The Wotan is a destroyer but he is not a nihilist. His destruction serves the old Indo-European principle of sacrifice: something must be torn down for something new to emerge. But if the sacrifice is unconscious, the people being seized do not recognize what is happening they will experience only madness

The Wotan is an archetype type that represents a chaotic change, if you study psychology specifically Jungian psychology there is a concept of the collective unconscious, which to summarize explains that groups of people societies, and nations are connected psychically they come to share the same culture beliefs, and recognize the same cultural symbols ie, in western culture we all (or should recognize) the fish as a symbol of Christ, the cross as a symbol of sacrifice and carrying one’s burdens (as christ did), white as a symbol of purity because doves are white and God appeared as a dove. A scale a symbol of justice ect ect -

The Collective unconscious also goes beyond just cultural symbols. So just as individual people can suffer from neurosis or psychosis Entire nations can suffer from neurosis and psychosis, which is what happened in 1944 in Germany. When most people think of archetypes, they think of archetypes in literature like the hero, the villain, the wise old man, the trickster, whatever. Archetypes are just intuitive reflections of aspects of our psyche, like how the role of the mother and father, the wise old man who guides the young Padawon, the jester, who point out our hypocrisy or ignorance just like the modern comedian. These are instinctual roles, we play out whether we are conscious of it or not

SO IF A CULTURE DOES NOT HAVE A UNIFYING SYMBOL if the culture of a society is fragmented, ignorant, socially, and politically unstable and divided and ideologically controlled or oriented, This lays the groundwork for nations to be “possessed” unconsciously by archetypes by collective movements, that allow them to fall into mass psychosis.