The birth of gods and giants, as seen in the top right ascending bar and low right descending bar of Perthro, completes the entire connection of everything with everything. The entire Stone is now sealed with the Gebo rune, which means "Gift" or "Generosity."

The Gift is an exchange, a sign of alliance. Fire gives the gift of Light to Water. Water gives the gift of transparency to Fire. These end-to-end connections make the entire Philosopher's Stone shine, projecting outward.

There is a second shape, complementing Gebo and highlighting the dualistic nature of the stone, the lozenge or 'diamond' shape:

There is no such rune in Elder Futhark, but the symbol itself is very basic, and universal, and has the common meaning of fertility, protection, and balance.

The Ingwaz rune has such a rhombic variant of inscription, and as we already learned in the first chapters, the Ingwaz rune also has such meanings of fertility and balance, so the same meaning is supported by Norse tradition as well.

In our case, we don't consider this shape as a separate entity but only reflect on the holistic symbolism of the entire Philosopher's Stone.

Instead of seeing it as a sequence of specific runes from Elder Futhark, we can see the stone as a three-layer symbol:

• Lozenge - the border, preservation, reproduction.
• Gebo - connection, influence, expansion.
• Three vertical lines - three phases, order, structure, purpose, and plan.

Another way to compose Philosopher's Stone is to scratch the surface with three claws three times:

So not only human, but also a wild beast can approach the source of Creation.

Breaking the Egg Shell

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 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 Thurisaz 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 and Jera rune: