# Jera

Traditional meaning: harvest

Meanings when upright:

- passage between worlds
- planting and harvesting
- gentle pushing of limits
- emotional healing
- slow hard-won growth
- there is wisdom to be gained from everything
- a farmer

Meanings when inverted:

- disequilibrium
- enslavement to the cycle

Jera can be useful for:

- opening up to changes in state/being
- expanding one's boundaries/limits
- guiding a dying person to the afterlife

Anglo-Saxon rune poem:

> Ger byÞ gumena hiht, ðonne God læteþ,
> halig heofones cyning, hrusan syllan
> beorhte bleda beornum ond ðearfum.

> Summer is a joy to men, when God, the holy King of Heaven,
> suffers the earth to bring forth shining fruits
> for rich and poor alike.

Norwegian rune poem:

> Ár er gumna góðe;
> get ek at o,rr var Fróðe.

> Plenty is a boon to men;
> I say that Frothi was generous.

A modern poem:

> I plant scattered words
> in the garden of my notebook
> and wait to see which will sprout
> aboveground and take a look
> at the sun
> above.

> Sometimes it takes years,
> others only a day,
> packaged into sorrowful poem
> and then sent on its way.
> The ones that linger in the soil
> sometimes rot, having no soul
> or otherwise missed its context,
> last metro train heading home
> now departing the station.

> You slowly opened up to me
> like a flower blooming,
> yet inside nearly bursting
> at the seams
> to have someone to share a dream
> with. Cross-section of a seed
> that was about to germinate,
> crumpled-up squiggle of green
> sometimes with a tiny leaf
> for soil lying in wait.
> Some seeds can be frozen
> almost indefinitely,
> waiting in oblivion for a world
> that will treat them far more kindly.
> And you waited. You waited so long
> for somebody like me
> to help you remember how to breathe,
> how to grow again.

> My rewards in Sablade
> will be far greater than any pain
> that I must bear.
> And when comes time to die,
> I should be able to look you in the eyes
> and let you carry me gently into that good night
> and in our new home spill from my lips all the tales
> with perfect memory of all that has transpired
> since to kill Eris the first time you and I failed.

> A book starts from just a single word,
> and a life from a solitary breath,
> and grows day by day until
> I have a tome of praises and a gentle death.
> It always feels like torture
> in the moment of toil,
> but at the end when all comes to fruition
> I cannot help but bless the soil.

> I was too ambitious,
> too close to the sun.
> We didn't get to see what the
> seed would decide to become.
> We didn't get to do
> everything we wanted to
> in just one lifetime.
> Right now is an interlude.
> And when we reunite
> in Sablade, I'll give you
> a part two
> worthy of your love.