In other words, the practically limitless power Alberich (representing, as Wotan does, human nature itself, collective humanity) attains over time through his Ring power, through the labor of those men dedicated to serving it, is within the limits of natural possibility. It is limitless in the sense that man’s knowledge can always advance, but, unlike the power of the gods, it is not omnipotent and absolute. But the power man assigns to the gods, including their power to redeem man from his natural limitations, exceeds the possible, and in this sense sins against Mother Nature.
We find a metaphorical basis for Alberich’s accusation that Wotan sins against Mother Nature (Erda) if he co-opts Alberich’s Ring to preserve religious illusion from the truth, in Feuerbach’s suggestion that by positing the existence of the supernatural, a ground for nature outside nature’s self, man figuratively kills life, betrays, sins against and therefore murders Mother Nature:
“… if you imagine that natural life … has its ground outside of itself, … you strike life dead.” [11F-TDI: p. 86]
“How untrue we Germans have become to our source, our mother, and how unlike her, thanks to Christianity which taught us that heaven is our home.” [211F-LER: p. 85]
“Nature has terminated and ended, and with its death, there arises over it a new world, the spirit.” [8F-TDI: p. 73] [See also 336F]
And here Wagner paraphrases Feuerbach, suggesting the day will come when man will free himself from his last heresy, which taught him to see himself as a mere instrument to an end (God) which lay outside himself:
“Let us glance … for a moment at this future state of Man, when he shall have freed himself from his last heresy, the denial of Nature, -- that heresy which has taught him hitherto to look upon himself as a mere instrument to an end which lay outside himself. When Mankind knows, at last, that itself is the one and only object of its existence, and that only in the community of all men can this purpose be fulfilled … . (…) This Heavenly Father will then be no other than the social wisdom of mankind, taking Nature and her fulness for the common weal of all.” [410W-{6-8/49} Art and Revolution: PW Vol. I, p. 57]
And Wagner also echoes Feuerbach in describing the heavenly father (or Wotan) as collective man’s social wisdom. Wagner is effectively saying that Wotan will be redeemed from his sin against Mother Nature only after we humans have acknowledged nature as our Mother, our true source, and have recognized that we, collective humanity, having invented God, are god.
The radical importance of this metaphor - which expresses the fact that by positing the existence of the supernatural man not only figuratively sins against his true mother, Nature, but kills her - lies in the fact not only that it is the basis for Alberich’s accusation against Wotan, but it is perhaps the basis for something quite striking which characterizes three of the four heroes of Wagner’s mature music-dramas. For not only will Wotan’s heir (the heir not only to Wotan’s desire for redemption, but also the heir to Wotan’s sins) Siegfried hold himself responsible for his mother’s death, since in giving him birth she (literally his blood-mother Sieglinde – but figuratively, Erda) died, but Tristan also blames himself for having been born through his mother’s death. Furthermore, Parsifal holds
