God did create the world, but numerous spirits gradually embodied it, embellished it, ennobled it or at least made it bearable for life. Among those greatest heavenly masters and craftsmen, blacksmiths stand out.
The Vedic Brahmanaspati, as the first blacksmith, forged the world. The blows of his hammer probably still echo through the universe. And the one who has hearing can surely hear them. One of them was Pythagoras, who was inspired by blacksmiths to set up a theory about the harmony of the spheres.
More famous than Brahmanaspati is Hephaestus, the god of blacksmiths, who was revered by all the other gods. Even today, some say, there is hardly a corner of the earthly and heavenly realm that could be compared to Olympus in its beauty, and that is all, of course, Hephaestus’s merit.
And the Bible talks about blacksmiths. The biblical Tovel is the forefather of those who forge copper and iron. In a way, Tovel is the patron angel of all blacksmiths.
And there are several other spirits, whose main activity is to protect and teach the blacksmith, but not to make the story long. The Chinese say that a connection with Heaven is made through the forge. The Taoist poet Xi Kang practiced forging under a willow tree, not out of obligation or leisure, but to establish a connection with heaven. In China, only the initiated knew how to forge a sword, if it succeeded, through tempering and mixture, a union of water and fire and a perfect primordial unity between yin and yang would be created.
