Gnosticism, Schopenhauer and The Ring of the Nibelungs

A one-sentence description of Gnosticism: a religion that differentiates the evil god of this world (who is identified with the god of the Old Testament) from a higher more abstract God revealed by Jesus Christ, a religion that regards this world as the creation of a series of evil archons/powers who wish to keep the human soul trapped in an evil physical body, a religion that preaches a hidden wisdom or knowledge only to a select group as necessary for salvation or escape from this world.

From the Early Christian Writings Website 

If you have followed my commentaries on The Ring of the Nibelungs so far, you will have seen that the dark, and fatalistic world of the Ring is an allegory our own world. It represents a loveless world ruled over the God of storms, wrath and war — Wotan. It is a cruel world where, in the words of Gloucester from Shakespeare's King Lear:

As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods,
They kill us for their sport. 

King Lear Act 4, scene 1, 32–37

We have also seen how Wotan, the Germanic God of storms and war, is identical to that of Yahweh Elohim, the vengeful God of war and storms in the Old Testament. We have also looked at Wagner's well known deep antipathy towards the Yahwistic theological basis of Judaism, that forms the cornerstone of all Abrahamic religions, but also his belief in the redemptive apocalypse of the Untergang of Ahasvar, that would unite the Jews into the oneness of humanity. The apocalypse at the end of Götterdämmerung, can thus be seen as the Untergang of the masculine and warlike Yahweh Elohim, consumed by the fires of the divine Love of Brünnhilde, the Eternal Feminine — the embodiment of the redemptive wisdom of Sophia.

Today, I want to ask the question whether Wagner's thinking is fundamentally Gnostic in character. The reason is not because I myself consider myself a Gnostic, and wish to impose my brutally narrow minded prejudices on Wagner like Hitler did, but simply because it casts an extraordinarily illuminating light on Wagner's art. Nor should other readers think I am conventionally religious. Actually, the only reason I know anything about Gnosticism is thanks to that most Feuerbachian (God as the projection of the Inner Self) and Schopenhauerian (mind as libido and archetype, in place of world as will and representation) thinker — Carl Jung. Indeed, I hope you will find what you are about to read to be something of a revelation.

First of all, in the Gnostic tradition, the world was created by an evil God. Sometimes the creator is identified as Yahweh Elohim of the Old Testament, but depending on the school of Gnosticism, at other times, the creator is identified as Lucifer. In another school of thought, such as that found in the recently rediscovered Gospel of Judas, the world was created by Yadaboath, the "rebel" defiled with blood, while man was created by Saklas, the "fool": hardly a ringing endorsements of our world (see the discussion on Gnostic schools of thought in The Gospel of Judas ed Kasser, National Geographic, 2006).

Whatever the precise details of the identity of the creator, the creation myth by an evil power is used to explain why the world is so deeply and fundamentally fallen – that is, as an explanation of why there is so much evil and suffering in the world. It is an answer to the age old theological question as to why, if God is omnipotent why He/She/It would allow such appallingly monstrous things to happen as they do. An Enlightened and Loving God, in the Gnostic answer to this question, could never have created so dark and evil a world as the present one. Only a madman could have created such a dark and fallen world as this one — to paraphrase Schopenhauer. For this reason, Judaism was often considered little more than a form of devil-worship by the Gnostic Cathars (the subject of The Da Vinci Code), who nonetheless showed great tolerance towards Jews. It is possible that the Knights of the Holy Grail in the Medieval Parzifal legend refered to the Cathars.

Wagner himself in his late Bayreuth writings tended to strongly differentiate between the "Judenweltmacher Jehova" (the Jewish world-creator Jehova) with the "Gestalt des Erlösers" (the form of the Saviour) — that is, a Christian Saviour*. As in the Gnostic world view, the Yahwistic creator of this fallen world, and its Saviour, are entirely different beings. In Kunst und Religion (Art and Religion) Wagner was to write of the:

Erkenntnis der Hingefälligkeit der Welt und der hieraus entnommenen Anweisung zur Befreiung von derselben 

recognition of the fallenness [Hingefälligkeit] of the world and the directive toward liberation that comes from this

He was summarising Schopenhauer, but in talking of the essential fallenness of the world, which touches and characterises its essential Being — Wagner even uses the remarkably Heideggerian term Dasein — he could have been discussing Gnosticism.


In Religion and Art (1880) Wagner makes it particularly clear that he unequivocally differentiates between Yahweh Elohim, dark and vengeful God of war, and the Saviour, Jesus Christ:

Obviously, it is not Jesus Christ, the Saviour, whom our military clergy praise as a paragon in front of the assembled battalions, before the beginning of the slaughter. Even if they name Him, they really mean: Jehova, Yahweh, or one of the Elohim, who hates all other gods other than himself, and who wants to be enchained to his beloved people. From this we can see that our overly sophisticated civilisation will not contrive to unmask its totally unchristian provenance. We find it impossible to explain the Gospel, let alone contrive to justify it, even though we are initiated into it from a tender age. Thus we have ourselves a situation in which we can very well discern the triumph of the enemies of the Christian faith. 

Offenbar ist es nicht Jesus Christus, der Erlöser, den unsere Herren Feldprediger vor dem Beginne der Schlacht den um sie versammelten Bataillonen zum Vorbild empfehlen; sondern, nennen sie ihn, so werden sie wohl meinen: Jehova, Jahve oder einen der Elohim, der alle Götter außer sich haßte und sie deshalb von seinem treuen Volke unterjocht wissen wollte. Ersehen wir hieran, daß unserer so komplizierten Zivilisation selbst nur die Verhüllung ihrer durchaus unchristlichen Herkunft nicht gelingen will, und kann unmöglich das Evangelium, auf das wir trotzdem in zartester Jugend bereits vereidigt werden, zu ihrer Erklärung, geschweige denn zu ihrer Rechtfertigung herbeigezogen werden, so hätten wir in unserem Zustande sehr wohl einen Triumph der Feinde des christlichen Glaubens zu erkennen.

This is perfectly in keeping with the sort of Gnostic thinking that once formed a rival school of early Christian thought, until the thinking of its rivals eventually overran it to form mainstream Christianity, which then triumphantly declared Gnostic thought a heresy. These early rival schools of Christian thought saw Jesus as the true Light and Saviour, totally distinct from the dark and evil power that had created our evil world full of suffering. Of course, it means for both Wagner and the Gnostics, that all those who worship the creator of this world and man are worshipping an evil and false deity. This is the fundamental Gnostic critique of Yahwistic-Abrahamic religions — a heinous heresy in the eyes of mainstream theology, and one which it has been trying to desperately suppress for centuries. It is what ultimately lead to the persecution of the Gnostic Cathars, whose unrepentant followers were burnt at the stake. It also explains the complete lack of invocation of God in Parsifal, whose Knights of the Holy Grail are probably based on the order of the Cathars. There, in Parsifal, it is ultimately the light of Love and Compassion, as symbolised by the Sacrifice of Christ, that begets Salvation for humanity from the darkness of the Fallen world: it is a salvation that is supremely humanistic. Christ on the cross symbolises the sanctification of humanism — the deification of the Power of Love, and the light of the feminine wisdom of Sophia:

Indeed, in many forms of Gnosticism, there was often not even a concept of the Resurrection. Christ's death itself already symbolised his release from this his physical body that is part of this false, apparent world, created by a false and evil deity. Again, in Parsifal, absolutely no mention is made of the Resurrection.

Now in discussing his discovery of the philosophy of Schopenhauer, we also saw in an earlier post how Wagner wrote to Franz Liszt:

I have now devoted my time exclusively to a man, who - if only through his writings - has been a gift of heaven to me in my loneliness. This is Arthur Schopenhauer, the greatest philosopher since Kant, whose ideas - as he puts it - he has completed by thinking them through to their logical conclusion. . . . His central thought, the final denial of the will to live, is of frightful seriousness, but the only Salvation. Of course this idea was not new to me and no one can think it at all in whom it did not already exist. 

So Wagner says that Schopenhauer only confirmed what he already knew. The interesting thing about Schopenhauer is that in his tragic vision of the world, the Will is the fundamental force of Nature and that this force is a dark and all powerful force whose driving power is the very driving force of human psychology. As the driving passion of the human mind was selfish, greedy, and destructive, so too is the fundamental force of Nature as destructive as a storm. This is not the naively optimistic vision of a world created by a benevolent, loving Father, who on creating the world, "saw that it was good". Schopenhauer dismisses the belief in such a benevolent omnipotent creator as a form of madness. The dark vision of the Fallen world in Schopenhauer and that of the Gnostics is thus extremely similar. Moreover, Schopenhauer's vision of Salvation and that of the Gnostic Salvation have a lot in common too — since both involve liberation from enthralment by the false world of appearances. In the Gnostic vision it is false because the apparent world is one that leads worshippers on the wrong path to worshipping its false and evil creator.

In the Gnostic Gospel of Mary it is stated that there are the Seven Powers of Wrath: "the first form is darkness, the second desire, the third ignorance, the fourth is the excitement of death, the fifth is the kingdom of the flesh, the sixth is the foolish wisdom of flesh, the seventh is the wrathful wisdom". The Seven Powers of Wrath ask the Soul:

"Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?" The soul replied, saying, 'What binds me has been slain, and what surrounds me has been destroyed, and my desire has been brought to an end, and ignorance has died. In a [wor]ld, I was set loose from a world [an]d in a type, from a type which is above, and (from) the chain of forgetfulness which exists in time. From this hour on, for the time of the due season of the aeon, I will receive rest i[n] silence.

The root of falleness is intimately related to Desire:

Matter gave birth to a passion that has no equal, which proceeded from something contrary to nature. Then there arises a disturbance in its whole body.

In the Gospel of Mary, just as in Schopenhauer, Salvation comes from the extinguishment of Desire and the ultimate release into an apocalyptic cosmic dissolution:

And the soul said, 'Why do you judge me, since I have not passed judgement? I have been bound, but I have not bound (anything). They did not recognise me, but I have recognised that the universe is to be dissolved, both the things of earth and those of heaven.'

Compare this with what Wagner says about his discover of Schopenhauer:

But it was this philosopher who first showed it to me with such clarity. If I think back to the storms of my heart and the terrible cramp with which it clutched — against my Will — at the hope of living, indeed when these storms even now still rise in tempestuous strength — now at last I have found a palliative, which alone helps me to sleep in sleepless nights; it is the deep and innermost yearning for Death: total unconsciousness, absolute non-Being, the extinction of all dreams — unique and final Salvation!

Of particular interest is Schopenhauer's views on vengeance in The World as Will and Representation:

The desire of revenge is closely related to wickedness. It recompenses evil with evil, not with reference to the future, which is the character of punishment, but merely on account of what has happened, what is past, as such, thus disinterestedly, not as a means, but as an end, in order to revel in the torment which the avenger himself has inflicted on the offender. What distinguishes revenge from pure wickedness, and to some extent excuses it, is an appearance of justice.

For vengeance is the power of the vengeful God of storms and war.

Further compare this to The Ring of the Nibelung, where the apocalyptic Love of Brünnhilde, whom Wagner identifies in his letter to Roeckel as the Eternal Feminine, grants the final dissolution of the wrath of Wotan, God of vengeance, storms and war. That is to say, the higher principle of Love — the Eternal Feminine — grants true Salvation from the fallen (Verfall is a common phrase in Wagner's late writings) world created by the wrathful masculine Warrior-God of the Old Testament: Yahweh Elohim, vengeful God of storms and war. This is why Brünnhilde's sacrifice represents the apocalyptic Untergang of Ahasver. This is why Brünnhilde is very much a Gnostic Sophia: the feminine power of redemption, as embodied in the Gnostic Gospel of Mary.

The Hold Grail by Dante Rossetti

With this everything makes perfect sense — the source of Wagner's deep antipathy toward the Yahweh Elohim, Abrahamic God of vengeance, storms and war, as well his acceptance of the philosophy of Schopenhauer.  It also truly highlights how Schopenhauer represents a return to a concept of philosophy (Φιλοσοφια) as a love (Φιλο — philo) of wisdom (σοφια — sophia): the redemptive Love of the Gnostic Sophia (Σοφία): the Eternal Feminine.

Finally, we see here the connection between Wagner and Goethe. For Part II of Goethe's Faust ends with the invocation of the Eternal Feminine:

Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis;  

das Unzulängliche, hier wird's Ereignis; 

das Unbeschreibliche, hier ist es getan; 

das Ewigweibliche zieht uns hinan

The Eternal Feminine draws us up on high — an invocation that Carl Jung saw as being fundamentally Gnostic in character:

*From Richard Wagner: Publikum und Popularität (1878)