Earth-Text

Earth

Drctionary; 1. the land surface of the world, as distinguished from the oceans and air. 2. the softer part of land, soil, especially productive soil. 3. the dwelling place of mortal men as distinguished from heaven and hell; the temporal world. 4. the material body of a human being considered as made of dust or clay.

There is an old Irish story about the invasion of Ireland by a people called the Gaedil. The Goddess Eriu opposses the Gaedil and makes an army out of sods and the mountain to fight them. She eventually changes her mind and welcomes the invaders but she asks that the island shall bear her name which it does, eriu being the oldest form of both eirie and erin.

This connection between the Goddess and the land (which are identical because both have the same name) is based on the fact that the earth is not merely the stage in which we strut our crowded hour but the foundation of our existence. On it, we live. From it, our food grows. To it, we return at death. And so the earth has been thought of as a great deity, the mother whose timeless fertility nourishes a man in life and to whose dark belly he returns.

In some cultures the souls of babies are thought to enter their mothers from rocks and caves and when this is combined with the belief of reincarnation the parallel between man and his crops is complete. Both are born of the Earth, are buried in it, and reborn again, but in the earliest cosmogonies of the ancient world that are known to us, Earth is not the original creator. Earth like all other elements has the power to heal or to destroy. In relationship to human beings this element also behaves according to the karmas of man, earthquakes are wide believed to occur when a God, hero, or monster who holds the earth up changes his hold and shifts his position directing its harmful shake to a particular area. On the healing side there is a big sense of spiritual grounding experience when saddhus in India buried their bodies for days in the soil, "earth baths," have been recommended by many doctors in which the pores of the skin would draw in the soil's nourishing juices and many more are still to be dicovered as we expand our imagination and relationship with mama earth.

The combination of the Earth and Sky is vital for the well being of humankind, for it is the combination of sun, rain, wind, and soil that brings warmth, and nourishment.