by Wotan’s repression of his self-knowledge into his unconscious mind Bruennhilde, was of course the explanation behind his fearless heroism, and also the reason why, for a time, he was immune from Alberich’s curse on the Ring, the curse of consciousness. But now, by virtue of this very foolishness that once protected him, he has lost this protection forever, since his foolishness left him ignorant of – and thus not fore-warned of - dangers to come. As Siegfried said in self-defense to Bruennhilde in T.P.2, she should not chide him that her teaching of Wotan’s runes left him untaught. The essence of the Rhinedaughters’ critique is that Siegfried’s heroism, strength, and indomitable will, were all the product of his blindness, but his blindness, which allowed him to live solely in the present (freed from Erda’s fearful knowledge of all that was, is, or will be, free therefore evidently from fate), was Bruennhilde’s gift to him.
Pursuing their critique, they add that though he swore oaths, he doesn’t heed them. I have explained how, in Siegfried’s earnest effort to honor his oath to protect Gunther’s honor and grant him the privilege of marriage with the world’s most wondrous woman, Bruennhilde (redemption through music), Siegfried unwittingly betrayed his oath to Gunther (Siegfried’s audience), and simultaneously betrayed the oath he once swore to Bruennhilde, to honor her status as his muse of inspiration and not abuse it. Siegfried, the Rhinedaughters say, also possesses runes which he has not heeded, echoing Siegfried’s remark to Bruennhilde that her teaching left him untaught. But this was Siegfried’s virtue, that he could draw subliminal inspiration from the most horrible thoughts man (Wotan in his confession) has ever entertained, and transmute or sublimate them into the most profound, blissful art.
Now Woglinde adds, significantly - and accompanied here appropriately by #149, representing Bruennhilde’s inspiration of Siegfried’s new adventures in art, and by #176, the motif representing Siegfried’s going astray from the Woodbird’s path of music, which once led him to his true muse Bruennhilde - that a most hallowed gift was granted to him, yet he doesn’t know he has cast it away. This of course was the gift of Bruennhilde’s magical protection from the wounds of foresight, and her unconscious inspiration of his redemptive art, a gift which he took with him out into the world of men. And the other Rhinedaughters add, accompanied again by #176, that the Ring alone, which will deal him death, he wishes to keep. But then, this was the inevitable result of natural necessity in the evolution of consciousness. Having consigned Siegfried to the fate he’s chosen, the Rhinedaughters now turn to Bruennhilde who, though she once refused to return the Ring to the Rhine for the gods’ sake, at Waltraute’s behest, they now assume will heed their message (that is to say, once Siegfried, Bruennhilde’s raison d’etre, is dead).
And now, with ominous horns signaling the arrival of Hagen, Gunther, and the Gibichung hunting party, that hunting party whose objective is Siegfried himself, Siegfried’s calls his assassins to him with the horn with which he once sought his boon companion, and Siegfried’s final moment is come.
