world, which is antithetical to the supernatural world of the allegedly immortal gods of Valhalla – and #54, the motif known as the “Twilight of the Gods.” #53, understood as the motival incarnation of the natural necessity of change, the ephemeral world, represents an elaboration of Feuerbach’s concept of “Natural Necessity,” i.e., the way things operate in nature, according to natural laws. This natural necessity includes, among other things, evolution of animate life from lower to higher forms, which eventually produces reflective consciousness, and also the necessity that a given character (say, the genius) must act in a certain, characteristic way. It is natural necessity, fate in its scientific sense, Erda’s knowledge, which Erda’s daughters the Norns spin into their rope of fate. This includes the necessity of death.
The first thing we note here is that Erda, who speaks the wisdom of nature itself (and in the Ring nature is the creator and embraces even the gods), does not suggest that Wotan restore the Ring to the Rhinedaughters, but insists instead that he yield it to the Giants who have agreed to accept it (and the rest of the Nibelung Hoard) in lieu of Freia as payment for building Valhalla. The solution to this apparent conundrum is the following. While the Rhinedaughters’ joy in the pre-fallen Rhinegold represents the spontaneity of undifferentiated, preconscious animal instinct, the distinction between the amorous Giant Fasolt and his selfish brother, the Giant Fafner, represents the division of instinct entailed by man’s acquisition of the power of conscious thought (the Ring), which distinguishes subject from object. Thus the Rhinedaughters’ undifferentiated animal life instinct was split into fear and desire, fear being the instinct of self-preservation which isolates us from others, and desire being the sexual, and therefore the familial and social drive which orients us outward towards others. But man knows preconscious animal instinct (the Rhinedaughters) only in the new form granted him by consciousness, as desire (Fasolt) and fear (Fafner). Therefore, when Erda warns Wotan that he ought to flee the curse on the Ring by yielding it to the Giants, she is figuratively telling Wotan that he should escape the curse of consciousness by placing the Ring under the control of his emotions of fear and desire, the only form in which conscious man now experiences what for preconscious animals would be undifferentiated life instinct, i.e., the Rhinedaughters. Yielding the Ring to the Giants is therefore a sort of ersatz, artificial restoration of it to the Rhinedaughters, i.e., an artificial restoration of preconscious feeling.
Though Wotan’s placing Alberich’s Ring of full consciousness on his finger makes Mother Nature’s knowledge wake in him, Erda’s warning to yield the Ring to the Giants represents religious man’s impulse to consign waking knowledge to oblivion by repressing it and submerging it in feeling. Metaphorically, Erda - whom Wotan will later virtually describe as the mother of fear - can be known objectively as Alberich does, in which case he who possesses full Ring consciousness cannot console himself with illusions inspired by heart-felt feeling. Or, she can be known subjectively, sympathetically, through feeling, i.e., through a restoration of that feeling of oneness with nature which presumably preceded consciousness’ split into subject and object, such as the Rhinedaughters enjoyed. Since conscious man can no longer restore the innocence lost to him through consciousness, he must resort to artificial means, a surrogate, and this is provided by man’s unconscious mind, a gift evolution provided man as a companion to his conscious mind, a place of refuge from it. This explains why Erda does not suggest Wotan restore the Ring to the Rhinedaughters, but suggests instead he yield it to the Giants. He must yield the Ring of consciousness to his antithetical feelings of desire (Fasolt) and Fear (Fafner), feelings which are already under the sway of conscious thought, as a place secure from the burden of conscious thought.
