Wagner sees in Erda a woman covered with hoarfrost, buried to the waist. She is a figure of nightmare, a spectre of eternal dismay. Like her daughters the Norns, she appears in the storm and the darkness. As if numbed, lost in an indecisive dream, she is essentially negative. Like Loge and the Rhine maidens, she represents the nature prior to the Lance, the Nature in its original state. Wotan, who enslaved Loge, seized the Gold, paid Walhalla and soiled the Source, attacks Erda and forces her to bear him a daughter. Erda is a typical figure: the Sybille, the sacred clairvoyant. Chéreau represents her as a Kabyl fortune-teller, clad as a moving clod of mud.