Voluspa 4, An Expansive Meditation Upon

Old Earth Mother, dressed in Ceres' clothes, rising up from the depths in glory.

The raven flies across the whole earth ; from Huginn's eyes we see the primeval stones of the planet panning, scrolling before our vision, the mountains in the background, the sun behind them, touching, tending, awakening soil from the rocks, the first germinating seeds of grass slowly seething from the rocks, in landscape after landscape, round the world wide.

And from afar, at the center of things, Nerthus, arms raised high, calling and awakening flora and fauna from their hiding places, niches, and wombs. Come out, come out; come out from your caves ; come out larvae, come out, hatchlings ; emerge forth from thine several uteri into the fullness of the sun! And thus the very first Spring day of the world : the soil was rich, the sea was salty, the ground was green with herbs.

She ascends on a wide, rocky platform wet with loam from the deep. Regal as an empress, wise and handsome matron, bearing cornucopia and baskets of gathered harvest, she blesses the soil and bestows hale upon its grains, so it is replete with growing power. Birds fly about and around her, beasts come to be blessed, the woodlands grow around and about her like a wreath woven vine and fleurs into hair ; the Great Gods build a mighty hedge about her garden, to keep her creatures from maraud and ravage. Her first children, the eldar alfar, they place around this hedgy edge, about the rim of the wild to bow and arrow ward off monsters from the icy tundras and darkened deep. Well hedged, She is Mother of All, Fructifier, first bless-bestower of zoe upon the newly shaped stuff fresh from the ovens and nooked caverns of the slowly forming world.

Beautiful, wise, wry, and savvy beyond reckon, the awed Gods shaped whatever they beheld about her to suit her, and tapping each with her distaff-scepter, the idols about came to life. She is royalty above royalty, humble beyond humility, forward seeing beyond the far seeing sun.

Disir who report to her she sent out amongst the nine times nine nations and tongues to watch the lands and regions, each beneath them having flocks of fair handmaidens who guard and green the every nook and cranny of the land, shining, shimmering gentry of the fields and meadows and mountains. All call her queen and give her vow and heed.