Earth Affirmation – Simple Discipline
Earth affirmation
“Earth-in-your-Angel, beloved teacher, each day I reach out to your beautybeing in order to truly re-learn, re-awaken, and re-connect with my own nature; with my deep-thinking heartself; with my own beautyway; and in the mirroring, merge the rhythms of my own Self with yours. I come to you knowing that you are the true point of my actual origins. I have not emerged as a species on a star. I am generated out of the life-giving, light-filled substance of this your own bodybeing. I rise in unbounded measures of grace from the bodyearth of you, wondrously beautiful planet in relation to our own Sunstar. I am an Earth-being and in this knowing I draw closer to you, I safe-guard you, and in so doing safe-guard all beings and my own Self.”
Simple discipline
Create your seasonal Summer Altar in honor of Earth in her form as the great Anglo-Saxon Nature Goddess Nerthus who, in all her various divine aspects, oversees love, fertility, marriage, childbirth, the good harvest and the health and wellbeing for all living things. And which of these aspects will be your guides and teachers in this season as we move through these three summer months of July, August and September? Who will walk with you each day and dream with you each night? In your morning or evening meditations recite your Earth Affirmation; use it as a mantra that may accompany you into the world of vision and inspired thought where you journey into your soul’s own world where encounters with Spirit are waiting. Ask those divinities and spirits who are the guardians of this month to gift you with an invocation, or a prayer that you can recite each day.
Remember Woden and Nerthus and the nature of their connection; their mutual responsibilities and their individual imperatives as you move into a time of loving; of cultivating deep and lasting relationships; of harvesting the gifts that have been laid at your table and of collecting supplies for the oncoming “cold and dark times” that recur with the yearly cycle of your life. But remember also that it is a time for great celebration, liberated activities, giving birth to new aspects of your-self, and making sure that these aspects are taken care of very well so that they will survive the winter season.
Add rainbow-colored candles to your Summer Altar. They will represent the precious language of the larkspur, the gladiolus and the aster; flowers that are so sacred to the Earth goddesses. Each morning or evening meditate and envision the ways in which you need to harvest to the bounty of your own heart’s gifts, your own soul’s offerings, your good thinking and what life on the outside has brought to your door. Begin to know yourself as a grateful, celebratory, joyful being, while at the same time carefully tending to what needs preparing, collecting and storing for difficult and challenging times to come-for they always do.
Throughout summer refresh your altar with freshly cut bouquets of flowers, ideally specific to the months but if not just so that there is a bountiful summery feel to your own sacred site. Place them with intentionality and awareness of the meaning and significance of the color and type of flower. Add prints, paintings, and other items with flower images in them that have a personal meaning for you on your altar. In your meditations with these beautiful images ask for their wisdom teachings. Meditate on the qualities of the flower and begin to cultivate or deepen those qualities within you. On your altar also honor the presence of the precious ruby, peridot and sapphire. If you do not have these particular gems use other stones/crystals to represent them. Remain conscious of them only representing the presence of the three jewels in all their metaphorical and symbolic meaning for you. Draw, map or write out your own mandalic journey toward your ruby, sapphire and peridot Selves and place your gems or their representatives in the center. Add any other sacred and or personally meaningful items to your altar. Spend time at your altar every day. Give yourself the time to meditate, to pray or simply to become inwardly quiet and to ask the great Divine, to ask Earth-in-her-Angel to give you much needed insight; to help you renew sacred intentions and to give you the strength of commitment to carry them out all in the name of gaining balance, harmony and a peaceful, loving self.