evolve into #154, Hagen’s Potion Motif, which is a variant of #42 based upon #43 (the Tarnhelm’s Transformations). #43 provides the transition from #42 to #154. And this entire set of motifs originates in Loge’s Motif #35, which is also the basis of #100, the Magic Fire Music (representing Loge’s ring of fire, the veil of Maya, or illusion, which protects Bruennhilde from all men except Siegfried). Wagner is drawing our attention to #154’s genealogy by having #42 segue into #154.
Porges’ account of Wagner’s rehearsal of the Ring at Bayreuth in 1876 suggests that Wagner consciously linked the Tarnhelm Motif #42 with its close cousin, the Motif of Hagen’s Potion #154, but provides us no explanation of their underlying connection:
“When Gunther angrily asks: ‘Was weckst du Zweifel und Zwist’ he rises from his seat and paces up and down the hall. As though by chance he approaches Hagen, who arrests his attention by a mysterious sign; at this moment the Magic Drink motive makes its first appearance, significantly preceded by a reminder of the Tarnhelm motive … .” [887W-{6-8/76} WRR, p. 119-120]
There is a simple logic which untangles this seeming motival complexity. If Siegfried does indeed abduct his muse of artistic inspiration, Bruennhilde, for Gunther, the artist-hero will have betrayed the secret of his own unconscious artistic inspiration, the unspoken secret of Wotan’s confession to Bruennhilde, to the light of day. Siegfried would thereby fulfill Alberich’s threat to overthrow the gods by bringing his Hoard of knowledge from the silent depths to the light of day, i.e., making the contents of the collective unconscious, the religious mysteries, conscious. It is precisely this that Hagen intends to accomplish. Siegfried is to somehow be manipulated into betraying this unconscious secret, of which he is the unwitting guardian, to Hagen. And by so doing it will be as if Wagner himself, in, for instance, his Ring, betrays the secret of its unconscious inspiration to his audience. Gunther and his fellow Gibichungs, who will constitute the audience for Siegfried’s narrative song in which he retails the story of his life in T.3.2, stand in here as Wagner’s metaphor for his own audience, the members of the public who experience his music-dramas.
The genealogical derivation of the Potion Motif #154 from Loge’s Motif #35, the Tarnhelm Motif #42, and the Transformation Motif #43, and its musical relatedness to Motif #48 (the Serpent Motif – representing existential fear, the basis of religious faith), follows from the same logic. The Tarnhelm in the gods’ and Loge’s (and therefore Siegfried’s) hands represents imagination, the creative, involuntary imagination of the dreaming collective-unconscious, in the service of the self-deception of religion, and the illusion of art. The imagination includes the Wagnerian concept of the “Wonder” discussed earlier, in which the musical motif comes to symbolize the comprehensive meaning of all the ideas, symbols, events, and characters with which it has been associated in the course of the drama, thus compressing all space and time into the here and now, through aesthetic intuition. But, just as Loge manipulated Alberich to use the Tarnhelm to place it, the Ring, and his Hoard in the gods’ hands, so Hagen will now manipulate Siegfried to use the Tarnhelm to place these sources of power in Hagen’s hands, and thus effectively back into Alberich’s hands, thus bringing the drama full circle. We will soon see how the Wagnerian Wonder, represented now by the Potion Motif #154 and its entire motival genealogy, aids Hagen in manipulating Siegfried unwittingly to further Hagen’s intent.
Siegfried had unwittingly foretold that he would betray Wotan’s Hoard of forbidden knowledge, represented by #150, to the light of day, when he told Bruennhilde that she gave him more than he
