Jera – Harvest and Cycles

Description

Cycles, harvest, abundance, processes, rhythms, waves, waxing and waning, seasons, passage of time, life, death growth and rebirth. Jera is the turning celestial sphere, to the moon driven tides, the changing of seasons and the rhythm of your heart. The inevitability of change it’s neither good nor bad, it’s a process, the wheel keeps turning.

In this piece I chose a sweet spot overlooking Emsworthy Mire and Rippen tor and beyond into the heart of the moor. Out of the side of a granite outcrop is a most lovely Hawthorn tree which blooms and fruits it’s way through each year, growing incrementally, defying it’s exposed position and living conditions. This little tree spirit teaches us much about the Jera rune and our own life cycles. 

To emphasise the rune of cycles I have gathered the beings which have so far accompanied our journey through the survival Aett, and all add to the harvest so far. 

The frost giant brings ice and sits in the cold season, the hunter is fire, and sits in the warm growing season. Both bring energy needed for the cycle to complete, now Jörmungander who was the raging storm in Hagalaz, becomes the Ouroboros as the cycle completes and the results, or harvest of our endeavours so far can be gathered together on the offerings table… Both oppositional and paradoxical energies of fire in Naudiz and ice in Isaz are needed for cycles to complete, and we can move onwards on our journey.    

“The process of our cycles can only be understood over the passage of time. Time is the passing gift we cannot hold on to or accumulate, we possess a finite quantity that can only be spent. Time is the synthesis of wisdom in how we use the gifts that time leaves behind and to spend our time wisely.

The wisdom we gain over time is held within our knowledge,  experience and most importantly, application of judgement. Jera builds a wisdom that knows when a cycle needs to end. Also, how to take responsibility for where, when, and how we nurture the seeds we sow and the cycles they create.

It’s not always a case of what you reap is what you sow. The harvest can tell portents of what is to come or stories of what has been. It’s not the judgement of whether the harvest is good or bad, it’s the separation of the wheat from the chaff and being abundant by making the most of what you have.” Duncan White Rune Master