his existential fear, but also of his fear of any knowledge of the truth which might undermine his faith in the gods’ capacity to grant man redemption in heaven through the gift of immortal life and divinely transcendent love (Freia). Once he has – with the Tarnhelm’s magic – transformed himself into a serpent, Fafner, the representative of this existential fear which is the basis for religion, will prohibit access to Alberich’s power embodied in his Ring, Tarnhelm, and Hoard of knowledge, becoming the incarnation of religious faith’s taboo on freedom of intellectual inquiry.
Wagner found in Feuerbach the basis for his emphasis in the Ring on the overwhelming import of existential fear, i.e., fear which transcends even the fear of death, its original source. This existential fear is the hidden source of inspiration for religious belief, the fear which is the main element in Alberich’s Ring curse. Feuerbach called fear religion’s basis. [See 196F] And he noted that this fear which gave birth to religion is not any specific fear of any particular object, but the abstract, generalized, existential fear which is the inevitable product of the universal, limitless power of the human mind and imagination:
“When we explain religion by fear, we must … take into account not only the lowest form of fear, fear of one natural phenomenon or another, the fear that begins and ends with a storm at sea, a tempest, or an earthquake, in other words the fear that is circumscribed in time and space, but also the fear that is limited to no particular object, the perpetual, ever present fear which embraces every conceivable misfortune, in a word, the infinite fear of the human soul.” [319F-LER: p. 287]
“ … the religious imagination is not the free imagination of the artist, but has a practical egoistic purpose, or in other words, … the religious imagination is rooted in the feeling of dependency and attaches chiefly to objects that arouse it. (…) This feeling of anxiety, of uncertainty, this fear of harm that always accompanies man, is the root of the religious imagination … .” [269F-LER: p. 196]
In fact, Wagner himself said that the whole purpose of his Ring was to show how the existential fear which Feuerbach described came into being, and came to rule the affairs of men, after man lost his love and innocence (i.e., after man’s evolutionary acquisition of conscious mind freed him from his dependence on animal instinct to satisfy his needs):
[P. 306] “ … fear of the end is the source of all lovelessness, and this fear is generated only when love itself is [P. 307] beginning to wane. How did it come about that a feeling which imparts the highest bliss to all living things was so far lost sight of by the human race that everything that the latter did, ordered and established was finally conceived only out of a fear of the end? My poem [the Ring] shows the reason why.” [613W-{1/25-26/54} Letter to AugustRoeckel: SLRW, p. 306-307]
Wotan’s waking dream, the gods’ heavenly abode Valhalla, with its soul, the goddess of divine love and immortality, Freia, was, in effect, established as man’s illusory refuge from this existential care and fear, a point Wotan will make in the finale of The Rhinegold when he describes Valhalla, with Freia now safely restored to the gods, as a fortress safe from dread and dismay.
