Runes
Jera
Jera is the twelfth rune of the Elder Futhark and the fourth of Hagal's aett, sitting at the halfway point of the alphabet.
Its sound is J, pronounced as a Y, as in year.
The shape is two angled hooks, one above the other, facing in opposite directions and not quite touching, like two halves of a circle that have slipped past each other.
The word means the year, and by extension the harvest.
The picture
A year is a circle.
The seasons go round, the paddock is ploughed and sown and left and reaped, and then it is ploughed again.
Nothing about it is quick and nothing about it can be hurried.
You cannot bring the harvest forward by wanting it.
The two hooks of the letter are the halves of that circle, the sowing half and the reaping half, and the gap between them is the waiting.
I think the gap is the real teaching.
Most of a year is the gap.
Most of any worthwhile thing is the part where you have done the work and nothing visible is happening yet.
Jera is the rune of reward in its season.
It says the harvest comes, and it also says the harvest comes when it is ready and at no other time.
In Perth terms it is the fruit tree you planted three summers ago that finally sets.
It is the course you finished long enough ago that you had stopped thinking about it, and then the phone rings.
It is the slow, dull, unglamorous keeping at something until one day the keeping at it pays.
When it comes up
When Jera comes out of the bag I take it as good news with a condition.
The good news is that what you have put in will come back.
The condition is the timing, which is the season's and never yours.
The first piece of guidance is to check what you have sown.
Jera returns what was planted, and it is scrupulously fair about it.
If the ground has been worked, the harvest is coming.
If it has not, Jera is a quiet reminder that there is still time in the year to do something about that, and that nothing grows from a paddock you only looked at.
The second piece is patience, and I mean the working kind.
Patience in a Jera moment is weeding, watering and mending the fence while you wait.
It is keeping the routine going on the days when the routine feels pointless.
I suspect the harvest nearly always arrives a little later than you hoped and a little larger than you expected, and the people who get to enjoy it are the ones who did not dig the seed up in month two to see if it was growing.
The third piece is about cycles.
Jera is the wheel of the year, and wheels keep turning.
This harvest is one of many.
Take it in, be glad of it, and know that the ground will want ploughing again before long.
That is how it works.
Tend what you planted. Trust the season. Do not dig up the seed.
Reversed
Jera looks the same either way up, so it has no reversed position.
Its hard side shows in the runes around it.
Beside Hagalaz the harvest is at risk from weather you did not order.
Beside Nauthiz or Isa the season is running long and the waiting is the lesson.
Beside Fehu or Othala the reward is in money or home; beside Kenaz it is a skill finally paying its way.
Across the traditions
In the tarot I set Jera beside The Wheel of Fortune, the card of the great turning that brings each thing round in its time.
That is my own association and nothing stronger.
The Wheel of Fortune has its own page in The 78 Cards.
The Celtic Tree Astrology page follows another old wheel of the year through thirteen trees, and the two sit well side by side.
What did you plant a while ago that you have stopped watching, and is it closer to harvest than you think?
If you would like this read against your own chart, my readings are here.
The Runes
The other pages in this set, and where they sit in the Library.
See every page and post in the Contents.
The Members area has songs, Moon pages to print, the Sunday article a day early and a first look at new Library pages.