Here is the link for the Earth Blessing Audio (with many thanks to Laurie Inn with her lovely voice!):
A modernized and Heathenized blessing-invocation adapted by Winifred Hodge Rose from the Old English Æcerbot, suitable for Spring seasonal ceremonies such as Ostara / Eastre, Earth Day, Wonnezeit, Mayday, etc.
Eastward we stand, asking for the grace of life!
We ask the famed lords,
We ask the mighty rulers,
We ask holy heaven-realm’s warders,
Earth we ask, and high heaven,
And heaven’s might and high halls,
That we may, with this prayer, by the gifts of the Gods,
Fill the Earth with strength through our firm faith,
And beautify her green meadows,
That all may have weal in Earth’s realm.
Erce, Erce, Erce, Earthen Mother,
Give forth life that is waxing and thriving,
Increasing and full of strength:
Trees and plants, beasts and birds,
And all beings of Earth and Waters.
Grant, ye Holy Ones of heaven and earth,
That Earth’s life be warded against all foes,
And defended against every ill
Sown by bale-workers throughout the land.
Be thou hale, Earth, Mother of all!
Be thou growing in holy embrace,
Filled with food for the use of all,
Full acres of food for every living thing.
Brightly blooming: be thou blessed!
Notes:
Note on the recording: I have updated the part of the discussion, below, about the word or name ‘Erce.’ What you hear on the recording will be different than what’s written here.
Word-notes: weal means ‘well-being’; bale-workers (baleful ones) are those who work harm and destruction; hale means healthy and whole.
Historical note: The magico-religious charm called the Æcerbot or ‘field-remedy’, along with extensive instructions for the accompanying day-long rituals, has been preserved since Anglo-Saxon times in a Christianized form. The roots of both the words and the ritual are clearly Heathen, however, and the focus of it is more ‘magical’ than ‘religious’, especially when all the ritual actions are considered. The intent of the original ritual was to heal agricultural land that was not bearing well, perhaps due to the curses of sorcerers and witches. In my much-shortened version of the invocation here, I’ve turned the focus toward modern ‘bale-workers’, praying to protect the land from pollution and destruction. The original focused on growing crops for human consumption; here I interpolate a few words to include non-human children of the Earth as well as human. I like to use this version as a prayer to honor Earth Day.
Erce Earthen Mother: Erce is a mysterious being, the focus of much scholarly discussion. This is further confused because most translators I’ve seen translate Anglo-Saxon eorðan modor as ‘mother of Earth’. Does Earth have a mother? Who is she? I translate eorðan modor completely literally as ‘earthen Mother, mother made of earth,’ in the same sense as ‘an earthen berm or an earthen pot’. Hence, she is the Earth Mother, which simplifies things considerably. The name, or the call, Erce, could stem from a number of sources; there is much scholarly discussion but no firm conclusions. I’ll add a bit to the discussion here!
According to the online dictionary “Wordsense.eu” erce is the vocative form of eorcnan—the ‘vocative form’ meaning the way that you would call or invoke someone using that word or name. Eorcnan, in turn, means ‘true, genuine, holy.’ So if you wanted to call a being whom you consider true, genuine and holy, you wouldn’t say eorcnan, you’d say erce.
A related word in Anglo-Saxon is eorcnan-stan, a precious stone, a gem. (I assume this is where the Anglo-Saxon scholar J.R.R. Tolkien got the name Arkenstone for the great gemstone in his book The Hobbit.) Turning to the Gothic dictionary we have the word airkns or airknis = ‘good, holy, sincere,’ and the feminine noun airknitha meaning ‘goodness, genuineness, sincerity.’ Going back yet further in time, we can find the Proto-Indo-European root er- which has two meanings. One meaning is ‘earth,’ and shows up in the Germanic languages in earth-related words. The other meaning is ‘to move, to set in motion,’ and forms the root of Germanic words relating to ‘being or existence,’ like our pronoun ‘are’—‘you are / you exist’.
All of these meanings: ‘true, holy, goodness, earth, to move, to set in motion, to be, to exist’ would be logical attributes for a fertility / earth Goddess whose powers are needed to stimulate growth and procreation. It seems to me that these possible meanings and roots of her name are correct, and I take them as indications of this Earthen Mother’s nature.
It isn’t clear how this name should be pronounced, but (of course!) I have my own view of this! Normally in Anglo-Saxon words, if ‘c’ is followed by ‘e’ then the ‘c’ is pronounced ‘ch.’ There are some exceptions, which we can roughly guess at by looking at how the word’s descendant is pronounced in modern English, specifically the name of the full charm or prayer ‘æcer-bot’ in Anglo-Saxon, ‘acre-remedy’. Modern English ‘acre’ has a hard ‘c’, and we assume that the A-S word did, too.
What about erce? Normally this would be pronounced ‘air-cheh’, based on the spelling, but that would not be the case if the word / name is derived from eorcnan, which is pronounced with a hard ‘c’—ay-ork-nan. This results in the pronunciation as air-keh, with a hard ‘c’. There’s another clue that points in this direction as well: an obscure German Goddess named Herke (Hair-keh) which sounds almost the same.
Going back to the Proto-Indo-European roots, the oldest form of the root er- meaning ‘to move, to set in motion’ had an initial ‘h’: her-. With a generous interpretation, here we have roots of the erce and the herke versions of the name. I believe that Erce / Erke and Herke are names for the same Goddess, an ancient Germanic Earth-Goddess who sets in motion the processes of life growing from the Earth and living on the Earth. She is our Earthen Mother of many names, holy, good, and true.
*****
Watkins, Calvert. The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011.