than a divine or supernatural origin, which is to say, that in that case, godhead and immortality would be lost. The gods can’t afford to admit that Freia could satisfy the giants, as this would expose the link between man’s egoistic motives and man’s involuntary invention of the notions of Godhead and immortality. And of course they could never afford to give her up to the Giants, since they would lose their godhead. No, Fafner’s threat to puncture the illusion of the gods’ immortality merely represents the threat that the laws of nature (of which human mortality is one example) pose to religious faith.
Accordingly, Fafner introduces a very important motif which has two distinct segments, #30ab, which Dunning has accurately coined “Godhead Lost,” as Fafner describes to Fasolt how the gods would wither away and die if they could no longer taste Freia’s golden apples. For this very reason, Fafner, the spokesman for man’s (and the gods’) mortality, suggests they deprive the gods of her. Dunning noted, interestingly, that #30b is the primary basis for #97 (which also contains harmony based on the Ring Motif #19), the motif introduced in V.3.2 in association with Wotan’s threat to punish his daughter Bruennhilde by putting her to sleep so she’ll be vulnerable to any man who might come upon her and wake her. #97 is generally known as “Bruennhilde’s Magic Sleep.” Significantly, apropos of Dunning’s insight, in V.3.3 Wotan takes away Bruennhilde’s godhood as he is putting her to sleep. This point was missed by Cooke, who traced #97 instead primarily to #33b (though #33b may influence it). Fafner is a greater threat than Fasolt, the animal impulse which gives birth to the family and all social sentiments, because Fafner, as the self-preservation urge, or fear of death, is inimical to society and love, every bit as much as Alberich’s Ring of power (truth) is. And most important, fear, the self-preservation instinct, is evidently more fundamental and stronger than the impulse of love, just as the individual is a precondition for society, and more basic than it, founded as the individual is on a body rather than symbolic communication.
We know that Fafner represents the self-preservation instinct, or fear of death, because a large part of Siegfried is taken up with the Nibelung dwarf Mime’s attempt to get Fafner (by then transformed, like Alberich before him, into a serpent) to teach Siegfried the meaning of fear. Since fear of death is answered by religion’s promise of immortality to mortal men, this is why #29 is always associated with Fafner alone of the two giants, whereas Freia’s motifs #24 and #25, which represent her as the love goddess, are associated exclusively with the one brother solely interested in Freia as goddess of love, Fasolt.
Fafner, as the embodiment of fear, stands for a key concept in the Ring, and his importance lies in two very special facts about him. One is that, unlike Fasolt, Fafner will employ Alberich’s magical helmet, the Tarnhelm, to transform himself into a serpent, emulating Alberich, who similarly employed the Tarnhelm to transform himself into a serpent in R.3. Wagner draws special attention to Fafner’s kinship with Alberich by employing Motif #48 to represent the serpent into which both Alberich and Fafner transform themselves. Thus Fafner’s antisocial egoism is directly linked with Alberich’s quest to obtain power over the world, and power over his fellow men, through his Ring. Two, Fafner lives on after persuading his brother Fasolt to renounce love for the sake of power, and after killing Fasolt. The importance of this is that of the two Fafner is more important, and absorbs Fasolt. Fear, according to both Feuerbach and Wagner, is the key to man’s invention of the gods, is according to Feuerbach the key to religious faith:
