Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Futhark: Rune Magic 101 - Jera/ár (J/j Y/y)

“No harvest is had without the seed first being sown.”
-Saga Ólafs Trygvasonar Konungs  ch 8
Literal Meaning & History 
If you say the word out loud you can hear it’s meaning, same as with the last rune. Jera means year. 
But not just year. The term in it’s old form could also refer to seasons and with different prefixes it would refer to different types of seasons as well.
And even if we simply focus on the meaning of year, the turn of the year, the moment of new year, wasn’t always during the mid of winter, at least not for everyone. Various areas of Europe celebrated the new year during different seasons. 
This term is mostly connected to the harvest season but old heathen and pagan europeans celebrated their new year usually in the autumn or around the start of winter, though there were some that started their year in spring during the sowing and sprouting seasons. 
Figurative Meaning & Symbolism 
The thing with this rune is that it refers to the whole growing and harvesting part of the year, the spring summer and fall seasons for that half of the year dedicated to the growing and harvesting of food and other things, so it’s hard to pinpoint one word to focus on for this rune. I suggest striving to create a visual representation of a field of wheat, heavy with grain, in your mind and connecting that with this rune. 
This is production and productivity.
This is the harvest.
This is the reward for labor.
This is the inevitable and constant change.
This is the passing of time.
This is the turning of the wheel. 
If you look at the rune, how it’s drawn, it hints at motion that has no beginning and no end. 
This is standing at your graduation, ready to receive the final reward for all your work. 
This is getting payed at the end of a project and/or seeing it come to fruition. 
This is getting your book published after all that you’ve put into it. 
This is pushing through that last patch of hard work and finally seeing things come together. 
BUT. 
This rune reminds us with all those things that after graduation, you have to find work and begin a new season in your life. 
After you project is complete, you’ll begin another one. 
After your book is published, the next one waits to be started. 
After watching that hard work lead to it’s end, there will be something else to begin. 
And sometimes a period in your life runs it’s course on it’s own. 
Things change and new things come along. 
Friendships fade, friendships are made. 
Relationships peter out, new flames are kindled. 
Change can be scary.
If you’ve been the person that is doing this project for long enough, completing it can be scary because we forget who we are if we aren’t the person doing this project. 
This fear and discomfort can even make it hard to make positive changes happen in our lives. If we let ourselves become defined by our problems, even the problems can become hard to let go of. 
This rune therefore serves as a gentle reminder that there is no end without another beginning, and that change is inevitable so we might as well make the most of it. 
The little rune poem translates roughly to;
Ár is good to men
and a good summer
and a laden field.
Suggested Homework 
Think of your own past. 
Think of periods of your life that were dedicated to projects of some sort. 
School, courses, studies that you did by yourself because of personal interest, pieces of art that took a while to complete, short stories you’ve written, something you’ve built, learning to play an instrument, whatever. 
These don’t have to be big projects, something small that took a couple of days is enough. 
Choose a couple of projects, 2 maybe 3, that you can remember with some clarity. 
Focus on the last moments, the bit where the final touches happened, the last few days before it was over, the moment of completion. 
Write down, in simple terms, what you remember of the completion, and what it felt like to see it finish. 
Write down your reward.
There is always a reward. It might not always be something obvious.