In much the same way the Christians say the physical, fallen creation belongs to Satan, though they only grant the physical world to Satan because they presuppose a more substantial spiritual world of redemption from this one. But what if there be no “other world”!
And, because secular materialists such as Alberich and Hagen adhere to the natural laws of this world, Wagner predicts the inevitable victory of their objective world-view over that of idealism, which follows from Feuerbach’s estimation of the fates of Christianity vs. science. Thus, we see here a scientific basis for Erda’s prophecy of the twilight of the gods at Alberich’s hands. Note that Wagner accords the Jews eventual, inevitable rule over the world, just as Wotan acknowledges that Alberich’s son Hagen will inherit the world, because according to Wagner, the Jews, like Alberich, adhere to the laws of this world, and these are the only laws which have any force or power, while religion and art, which posit or express the longing for man’s transcendent value, are powerless:
[P. 271] “Not into the remotest contact is he [the Jew] brought with the religion of any of the civilised (gesittete) nations; for in truth he has no religion at all - merely the belief in certain promises of his god which in nowise extend to a life beyond this temporal life of his, as in every true religion, but simply to this present life on earth, whereon his race is certainly ensured dominion over all that lives and lives not [As the Rhinedaughters promise Alberich world-dominion through his Ring-power]. … the hardest calculation lies all cut and dried for him in an instinct shut against all ideality. A wonderful, unparalleled phenomenon: the plastic daemon of man’s [P. 272] downfall in triumphant surety … .” [1068W-{1-2/81} Know Thyself – 2nd Supplement to ‘Religion and Art’: PW Vol. VI, p. 271-272]
“… I consider the Jewish race the born enemy of pure humanity and all that is noble in man: there is no doubt that we Germans especially will be destroyed by them, and I may well be the last remaining German who, as an artist, has known how to hold his ground in the face of a Judaism [i.e., the scientific, secular, materialist world-view] which is now all-powerful.” [1107W-{11/22/81} Letter to King Ludwig II of Bavaria: SLRW, p. 918]
In his nihilistic desire to end the world and all the ideals he has striven for within it, Wotan was prompted by his conviction of the futility of fighting against Alberich, who has the truth on his side. However, there is still a way out, a temporary form of redemption, that Wotan had only dimly foreseen, an escape hatch he hadn’t looked for. If he accepts the end of the gods as an idea, as a concept, and no longer stakes religious faith’s claim on the power of truth (a claim on Alberich's Ring), religious feeling can live on as expression in art, minus claims to truth which are inevitably subject to refutation.
We find this concept first broached in cryptic form in Wagner’s meditations on the meaning of his first important opera, The Flying Dutchman, whose hero, like Wotan, is cursed to roam the world without finding redemption, and therefore seeks world-end, though an alternative form of redemption is in store for him if he can find a sympathetic woman, on earth, who will lovingly sacrifice herself for him, or at least be willing to do so. The curse of irredeemable world-wandering the Dutchman (or Wandering Jew) suffers from was, like Alberich’s curse against Wotan, the consequence of the religious sin of world-denial: when the Dutchman was unable to
