scientific world-view, the world-view for which I posit Alberich and his son Hagen as metaphor. In other words, in Feuerbach’s view God must be natural, not supernatural, to have any link with nature at all, even as its creator. And this only serves to demonstrate Feuerbach’s argument that no metaphysical speculation can alter the fact that we must have had a natural origin. Since God on Feuerbach’s view is a human invention (though an involuntary one), and man is a product of nature, God also has a natural origin. It is in this sense also that Wotan and the gods are a byproduct of Alberich’s forging of the Ring of consciousness, which is itself a product of evolution, nature’s necessity. As Feuerbach says in his remarks above, “… consciousness develops itself only out of nature.”
It is implicit in Feuerbach’s recognition that good and evil, spirit and matter, are actually one, and originate in nature, not god or the devil, that nature, the true creator of the world (or, to speak more accurately, not the creator of the world, but simply, the world), is amoral, and that only humans invent value and impute it to the world. Thus Cosima recorded that Wagner (following Feuerbach’s logic) described the Marcion heresy, the belief in an amoral primal being or creator, as an admirable idea:
“R. spoke recently of the heresy of the Marcionites, which consisted in recognizing a primal being who was neither completely good nor completely evil; admiration for this sensible form of cognition.” [854W-{7/1/74}CD Vol. I, p. 770]
Wotan also provides Mime with the history of his Spear of authority and law, describing how he cut it from the holiest branch of the World-Ash Tree, whose motif Dunning describes here as the compound #2/#53, and Cooke describes as a rhythmic variant of #53. However, Dunning doesn’t grant the World-Ash Motif its own number designation, #146, until its definitive introduction in T.P.1, as the Norns provide their own version of world-history, repeating some of the things Wotan is now telling Mime. The orchestra introduces Motif #115 as Wotan proclaims that the wielder of the spear, Wotan, rules the world. This motif has therefore often been called the “Power of the Gods Motif,” but it will recur later in Twilight of the Gods, perhaps ironically, in association with the twilight of the gods.
The World-Ash, whose most sacred branch Wotan broke off to manufacture his Spear of Divine Authority, does double duty as a metaphor both for the Biblical Tree of Life, and also (in its embodiment as Wotan’s Spear, made from its holiest branch) the Tree of Knowledge, the cause of the Fall. Previously, during my discussion of the Spear in R.2, I noted Feuerbach’s metaphor, in which the Tree of Life can be construed as the network of all living things, the Tree of Life’s highest branch ultimately reaching the bitter fruit of human consciousness, through evolution. [See 23F] It is in this sense that the wound Wotan inflicted on the World-Ash Tree by breaking off its holiest branch to make his spear, ultimately causes the World-Ash to wither and die. This is another image of Wotan’s sin of matricide, religious man’s figurative killing of Mother Nature, Erda. {{ Cooke, through a somewhat tortuous argument, derived #115 from #21, the Motif of Wotan’s Spear, but #115 seems almost to be a variant of #1, the Primal Nature Arpeggio. In this regard it is perhaps significant that we hear both #2 and #53, which compounded comprise the World-Ash Motif #146, each of them derived directly from #1, as Wotan describes how he broke a branch from the holiest bough of the World-Ash to make his Spear. Certainly, #115’s definitive recurrences in the course of Twilight of the Gods, as a motif which speaks rather to the destruction of the gods
