power, which is our heritage.” Ann Finnin (2007).
The ones who attain this level, the successful alchemists arrive “where liberty reigns” to “taste the fruit of the tree of knowledge.” *Such a person becomes an enlightened being whilst still incarnate, at one with the gods, he or she, has achieved Heaven on Earth.
Witches, heretics, magicians and masons have all been vilified for reaching for godlike qualities, all at some point have been labelled as satanic. At certain points of history the outcast have even banded together, and exchanged lore, content in their conviction of truth and unity.
That Truth unifies and for no small reason did Roy Bowers, the Magister of our clan in the 1960s, describe godhead as Truth and Beauty.
His critics then as now, insist he made it all up, that there was no witch great grandfather, no aunt Lucy, and that he must have been fantasising about visiting lodges of cunning men and seeing the hammer and tongues of the blacksmith’s forge at the altar.
We have NO cause whatsoever to doubt He was active as a hereditary witch, and it was not all made up.
People forget that before the repeal of the witchcraft act care was taken to leave no evidence, this makes reconstruction hard for the academic and easy for the charlatan. If his system didn’t work, and hadn’t endured anyone would agree this was a fake, validation, results and the test of time prove otherwise.
Where ever it was he came from - we know the truth - one could argue to his detractors that he hit upon something real.
Clan members are often engaged in detailed research. Nothing can beat those moments of revelation when the connections are made between seemingly disparate pieces of information, and suddenly the wisdom of his lore shines forth making perfect sense.
He identified with Tubal Cain, sore to have been brought up in a Methodist - and no extra curricular activity - branch of the family. Maybe he saw his grandfather as a Lamekh, who he held responsible for making him the last of his line, responsible also for evoking the curse of Cain…
What the families’ superficial, social front faith had been prior to this, we may never know, It wasn’t unusual for witch families to attend a church or other place of public worship, and this wouldn’t be done solely out of fear, the wise blood recognised a part of a greater truth hid within revealed scripture and practice, they were not about to turn their noses up at any resource on offer.
Interestingly Methodism had a bit of a thing for the watchers though…so that could have had an influence.
Roy even worked for a time as a blacksmith, and his lore contains many references to the smith’s craft as indeed it does to “The Good Book” .
What was true then is good to run now and that is, that this eclectic mix is not interfaith, but a return to source.
But what of alchemy?
Roy embraced apotheosis, “I am the devil in fact” said he, what is this if not alchemy by another name?
While Roy’s immediate biological line is silent, those adopted into his clan are now finding their voice on a global scale.
Autonomous groups within the clan enter its transforming mysteries at any point of the old histories of the spread of civilisation, particularly the spread of smith craft.
Through lineage they aspire to connect with the ancestors, those gone before into spirit and thence godhead, to emulate their knowledge and follow in their wake.
Copyright © Carol Stuart Jones 2008
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