Hoard accordingly was losing more and more in material worth, to yield to a higher spiritual content. The spiritual ascension of the Hoard into the Grail was accomplished in the German conscience, and [P. 294] the Grail, at least in the meaning lent it by German poets, must rank as the ideal representative or follower of the Nibelungen-Hoard; it, too, had sprung from Asia, from the ur-home of mankind; God had guided it to men as paragon of holiness.
(…)
{FEUER} The quest of the Grail henceforth replaces the struggle for the Nibelungen-Hoard, and as the occidental world, unsatisfied within, reached out past Rome and Pope to find its place of healing in the tomb of the Redeemer at Jerusalem, -- as, unsatisfied even there, it cast its yearning gaze, half spiritual half physical, still farther toward the East to find the primal shrine of manhood, -- so the Grail was said to have withdrawn from out the ribald West to the pure, chaste, reachless birth-land of all nations.” [373W-{6-8/48} The Wibelungen – Revised summer of 1849: PW Vol. VII, p. 293-294]
[374W-{6-8/48} The Wibelungen – Revised summer of 1849: PW Vol. VII, p. 295]
[P. 295] {FEUER} With the foundering of the Wibelungen, mankind had been torn from the last fibre whereby it still hung, in a sense, to its racial-natural origin. The Hoard of the Nibelungen had evaporated to the realm of Poetry and the Idea: merely an earthly precipitate remained as its dregs: real property. [374W-{6-8/48} The Wibelungen – Revised summer of 1849: PW Vol. VII, p. 295]
[375W-{6-8/48} The Nibelungen Myth: PW Vol. VII, p. 301]
[P. 301] {FEUER} The race of Giants, boastful, violent, ur-begotten, is troubled in its savage ease: their monstrous strength, their simple mother-wit, no longer are a match for Alberich’s crafty plans of conquest: alarmed they see the Nibelungen forging wondrous weapons, that one day in the hands of human heroes shall cause the Giants’ downfall. [375W-{6-8/48} The Nibelungen Myth: PW Vol. VII, p. 301]
[376W-{6-8/48} The Nibelungen Myth: PW Vol. VII, p. 302]
[P. 302] {FEUER} From the depths of Nibelheim the conscience of their guilt cries up to them: for the bondage of the Nibelungen is not broken; merely the lordship has been reft from Alberich, and not for any higher end, but the soul, the freedom of the Nibelungen lies buried uselessly beneath the belly of an idle Worm: Alberich thus has justice in his plaints against the Gods. [376W-{6-8/48} The Nibelungen Myth: PW Vol. VII, p. 302]
[377W-{6-8/48} The Nibelungen Myth: PW Vol. VII, p. 302-303]
[P. 302] {FEUER} Wotan himself, however, cannot undo the wrong without committing yet another: only a free Will, independent of the Gods themselves, and able to assume and expiate itself the burden of all guilt, can loose the spell; and in Man the Gods perceive the faculty of such free-will. In Man they therefore seek to plant their own divinity, to raise his strength so high that, in full knowledge of that strength, he may rid him of the Gods’ protection, to do of his free will what his own mind [P. 303] inspires. So the Gods bring up Man for this high destiny, to be the canceller of their own guilt; and their aim would be attained even if in this human creation they should perforce
