With Nerthus

I'm standing on a floodplain, ankle deep in silt, the waters just reaching my calves.
 
Nerthus stands before me, not veiled, but I won't remember Her face, Her clothing, only Her presence. She is no more than an inch or two taller than me, or perhaps She is standing on slightly higher ground, sinking into slightly firmer silt. She is not the kind of goddess who walks on water.
 
In every direction, I see only more floodplain, but with the humidity, the haze, I can't see very far at all, really. The water is cool, but not at all chill. My feet sinking into the silt are comfortable, the silky mud between my toes feels like a caress.
 
She speaks and Her voice is low, quiet, and still resounding as if from all directions at once, as if up through my bones into my chest, into my heart, into my mind.
 
She speaks of Fertility.
 
As a human animal, it is easiest for me to begin with the fertility of animals – the ability of animals to come together, to pleasure each other, to combine their unique substances, to create, foster, and
support life, to bring it to bear, to raise it up. But Nerthus begins with the land itself.
 
The fertility of the land is truly the fertility of tiny things that live not on the land, but in it. Insects and worms are large by comparison to their truest allies. Nothing can thrive on dead land. Land is fertile when it is full of life, full of living things. The tiny things are fertile when they can consume the dead, to convert the dead into food for the living. Without the dying plants and animals,
the land cannot thrive.
 
The flowing waters are steadily rising, my calves are now submerged. Mother Nerthus continues on.
 
The fertility of plants follows the land, sending deep roots into that fertile earth, drinking up the nutrients those tiny things make accessible, reaching towards a shining sun, spreading up and out. The fertility of plants is the ability of plants to create and bear fruit, self-contained worlds that provide the new plant with everything it could need to put down its own roots in the living land. The fertility of plants is in the flowers and the vines, the runners, the flying seeds, the nectar and the pollen. Without the living land, the plants cannot thrive. Without the animals to spread their nectar, pollen, and seed, the plants cannot thrive.
 
And we return to the animals, who of course cannot thrive without the plants and fellow animals to eat.
 
The water has risen above my knees, but I have not moved, enthralled by the flowing words of the Mother, who has not paused.
 
But animals do not simply eat and fuck and die. We also cannot thrive without the plants and fellow animals to create things with. We cannot thrive without the ability to trade with each other. We complicate this simple interaction with systems, with constructs. We call it “Economics”, and describe huge enterprises like automatons, as though they are entities unto themselves. Perhaps they are. If so, they are fertile entities, creating and exchanging and destroying, much as the animals and plants and insects and microbes beneath them in scale.
 
A Sacred King must be responsible for all of these things, for a people cannot thrive in a dead land, without thriving plants, without thriving animals, without thriving trade. And all of these sorts of
fertility belong to Nerthus.
 
The water has reached my thighs, and it begins to occur to me that this floodplain may become a bog, and that Mother Nerthus is known for filling bogs with offerings, and that the drowned body of a devoted follower is the best possible offering. But I do not move. Perhaps I cannot move. I trust the Goddess that I will not be consumed.
 
And still I listen, for still She speaks.
 
There is another kind of fertility, another ability to create, to reproduce, to spread far and wide, to destroy, to deconstruct. It does not belong to Nerthus, for it has no physical form, but it does depend on those of physical form to thrive. This is the fertility of ideas, and it is as much the responsibility of a Sacred King to be certain that this form of fertility is encouraged in the land as any other, if a people are to thrive.
 
Do I understand?
 
Finally the murmuring stops. My lower calves are covered with silken mud, my thighs soaked with floodwater. The Goddess looks at me with eyes I can't remember, with a face I cannot picture beyond that Her expression is intent.
 
I nod, not actually certain.
 
And then I am awake, dry in my bed, and the echo of a warm smile on my face. She is pleased.

Artwork by Reznor.