is evident to the thinker [Alberich], by whom religion is viewed objectively, which it cannot be by its votaries.” [45F-EOC: p. 13]
“… reason [Alberich, in possession of the Ring], at least as long as reason, not yetdisciplined by observation of the world [i.e., before Alberich has acquired enough experience of the world, accumulated a large enough hoard of knowledge], regards itself uncritically as the essence of the world [Alberich took literally the Rhinedaughters’, i.e., his feelings’, promise that forging a Ring from the Rhinegold would grant him absolute power], … leads necessarily to the idea of divinity .” [Dark-Alberich is transformed into Light-Alberich, Wotan] [215F-LER: p. 97]
Alberich will not be so easily cheated out of his Ring as he was in the past because he now knows where Wotan is weak, namely, in the fact that Wotan paid the Giants with Alberich’s Hoard, Tarnhelm, and Ring for building Valhalla (in order to redeem the great, though illusory, promise of religious faith, Freia, the goddess of divine love and immortality, from all claim by Alberich’s real world), and can’t now take the Ring from Fafner lest Wotan break the contracts engraved on his spear, the social contract Wotan (collective man) made with his egoistic impulses, the Giants. But this is precisely what Wotan intends to do using his proxy Siegfried, who will, as Wotan desired, break Wotan’s spear in S.3.2. #81, the motif which expresses Wotan’s reluctant acknowledgment that Fricka’s accusation that Wotan has been behind all of the allegedly free and spontaneous heroic acts performed by Siegmund, is heard as Alberich notes that he now knows Wotan’s ways, and sees where he is weak. Wotan’s weakness, what he loathes in his own nature, lies in the fact that his whole world is a product of the power of Alberich’s Ring. This is important because Siegfried, the allegedly free hero Wotan has longed for (and failed to find in the sympathetic Siegmund), ultimately is just as much a product of Wotan’s fear of that inevitable end which Alberich is predestined to bring about, as Siegmund was.
Alberich seems at first not to have grasped that Wotan is now reconciling himself to the demise of the gods of Valhalla. Alberich’s warning that by virtue of trying to preempt Alberich’s threat to regain possession of his Ring by breaking Wotan’s contract with the Giants, Wotan would be relinquishing his power, surely falls on deaf ears at this point, because Wotan hopes that one of his proxy heroes will in fact preempt Alberich’s quest to restore his lost power by depriving Fafner of his rightful property, the Ring, and thereby effectively breaking Wotan’s spear of divine authority and law. However, Alberich will address this issue shortly.
While Siegmund was a moral hero, Siegfried is an artist-hero, but, contrary to Wagner’s so-confident assertions, neither acts of moral rectitude and self-sacrifice, nor works of art, are produced without motive. In both cases the motive may be subliminal, unconscious, or even instinctive, granting it the appearance of spontaneity and disinterestedness, but these subliminal or unconscious motives are motives nonetheless, and motif #81 embodies the notion that Wotan will always find his own craven nature, his egoism, behind all that he does, or his proxies do, to redeem himself from his true nature and corrupt history. That is why #81 is based on the Spear Motif #21, the motival expression of Wotan’s divine authority. As Alberich said, by virtue of the Tarnhelm’s power Alberich (man’s egoism) is everywhere, even where most unseen or unexpected.
{{ There seems to be another, perhaps vague, motival reference as Alberich asserts that he knows where Wotan is weak, and that Wotan is trapped by his agreement with the Giants. We seem to
