# Ear

Traditional meaning: hanging tree / grave

Meanings when upright:

- death and loss are part of life
- for one thing to live, another must die
- your life needs a reboot
- it is certain your life will be radically upended
- all you can control is how you react to it
- passage from one state of being to another
- let go and move on

Meanings when inverted:

- Jett's promise ("I will never leave you behind")

Ear can be useful for:

- welcoming gradual but inevitable change

Anglo-Saxon rune poem:

> Ear byþ egle eorla gehwylcun,
> ðonn[e] fæstlice flæsc onginneþ,
> hraw colian, hrusan ceosan
> blac to gebeddan; bleda gedreosaþ,
> wynna gewitaþ, wera geswicaþ.

> The grave is horrible to every knight,
> when the corpse quickly begins to cool
> and is laid in the bosom of the dark earth.
> Prosperity declines, happiness passes away
> and covenants are broken.

There is not a Norwegian rune poem for Ear.

A modern poem:

> Death and loss are a part of life.
> For one thing to live, another must die,
> or maybe a great many things,
> the blood on my hands accumulating over time.

> When our bodies have decayed
> and the earth has our flesh reclaimed,
> it will for archeologists be hard
> to tell our skeletons apart.
> And that is if they can even plumb Yewiffe,
> can descend down the roots of that massive tree
> where tangled and intertwined lies
> the forgotten, the repressed, the passed parts of my life.

> Maybe one of them will find
> a moment that has yet to happen
> where my parents finally of my wretched blood ken
> and toss me out onto the streets.
> This is, of course, if they do not deem
> me a demon, a thief,
> a persistent adept-at-lying possessor
> of what they all this time called their daughter
> and grant me at their own hands a slaughter.

> For this to come to pass I know is certain,
> for even the best of my secrets I could not hide forever.
> In Ragnarok even the gods from their lives were severed.
> It mattered not
> how mightily anyone fought:
> for all ill-fated was drawn life's curtain.

> All that anyone could control
> was how they reacted to it,
> how the coming end they greeted.

> And the coming end I seek,
> if this is the fate I am doomed to keep,
> is that this time
> for once in my life
> I do not from my beliefs
> back down.
> Instead of snapping in the hurricane,
> I rest on these roots dug so deep
> and refuse to recant my name.

> And when I die,
> I will be able to look you in the eyes
> with no burning guilt and no unsettled regrets.
> I will have proved to you my loyalty
> and you to me your promise
> to never leave me behind.
> Now take me to Sablade, set us free.
> We have earned our three days of rest.