man from the danger represented by this knowledge by taking possession of it aesthetically, in inspired art.
The motif expressing Wotan’s intent to put Bruennhilde to sleep is #97. According to Allen Dunning #97 is based directly on #30b, which was first introduced in R.2 when the Giant Fafner noted that the gods, deprived of Freia’s golden apples of sorrowless youth eternal, would wither away and die. For this reason Dunning christened #30b “Godhood Lost.” And of course, Wotan will take away Bruennhilde’s divinity, her godhood, just before putting her to sleep. Dunning points out that the harmony stemming from the Ring Motif #19 rises upward in thirds simultaneously with #97’s downward descent. Bruennhilde is now in possession of foreknowledge of the inevitable end of the gods, which is the same as saying that the so-called gods are not in fact gods, as Loge himself intimated when he noted that he is only ½ as “godlike” as the gods themselves, who are going down to destruction though they think themselves eternal. In other words, their self-proclaimed divinity is a sham. Wotan would not fear the end were he truly an immortal god. The fact that Fafner might have taken Freia from the gods, deprived them of their golden apples, and made them subject to death, is proof positive that they are not divine. The gods of Valhalla represent Feuerbach’s notion of collective, historical man, who aspires to transcendence, and who therefore is the true basis for our idea of godhead. By putting Bruennhilde to sleep Wotan is putting his potentially dangerous thoughts, his hoard of knowledge (represented now by the Ring) to sleep, so that it may waken only for the authentic artist-hero who is gifted with unconscious artistic inspiration, through which he may draw inspiration from man’s forbidden, fearful self-knowledge, without suffering from the paralyzing effect it would have were it conscious. Wotan’s artist-hero Siegfried will, then, fall heir to Loge’s cunning, through which the artist-hero can draw advantage, or inspiration, from the enemy’s envy, i.e., from Alberich’s threat. Alberich’s and Wotan’s hoard of knowledge of the inevitability of Alberich’s victory, and therefore the Ring curse, is made safe, tamed aesthetically, by virtue of its sublimation into that profound form of play Wagner calls inspired art.
Only an authentically unconsciously inspired artist-hero can safely access Alberich’s and Wotan’s hoard. That is why Bruennhilde forcefully argues that Wotan absolutely must protect her defenseless sleep with a defensive ring of fire (represented here by Loge’s motifs #35, #34, and #33b), the veil of Maya (Wahn), which both religion and art have constructed over millennia to hide the truth from man and replace it with a consoling illusion. Loge is the archetype for the Waelsung heroes, and particularly for Siegfried. Loge’s and Siegfried’s primary function is to employ the cunning of the artistic imagination to create and sustain man’s religious self-deception embodied by Valhalla. Loge’s protective ring of fire represents this self-deception, and the fear of penetrating it stems from intuition of the fearful truth hidden within it. Our reluctance to inquire too deeply into the cause of the magic of art and love, stems from the same cause as religious man’s fear of bringing his faith into question, his fear of doubt, which ultimately stems from fear of the truth, and fear of death (Fafner). Loge’s fire will therefore frighten away everyone except the chosen, fearless artist-hero, the very hero to whom Bruennhilde gave birth by hearing Wotan’s confession. She is the womb of Wotan’s wishes, in whom Wotan has planted his seed through his confession. As Wagner put it himself:
[P . 220] “ … if I wish to demonstrate that music (as a woman) must necessarily be impregnated by a poet (as a man), then I must ensure that this glorious woman is not
