Jera (ᛃ) is the twelfth rune of the Elder Futhark and stands for the sound of y in "year." Its name means "year," and by extension a fruitful year and its harvest. All three medieval rune poems call it a blessing for everyone. In modern rune reading it is taken to mean reward in due season, cycles and patience, and it is read as a yes.
What does the Jera rune mean?
As a piece of history, Jera is a letter: the sign for the consonant that English spells with y and that scholars of runes write as j.
As a symbol, it belongs to modern rune reading, a 20th-century practice. There Jera stands for:
- Harvest. The return on work done a long time ago.
- Cycles. Seasons, and anything else that comes around in its turn.
- Patience. A process that cannot be hurried and cannot be skipped.
The Jera sign and its sound
Jera is made of two small angles, one above the other and facing opposite ways, that do not touch. No other rune of the 24 is built from two separate parts in this way. Many people see two halves of a year circling each other.
The sound is the y of "year" or "yes." In writing about runes it is shown as j, as in German Jahr, which is why the name starts with that letter.
The reconstructed name is Jera or Jeran. In Old English the rune is Ger. In Old Norse the word lost its first sound and became Ár, and the rune was reused for the vowel a.
The name Jera and what the rune poems say
The names of the runes come from manuscripts written centuries after the Elder Futhark, and their early forms are reconstructed. Tineke Looijenga gives jēran and translates the Old English name as "year, harvest."
All three medieval rune poems have a verse for the rune, and they are unusually close to one another. The lines below are from Bruce Dickins's 1915 translation; he renders the name as "summer" in the English poem and "plenty" in the Scandinavian ones.
The Old English poem: "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."
The Old Norwegian poem: "Plenty is a boon to men; I say that Frodi was generous." Frodi is a legendary king whose reign was remembered as a time of peace and good harvests.
The Old Icelandic poem: "Boon to men and good summer and thriving crops."
The poets are not describing a calendar. A "year" here is a good year, the kind that fills the barns. And in the English verse the fruits are "for rich and poor alike": the harvest is the one kind of wealth in the poem that reaches everybody.
Jera in a modern rune reading
The following is modern practice, built on the verses above. It is not something the rune carvers left behind.
As a rune of the day, Jera is taken as a reminder to tend what has been planted; the harvest keeps its own date.
In a three-rune cast:
- The situation. A process is under way and is somewhere in the middle. Earlier work has not been wasted.
- The challenge. The wish to see results now. The task is to keep tending and to let the season finish.
- The likely outcome. A fair return, proportionate to what was put in. It is a direction, not a verdict, and it names no date.
In a yes-or-no question Jera is read as a yes, with the quiet addition "in time."
Draw a rune or cast three below.
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Is there a reversed Jera?
Many modern books give runes a second meaning when they fall upside down. Jera is usually exempt, because turning it around changes nothing you can see. Reversals are a recent convention in any case; the poems give each rune a single verse.
Our rune reading reads all runes upright.
Jera in its ætt and neighboring runes
The 24 runes are traditionally divided into three groups of eight, each called an ætt. Jera is fourth in the second group, often called Hagal's ætt, and the twelfth rune overall: the midpoint of the alphabet.
It comes after Isa, ice, and before Eihwaz, the yew tree. After hail, need and ice, the row turns to summer here.
The complete alphabet is in the guide to the Elder Futhark runes.