Time is an aspect of the Order. While Space defines the positions and size of things, Time does the same for events. Time defines when something starts and ceases to exist, this is how Time is the source of birth and death. Time also defines how events relate to each other, this is how we can make sense of the world regarding cause and effect.

Future and past

Everything starts with separation. The torch of Kenaz lights the Emptiness up allowing us to distinguish the opposites, the Water, which is not water, but a liquid light of stars, and the Fire, which is not a fire, but dense like a lava energy. This initial separation also cracks the eternity in halves. There is no time yet as we know it, but there is already an idea of before and after.

Doppler's effect

Remember when you are on the road and the motorbike is approaching and you hear its engine producing noise at a higher pitch, but at the moment when the bike passes you and runs away - the sound suddenly becomes much lower? The true sound is somewhere in the middle, which you hear momentarily when the bike is right in front of you. This effect of shifting of sound wave frequency up or down is caused by contracting or increasing the distance between you and the source. For example, in the case of the approaching source of the wave, each oscillation happens a bit closer than the previous one, so the length of the wave becomes shorter compared to the static source/target because each wave reaches you a bit faster than it should.

The same effect works also for electromagnetic waves. If the source moves towards you (or you move towards the source) then the frequency of the waves increases and in the case of the visible spectrum, the light shifts upward to the blue part. And oppositely, when the source moves away, the light shifts down to the red part. This is how astronomers can estimate the speed and direction of distant stars and how Doppler's sensors can detect movement in the secured area by comparing emitted and reflected signal frequency.

Light

The Light is White and it comes both from the Future and from the Past.
But the future is approaching us, this is why the Light from the Future looks rather blue and why we call it the Water.
And the Past is going away, this is why the Light from the Past looks rather Red and why we call it the Fire.

The deeper into the Water we look, the more distant the future we see the faster it's approaching, and the more the Light is shifted to the Blue until it reaches the limits of our perception and becomes dim and then dark.

Same for the Fire: the more distant past we see - the faster it's going away and the more the Light is shifted to the Red, until it again reaches the limits of our perception but from another side.

The Darkness is still the Light but at a frequency that we can't see.

Now

The edge of the Emptiness, which divides Fire and Water, is a moment where the Past and the Future meet. We call this moment "now" and this is a tip of the rune Thurisaz, the birth of Ymir.

When we were discussing the Water we described it as a field of probabilities. The future already exists but it's not fixed. Like a saturated solution, water contains all the possible combinations and shapes of yet growing crystal, but its actual shape is yet to be defined. Defined partially by the shape of already happened past, partially by the freedom of choice which gives us the Air, and partially by our strong will powered by the Light.

The Earth, as a solidified Fire, is still raw and chaotic, it's still waiting to be crystallized. It means the past is still subject to refinement and reordering. The Light of the Future is a Light of the Fire but reflected. It's the light of the Future because it's yet to be filtered from the Fire of the Past by the Crystal of the Earth, this is why this Light is coming from the Water to the Air - to teach the Earth order, so the Earth will let it ascend.

Creation

The Creation is not an act, because it's continuous. The Creation is not a process, because it happens beyond time. The birth of Ymir is a birth of time when the moment of now appears in the touch point between Future and Past. But Jera, the Wheel of Time, begins to spin only with the death of Ymir, within the creation of the world from Ymir's body. This is how things start changing. This is how the future starts coming, and the past starts going away and the present starts gliding from one to another.

One can look to the left to meet the incoming flow and can look to the right to see where it's going and hold the flow of time in the hands as Water and Fire and see in the middle who turns one into another.

We, alchemists, are agents of the Future, relaying the reflected Light of the Water down to the Earth to make it Crystal, helping the universe to filter, collect, and conduct the Light of the Fire from the Past to the Present so it will raise higher to the Water and reflect back.

By holding this thread of Light which slides in both directions in our both hands we come closer.

Living in Time

As beings who live in space, we can relatively freely change our position and orientation and perceive it from any direction.

But along the time axis, we are limited in our movement and perception by only one direction and by a very narrow period in the time called "now". We usually can only remember our past and guess our future, but not perceive it directly.

Through the practice of Runic Alchemy, we have a chance to realize our potential as beings who live also in time and obtain more freedom and control over our time coordinate by training our sense of time and ability to extend our consciousness from only current moment to wider period which includes our past and future, potentially over our entire lifespan or even beyond.

Helping Ourselves

It is possible to contact your own future version from one of the potential future variants and ask for advice and support in arriving at that particular variant.

Doing so, while possible, is quite difficult because it causes "borrowing" of Light from the future, which is resisted by the law of preservation.

To make the connection easier and stronger, we can free the Light from our past by supporting ourselves in some past challenging periods, when such help would be most needed.

By helping ourselves in the past, we play the role of the future and allow ourselves to waste less energy on stressing and doing something wrong.

This preserved energy will be transferred from that past back to our present and can be used to open the connection to the future self without "borrowing".

Even for doing this, we can use some help from the future, because there is always a background glow around, called the "call of the future", that subtle but eternal feeling, that never lets us settle, like a silent question within, which is always asking us to seek for the answer.

• Dive deep, up to the Water, and let it fill everything around as we did in the chapter about Water.
• Turn your head to the left, scan among all the variants, and find where is your ideal future.
• Contact yourself from that future, and ask about the best point in your past at which you should support yourself first.
• You will feel the response as a guiding thread of light coming from the top-left, hold it in your left hand.
• Track this thread from left to right, slowly turn your head along the thread, and see where in the past it comes.
• You will recall some event or situation in your life - tell yourself the answer you were asking for, help yourself with the love and support you needed, calm yourself, and assure yourself that you have a better future and the challenge will be resolved.
• Turn your head slowly from the right to the left, slide back to the future along the guiding thread, and ask yourself in the future to support in arriving there, in making this future happen.

Doing so over and over again with various past events and situations will have a cumulative effect. This is part of your crystal-growing effort. This is restructuring your chaotic earth supported by the light of Water and extracting the Light from the Fire at the same time. By doing this you are connecting different dots of your self along the timeline into a continuous stream of consciousness.