throws it back to the First.) (#97:) If you want to know when that will be, (#87) (#15 vari: [with trills: is there any #35 vari or #42 influence?]) sisters, wind the rope (:#15 vari [with trills. is there a hint of #35 vari or #42?])! (#97)
The Second Norn has recounted how, after Wotan tamed Loge to serve the authority conferred on Wotan by his spear, Loge whispered wisdom to the god (The Second Norn may be alluding to Loge’s five requests in R.2 and R.4 that Wotan restore the Ring to the Rhinedaughters, suggested here perhaps by the presence of a #15 variant), and then gnawed at the runes on Wotan’s spear to gain his freedom from servitude to the gods. Given Loge’s status as the archetype for the revolutionary Waelsung heroes, particularly Siegfried, it makes sense that Loge would gnaw at Wotan’s spear to gain freedom from the gods’ rule, since the greatest of the Waelsung heroes, Siegfried, gained his freedom by chopping Wotan’s spear in half and penetrating Loge’s ring of fire to wake and win the redemptress Bruennhilde. Wotan had cast a spell on Loge with his spear to compel him to create the protective circle of fire around Bruennhilde, so by penetrating Loge’s ring of fire to win Bruennhilde, Siegfried not only breaches Wotan’s social contract, literally, by breaking the spear on which Wotan’s contract is engraved, but figuratively breaches it by penetrating the veil of illusion with which religious societies have preserved their mysteries, in order to gain access to Wotan’s hoard of forbidden knowledge, upon which religious faith has, up till now, maintained a tight seal. The mere fact that Wotan bound Loge to protect Bruennhilde’s sleep with his ring of fire (to insure that only an authentic, fearless hero wins her hand), though Loge was in the process of breaking free from the gods’ authority, is precisely the situation in which Siegfried finds himself: he serves Wotan’s need through his very defiance of Wotan’s law. Siegfried, in a sense, breaks the law in order to preserve it (transmuted of course into a higher law), just as the savior Jesus is said to have broken the Old Testament law to reconstitute it.
The Second Norn closes her account with another interesting detail of the story of Wotan’s involvement in his own demise: she foresees that he will light a fire composed of the logs of the dead World-Ash, with a torch made of his spear, splintered by Siegfried, which will burn Valhalla, and consume its denizens, the gods and heroes. Bruennhilde, his will, will perform this last act.
[T.P: E]
#97 begins to creep in now because Wotan had already (in S.3.1) consigned Erda and her wisdom to the oblivion of sleep and dreaming which would permit man’s religious self-deception to live on a while longer, in art. The First Norn notes that night is now, after all, waning, and that she can no longer see to find the strands of the rope of fate, as we hear #15 again, the motif which seems to have established itself as representing Bruennhilde’s protection of Siegfried from consciousness of Erda’s (and thus of the Norns’) fateful knowledge. #15, the Rhinedaughters’ “Rhinegold! Rhinegold!” tells us that Bruennhilde, who will now hold the Ring for Siegfried to keep its power safe (just as she has been holding for him the knowledge of his true identity, his prehistory, and his fate), is Siegfried’s surrogate Rhine, who temporarily neutralizes the Ring curse through her magical protection:
