Now it's time to speak about three outstanding runes that do not fit into the Stone and why. As you see in the Stone bind rune, all diagonals are evenly distributed and have equal distance from each other.

Most of the Elder Futhark runes follow this pattern and fit the Stone nicely.

But if you try to fit, for example, the Ansuz rune, it doesn't:

You see, two parallel descending bars are too close to each other. If we fit the top descending bar with one of Lagus, from Water to Air level, the second bar appears in between the standard Philosopher's Stone. There is no "slot" for the descending bar from Air to Emptiness which starts from the middle vertical. The next available slot is a bar from the very center, from the Emptiness to Earth.

If we try to stretch Ansuz to force it to fit into the Stone, Ansuz would look ugly:

We have the same issues of too-close parallel bars in the Fehu and Jera runes.

Killing Ymir

In the previous chapter, as suggested by the Icelandic Rune Poem, we compared the giant Ymir with Saturn, the Roman god of time, who separated his father Uranus (god of Sky) from his mother Gaia (goddess of Earth) in a bloody way, using a scythe and causing a flood of blood that turned into oceans. In turn, Saturn was defeated by his son Jupiter later on.

According to Norse myth, something similar but in a bit of a reverse direction happened. Thurs Ymir had no particular father or mother and killed nobody, which is not surprising considering he was always sleeping, and instead, he was killed by his grandchildren - Odin and his brothers. Again, the blood of Ymir turned into the sea, which seems like a good match. This is the first time in Norse myth that someone is mentioned to be killed or dead. It aligns well with the parallel between Ymir and Yama, the first ever to die, and reinforces the connection with Time, as both Saturn and Yama (Kala) are considered gods of time, and ideas of time and mortality are closely connected.

The event of killing Ymir by Odin, Vili, and Ve is represented by "breaking" the Philosopher's Stone. The Thurisaz rune, associated with Ymir, is the rightmost rune in the Stone:

Odin and his brothers kill the Thurs and bring his body to the center to build Midgard from it:

As you see, the Thurs rune is now shifted one step left, so its vertical bar is now matching the central axis of the Stone, and diagonal bars are now unexpectedly crossing the standard lines of the Stone.

Thanks to this, we now have a new slot from Air to Emptiness which we were missing for our Ansuz rune. Similarly, we have a new ascending slot from the Earth to the Emptiness for the Fehu rune:

Jera Rune

The same move of Thurs inward also enables the most mysterious rune of Elder Futhark - Jera. But there is a challenge with the Jera rune itself. Starting from the earliest examples of rune inscriptions, there is uncertainty about its proper shape. The rune Jera consists of two independent angles pointing outward and shifted vertically against each other.

On the oldest found rune stones, there are examples of the upper position of the first angle. It feels like rotating counter sunwise and has an accent on Water, while Fire is missing:

But there are also examples of the lower position of the first angle. It feels like rotating sunwise and has an accent on Fire, while Water is missing:

But even with two different variants of Jera, the complete Broken Stone looks exactly the same, they both match it perfectly:

There is also another variant of Jera - horizontal. It's a sunwise Jera but rotated further in a sunwise direction so the left angle is pointing upward and right - downward:

We are not going to use it, but it's a good illustration of what "sunwise" means in the context of the Jera rune: the sun first rises and then sets.

The meaning of the Jera rune is "harvest", "season" and "year". The harvest season is autumn, the time of red leaves and it's better to have dry weather to harvest. And the Water is a better fit for Spring.
The sunwise rotation direction of the lower Jera variant connects it better with "season".
So in direct comparison, lower Jera wins.

Let's compare two variations of the World bind rune.
With upper Jera:

...reminds flower. Looks too nice and pictographic to be Norse. Water and Air dominate.

And with lower Jera:

Reminds nothing, but invokes the perceived presence of Eihwaz. Feels more grounded, stable, and balanced, evenly distributed across five worlds, which fits better the balanced nature of Philosopher's Stone.

In modern practice upper variant of Jera is used much more often, but the majority is not always right. In this book, we will use the "lower" sunwise-directed variant of Jera.

Broken Stone

Let's return to the Creation myth.

While it may look scary: killing an ancestor, rivers of blood, breaking our precious Stone which we were crafting so hard. But let's trust Odin's wisdom; if he did it, there was a very good reason.

Let's recap what we already know:

• Ymir is a Thurs, which means wild and chaotic.
• Ymir has not ever been mentioned doing anything except eating, sleeping, and making children. It does not seem to be a high level of consciousness.
• After his "death," we, humans built of trees, find ourselves walking inside his head with brains as clouds, flesh as earth, blood as water, bones as rocks, etc.
• Ymir is closely connected to Birth, Death, and Time.

All these make us conclude Ymir is Matter, the material world we live in.

The Norse myth of the birth and death of Ymir and the resulting creation of the world of mortals echoes the modern myth of the Big Bang, which describes the birth of the universe as a very intense and violent event compared with a blow when space and time themselves first ever appeared. We could correlate the moment of the Big Bang with the moment of the killing of Ymir.

Only after killing Ymir did the actual Creation happen, so all the story before this moment, as represented by the entire "ideal" Philosopher's Stone, is a story of the conception and incubation of the egg. And when the hatchling is ready, the shell must be broken.

In two Runic Poems, the Old Norwegian and Old Icelandic, Thurs is described as causing pain to women. This connection can be interpreted as representing the pain and struggle of childbirth, along with the corresponding symbolism of struggle, destruction, and the transcendence to new life.

So when the time comes and you complete your Philosopher's Stone, don't be afraid of opening it and seeing what you've got as a result.