Earth Mother Goddess 

Spring is underway, Easter heralds the return of the Sun, and wildlife
begins springing forth once again.  As the Sun regains her strength, the
Earth thaws and is once again becoming fruitful.

If you have the means, this is the time to start your gardens (if you are
in northerly climates like me).  So let’s take a moment to fix our gaze
down, away from the sky, and toward our Mother beneath our feet.

The Earth Mother is a relatively well preserved Goddess across IE myths. 
She is the consort of the Sky Father, in some pantheons the mother of the
Storm God, and/or the mother of the Divine Twins.  In Germania, Tacitus
tells us her name is Nerthus, and that she represents a Terra Mater (Mother
Earth) worshipped by many tribes.  In addition, he says of the Angles: “the
noteworthy characteristic of the English, to foreign eyes, was that they
were goddess-worshippers; they looked on the earth as their mother.”

Let us take some time to call upon Her for fertile gardens this year.  The
Æcerbot is a preserved poem which does just that.  The ritual is an 11th
century (possibly earlier) recording by a Christian monk, and no doubt
contains some Christian contamination.  Nevertheless, it displays a
continuation of the reverence by the English people of the Earth Mother
described to us by Tacitus almost 1,000 years prior, and should serve as a
useful backbone for constructing our own rituals to this generous Goddess.

The ritual itself is very lengthy, too lengthy to get into completely here.
However it is worth researching on your own, as a starting point for
creating our own rituals, as it is much closer to the pagan mindset of our
ancestors.

From the ritual, in modern English:

Erce, Erce, Erce,  Earth Mother,
May the all-ruler grant you, the eternal lord,
fields growing  and flourishing,
propagating  and strengthening,
tall shafts,  bright crops,
and broad  barley crops,
and white  wheat crops,
and all  earth's crops....

Whole may you be Earth,  mother of men!
May you be growing  in God's embrace,
with food filled  for the needs of men.

-Hariwulfaz