Earth's Mother, Protector of the Needy, The Hermit Princess

'Ertha is THE MOST WELL KNOWN OF ALL EUROPEAN DEITIES, even if one does not realize it... We've all heard her name, we walk upon her namesake day in and day out and Mother "Eartha" is on the tongues of all. Yet how many of us know her story?

Traveling across the land she is pulled by snow white steer and from whence she strides as she walks across the land, healing water springs forth! It is said she even gave the great Frau Holda her steading and with that, her duties. To this day simple rituals; nearly forgotten as to why they are performed, and chants sang across her fields are still given freely in return and gratitude for her many gifts, so deeply engrained are these simple acts of thankfulness the reasoning and awareness of them forgotten to time but recalled in the blood.

All of this is despite the Church's best attempts to eradicate her, casting her as naught but a byname for Gaia or Terra, meaningless and but a fiction. But her people know, they know in their marrow that is not so. She is our Mother, bloodied hands buried deep in the soil feeding both our bellies and our souls.

Mother Earth has always been here beside us never having left our side, her story may have been hidden beneath Saints & Madonna's or even The Great Seer Notburga. Yet the Church for all of their supposed power failed to rid the people of this most beloved God. This God who leads the Wild Hunt atop her White Stag! Hops crowning its regal antlers, 'Ertha herself astride his mighty back in all of her glory wielding a riding crop of sacred Valerian Stalk.

Beneath the mask placed upon 'Ertha her true story can be found. A story of woe, a story of a heart so broken it sent her fleeing to the Underworld to escape its relentless pain. A story where in her desperation; her unrelenting sorrow, she rode across the raging River of the Dead to the very bowels of the earth atop her stag to a cave among Death's Mountains. Her only sustenance to be found in being fed by Stag and Serpent who brought her food as she succumbed to grief. While there, in her dark respite she eventually gained wisdom and clarity coming to understand what curses the mind and soul of many Seers.

Her father, hearing of her turmoil went himself to reclaim 'Ertha, to bring her to the safety of home and family. But despite his heroic efforts he found himself unable as she was neither alive nor dead managing only to tear off her bloodless arm in his desperate efforts to reclaim his daughter.

Yet somehow... someway; every year in early Summer she returns to her people blessing them and their fields until Autumn comes, when once again with the shifting of the seasons she is carried away by snow white steers to the River of the Dead where she slumbers once more amidst deaths waters until Spring comes anew.

Mother Ertha remains to this day. By Wagner's pen she appeared as Seer, Mother of both the Norn and the Valkyrie. She rode her stag in Disney's Fantasia. She is called upon and depicted in wide array to this very day. However, most importantly she remains because we never once lost her name, we never forgot; the name we hold to most adamantly for our planet despite many efforts to rename it. The home we call, Earth.