Jera

Umbrae

Jera:
"jare-awe" ( A year, a good harvest.)

Jera is the seasonal aspect of nature (implies harvest). The Teutonic people only had two seasons, summer and winter. A year is a two-season timetable punctuated by the changeable weather patterns. There exists a relationship between Raidho and Jera. Jera implies the cycle of the sun during the year, and Raidho is the cycle of day or days (seasonal and cyclical)

The eternal cycle of or return/reward for correct action. The organic/material harvest. (The Teutonic Yin/Yang, but not to be seen as opposites, but as complements).

This rune shows spiritual growth cannot be hurried. You cannot force plants to grow faster than they are able. Nature requires patience and awareness. There is no instant gratification.

For a harvest there are the inner aspects (the seed), and the outer aspects (seasons and weather).

The promise of success earned. Take care of loose ends, pay debts. Everything changes, in its own time.


Merkstave: Sudden setback, reversals. A major change, repetition, bad timing, poverty, conflict.

As a person, it Jera would represent a farmer or a person in finance.
 

zorya

jera is the 12th rune. was it seen as 12 months= one year? how much numeric value was, (and should be) placed on the runes?
 

Umbrae

Most of the old pagan calendars used 13 months based on the lunar cycle.
Take a look at the XIII thread in the Marseilles Deck study group.
 

runehunt

Jera-Raidho QUESTION

Relationship between Jera and Raidho? "Jera implies the cycle of the sun during the year,and Raidho is the cycle of day or days (seasonal and cyclical)" It has always been my understanding that Raidho stood for riding, journey, chariot,or sun chariot,or sun wheel, or even Thor's war chariot. Amd Dagaz was the rune of day or day light, dawn and twilight or the cycle of the day or the gray area of light. Have I been mistaken. all these years? Can some one please inform me to the proper umderstanding of the two *runehunt*
 

Umbrae

Raidho-Jera

I got to contemplating…in our modern, enlightened world, we hold to the Copernican theory that the earth rotates around the sun. On July 4, 2002, the earth is in the same place it was (spatially) in 2001.

This may be so astronomically, but that is about it.

I am not ‘in the same space’ as I was one year ago, and although the sun rises and sets, today is not the same as yesterday.

There is a spiral to change (Raidho). We are in the same day, in the same season, but we have journeyed since.

Jera is referencing the seasonal change (and the gifts/rewards for actions which acknowledge that cycle); Raidho references our path through the times.

The wheels turning within the wheels. It helps to realize that our linier concept of time and space is a lovely human invention.

For the purists out there, sure Copernicus was right. However, to this day with all of our wonderful computers and gigs and bits, we still use the Ptolemaic system for navigation. Sure, the sun may be the center of the solar system, but if you are out to sea with a timepiece, sextant, and compass, it does not help. You must have the earth at the center.

Doubters are referenced to “American Practical Navigator (Bowditch)” by Nathaniel Bowditch.
 

einhverfr

Umbrae said:
Most of the old pagan calendars used 13 months based on the lunar cycle.
Take a look at the XIII thread in the Marseilles Deck study group.

I assume you are not stating that most of the pagan calendars had 13 months per year. You have about 12 1/3 lunar cycles per solar year so calendars either tend to go with 12 and then extend them, come up with an extra occasional month, settle for a roaming lunar calendar (such as the Islamic calendar), etc.

The Coligny calendar, for example, does appear to have a thirteenth month which only occurs every three years or so. The entire calendar is probably reconciled on a 30 year cycle. It would be more accurate, I think to say that it is a 12-month calendar with occasional intercalary months added for reconcilliation purposes (one sees something similar wrt the Mayan calendar).

Why not have 13 months every year instead of 12? Well to start with 13 is a prime number, so you can't divide it up into equal groups of anything. 12, on the other hand, is divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6.

Grimnismal discusses 12 halls in Asgard which might be associated with astrological signs. While the moon no doubt played a great role in timekeeping, I don't see any evidence of intercalary months added to square the calendar out (this is possible-- as I have said before our information is nowhere near complete).
 

einhverfr

Jera Analysis

The Protogermantic word *jera gave rise to the Mod Eng. word Year and the ON Ar (Year).

The rune poems generally refer to this stave as representing harvest, and they approach this in relation to prosperity and Freyr. There are however undercurrents that deserve closer attention:

From The Havamal (Hollander translation):
Betimes must rise who few reapers has
And must see to the work himself
Much he misses who sleeps through morn
For the brisk race is half run

Here we have the association of harvest with hard work too. This is significant. The middle aett generally represent aspects of struggle as I have called them the Warrior's Aett elsewhere, though perhaps it is better to describe it as the aett of struggle. While the preceding runestaves in this aett all have strong crisis apsects to them, this stave is much more positive. It represents a struggle when the end is in sight, when the reward is known provided that the requisite effort is put into the harvest.

As a side note, I see the first aett as the aett of creation, and the last aett as the aett of sovereinty.

As for a calender system most lunar-solar calendars used a 12-month year with occasional intercalary months thrown in to square the lunar and solar calendars. This is really neither here nor there, and I am not sure we know enough about the ancient Norse and Migration Age Germanic calendars to know how they collectively tracked time, and I have not come across any authentic Norse astrology system that I can stand behind yet (too bad Robert Zoller's book on this subject is out of print-- it would be worth reading).

I tend to see Jera as representing prosperity, gain, increase, or earned gain in potential rather than in fact. In other words, I see Jera as representing the opportinity to have prosperity, gain, increase, etc. rather than the increase itself. Sort of the time when such increases can be gained. But it doesn't imply that they definitely will be.
 

Milfoil

I would agree that Jera is about putting in the hard work too. It seems (from my own personal experience) to be associated with patience, knowing when to sew and when to reap, hard work or more appropriately, putting in the effort, will eventually reap the rewards. Jera can't really be merkstave any more than spring cannot come or winter be avoided but neither can it be made to come along any faster than is the natural cycle.

Sometimes when Jera comes up in a reading, it refers to both the promise of timely harvest and the knowing when to harvest or the crops will molder and waste.