The same transition of Thurisaz inward that "breaks" the stone and makes Ansuz and Fehu possible also enables the most mysterious rune of Elder Futhark - Jera, the culminating rune of the Runic Alchemy sequence.

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 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-clockwise and has an accent on Air and 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 Earth and Fire, while Water is missing:

And even with two different variants of Jera, the complete Broken Stone still 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 the 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, and it adds some weight as a second sunwise version against only one counter sunwise variant.

The meaning of the Jera rune is "harvest", "season", and "year". For example, the English word "year" is a direct descendant of Proto-Germanic "jērą" same as German "jahr". The harvest season is fall, the time of red leaves, and it's better to have dry weather to harvest. And the Water is a better fit for Spring.

Interestingly, there is Yarilo, the Slavic god of vegetation, fertility, and springtime, and his name comes from Proto-Slavic "jȃro" - "spring" and further from Proto-Balto-Slavic jēran and Proto-Indo-European "yóh₁r̥" - "year", "growing season" (where Slavic "spring" meaning probably branched out) or "harvest season" (closer to Germanic "Jera"/"Year"/"Harvest" branch).

The sunwise rotation direction of the lower Jera variant connects it better with "season", because seasons follow the movement of the sun across the sky.

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

This shape reminds me of a flower. Water and Air dominate. Looks very relevant to Slavic "spring".

And with lower Jera:

Arguably reminds of an ear of wheat. Feels more grounded, stable, and balanced, evenly distributed across five worlds with focus on Earth, which better fits the "earthy" harvest meaning of the Jera rune.

In modern practice, the upper, counter-sunwise-directed 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 because, in the humble author's opinion, it's more "Nordic", while the most popular modern variant is rather "Slavic" which, honestly, is a good thing, considering the author's baltic/slavic origins, but it drifts us away from the Norse/germanic scope of this book.

From an alchemical perspective, Jera represents the cyclical nature of our world, caused by the introduced "imperfection" - the event of the killing of Ymir. From a mechanical perspective, the rotational part of the movement results from the force applied not precisely, but off the center of mass of the target object, so one half receives a higher impulse than the other and tries to go faster, while the second half lags, but since they both are connected, the whole body starts chasing its own tail.

But we are not going to blame Odin for making a mistake. This game was started much earlier by someone hidden in the Emptiness. Fire and Water are not just two equal halves, they are different, and their difference is a potential that drives the change and evolution of unfolding complexity. Jera is a spiral spring, wound to run the clock, the Ymir's power of time focused on the Emptiness by both descending and ascending bars of the Thurisaz rune, which is the right half of the Jera rune.

Is the universe perfect? If it is, then, by making any change, don't we deviate from perfection, don't we commit a "sin"?

The moment we are born, we are already "guilty" at the beginning of a new existence. And change is the core of any existence. When you make any change, you don't deviate from the perfection of the universe, and you are not responsible for fixing it back, because perfection is not static, perfection is dynamic.

Every change is included in perfection, whatever is happening is aligned with all the laws, whether we may know or not, like them or not. The universe is always changing, and so is life. If change stops, it is death, the end of existence. Every change you make is perfect. And every change happens on top of all the previous changes and serves as a stepping stone for upcoming changes, this is how time walks forward.

Emptiness is the creative force that initiated the process of creation of the universe by separating opposites and giving space and time for them to touch again and give birth to our middle world.

Emptiness is in the very center of you and me. When we create, creation is unfolding from Emptiness like the world unfolds from the thin line of the horizon when we walk forward. A thin line of Emptiness that divides Earth and Sky, which you can never reach, but it's always in front of you. The force that is not visible, but you can always feel it behind the scenes, at the tips of your fingers. The rune of Jera is the rune of happening, the rune of existence, the rune of time.