The Sky Father and Earth Mother: the Basis of All Indo-European Religions, Part Two, the Germanic Earth Mother

 This essay should be read in conjunction with The Sky Father and Earth Mother: the Basis of All Indo-European Religions, Part One, the Germanic Sky Father and Erce, Anglo-Saxon Mother Goddess of the Earth . This will help to save me from going over the same ground that I have covered in my recent posts.

The earliest reference that we have to a Germanic earth goddess is to be found in Tacitus's Germania:

Next come the Reudigni, the Aviones, the Anglii, the Varini, the Eudoses, the Suardones, and Nuithones who are fenced in by rivers or forests. None of these tribes have any noteworthy feature, except their common worship of Ertha, or mother-Earth, and their belief that she interposes in human affairs, and visits the nations in her car. In an island of the ocean there is a sacred grove, and within it a consecrated chariot, covered over with a garment. Only one priest is permitted to touch it. He can perceive the presence of the goddess in this sacred recess, and walks by her side with the utmost reverence as she is drawn along by heifers. It is a season of rejoicing, and festivity reigns wherever she deigns to go and be received. They do not go to battle or wear arms; every weapon is under lock; peace and quiet are known and welcomed only at these times, till the goddess, weary of human intercourse, is at length restored by the same priest to her temple. Afterwards the car, the vestments, and, if you like to believe it, the divinity herself, are purified in a secret lake. Slaves perform the rite, who are instantly swallowed up by its waters. Hence arises a mysterious terror and a pious ignorance concerning the nature of that which is seen only by men doomed to die. This branch indeed of the Suevi stretches into the remoter regions of Germany. (Book 40, translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb, 1876).

In this translation, the earth goddess is named Ertha. However, this is a mistranslation of the Latin Nerthus. I have selected this translation as it is out of copyright and to illustrate the following point: the original Latin text that mentions Nerthus is as follows: Nerthus, id est Terra Mater. In other words, 'Nerthus, that is Mother Earth.' 'Ertha' was a Victorian construction, based on the assumption (not without merit) that Erce=Nerthus/Ertha, assumed to be reflexes of the same deity.  'Ertha' also looks suspiciously like the Old High German Erda, which was a personification of the earth but not an actual, named goddess. No doubt, my readers will point to the reference to 'Erda' in Wagner's Das Rheingold and Siegfried but this is merely 'poetic licence' on the part of Wagner and is not based on any surviving mythology or folklore. Wagner's 'Erda' is a synthesis and a mytho-poetic reconstruction of various Germanic earth mother traditions. Wagner based his character on the following sources:

. Old Norse Jörð, a giantess-goddess hybrid who was named as the mother of Thor. She is a cthonic and primordial deity.

. Nerthus of Tacitus's Germania.

.Anglo-Saxon Erce from the Æcerbot charm.

. The Old High German noun Erda, a personification of the earth, which is directly cognate with the Gothic airþa, the Old English eorþe and the Old Norse jörð.

. Frau Holle, the name of a continental Germanic deity which has survived in German folklore, who has cthonic and maternal characteristics.

Thus 'Erda' may be considered a reflex of the Germanic earth mother. The noun is derived ultimately from the Proto-Germanic *erþō and the Proto-Indo-European *h₁er- / *h₁erth₂‑ ('earth/ground').

It may be helpful at this stage for me to construct a Germanic Earth Mother 'family tree' to trace the evolution and development of this divine archetype:

PROTO-INDO-EUROPEAN/PROTO-INDO-GERMANIC

The reconstructed goddess: *Dhéǵhōm.Meaning: Earth, the ground, the soil, the world beneath the sky and the wife of *Dyēus ph₂tēr, the Sky Father. As a primordial being, She was older than the male gods, was cthonic and thus concerned with the dead, maternal and associated with oaths. Being responsible for the fertilility of the earth, She received libations, poured into the ground. Being associated with the concept of fate, She was concerned with the care of the dead and the ancestors.

This root gives us:

• Sanskrit Pṛthvī (Mother Earth)

• Greek Chthōn, Chthonia, Gaia (via related roots)

• Latin humus, homo (earthling)

• Old Irish du (earth)

• Germanic *erþō

PROTO-GERMANIC

Branching off from the PIE we have the Proto-Germanic *erþō. Meaning: earth, soil, land.

GERMANIC

From this we get:

• Old Norse Jörð (a goddess)

• Old English eorþe (noun) and Erce (goddess)

• Old High German erda (noun)

• Gothic airþa

• Tacitus’ Nerthus (likely a cult title)

• German folklore Frau Erde / Holle

Like the reconstructed PIE goddess, the Germanic *erþō is primordial, older than the male gods, cthonic, maternal, a witness of oaths, fertile and the receiver of the dead. Unlike Anglo-Saxon Erce, She is the earth itself, not just a goddess who presides over it. In essence, She combines the functions of both Erce and *erþō. Her divine husband is the Proto-Germanic *Tiwaz. From what we can deduce from the Æcerbot, She brings fertility to the fields, receives offerings of grain, milk, honey and ale, and is associated with ploughing rites and healing of the soil. She also brings peace and prospeity to Her devotees: this is made clear in the passage from Germania Book 40 with reference to Nerthus. She is the goddess of lineage and the ancestors who dwell in Her embrace. The act of inhumation symbolises the return of the dead to the 'womb' of the earth mother. 

As She is the divine witness of all oaths, any breaking of such oaths would 'defile' Her and pollute the earth. The use of 'heofon and eorþe' in Old English legal oaths ('heaven and earth') and 'himil enti erda' in Old High German oaths is an indication of the Germanic tradition, traceable to pre-Christian times, of swearing by the name of the Sky Father and the Earth Mother. Other examples of this custom are evident in the following Old High German legal formulas: 'Erda zi uuizzoni' ('Earth as witness'), 'Daz erda inimo ni scal helfan' (May the earth not help him'). The earth is invoked in Old English boundary charters, homilies and oaths. Examples of such include: 'Ic swerige be heofone and be eorþan.' ('I swear by heaven and by earth.') and 'Se þe þis brice, eorþe hine forswelge.' ('Whoever breaks this oath, may the earth swallow him.'). Some boundary charters also contain curse formulas: 'ne hæbbe he nanne dæl on þære eorþan.' ('May he hath no share in the land').

When invoking the earth as a witness to an oath, the Anglo-Saxons ritually touched the earth, often by lifting some earth with the hand, thus entering into a direct contract with the one who receives the oath and She who witnesses it. Bearing in mind that these are clearly heathen practices, it is astonishing that they were preserved well into post-conversion times. One could define these as 'earth contact rituals'. Wulstan (died 1023), Archbishop of York, wrote several homilies in which he condemned perjury, such as sermo lupi ad Anglos (The Sermon of the Wolf to the English) in 1014, Homily XIX ( be swicolum aðum-Concerning False Oaths) and Institutes of Polity (No Latin title) and viewed it not merely as a personal matter but a collective one, in which the Christian god's vengeance would be visited on the people as a whole and upon the fruits of the earth. Many ecclesiatics at the time viewed the Viking raids and invasions as a judgement upon the English people for their 'sins', perjury being one of them. In the Germanic world of both heathen and post-conversion times, there was the view that society was held together by the swearing and keeping of oaths, by the King, the Church and the People, and perjury would result in the moral collapse of society and the social order as well as material disaster with invasion, plague and famine.

The Norse goddess Jörð is the same as the physical earth, jörð, not merely a symbolic or metaphoric representation of it. She is thus a cosmic substance and a divine personage, which is typical of Indo-European myth. She is one of the jötnar (giantesses) and counted among the ásynjur (goddesses), revealing her primordial origins as part of a much earlier race of gods, who precede the Aesir and Vanir. With the Norse Sky Father, Odin she conceived Thor, the son of a Sky Father and Earth Mother. This relationship in part mirrors the relationship between the Olympian Zeus and Gaia, the latter also belonging to a primordial race of gods. However, there was no union between Zeus and Gaia but they represent the cosmic order. Thor as the son of sky (Odin) and earth (Jörð) is the Norse expression of the Indo-European formula of Sky Father + Earth Mother ->Thunder God. The thunder god fertilises the earth with His rains, brought by the storms produced by the blows of His hammer: Thor is thus the protector of farmers and the guardian of man.

Nerthus (1905) by Emil Doepler, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nerthus_by_Emil_Doepler.jpg