Of all the crafts and professions other than the priesthood, none has been more closely connected with the religious taditions of Western peoples than mining and metallurgy. Not so long ago our ancestors would have found it incredible that people could not see the connections between mining, metallurgy, and the sacred, just as we now find it incredible that they could. What was a commonplace to the European mind for millennia has for us become a matter of the deepest obscurity.

This is a matter of more than historical interest. It goes to the heart of how we think about work, about...