UPRIGHT
REVERSED
~ GER (harvest) ~ j ~
Harvest is the specific meaning of this rune, but for general purposes,
cycle may be more useful. It indicates the coming full circle of the year
when the labor in the fields during spring and summer is repaid in autumn.
The ancient Germans did not recognize autumn as a season. According
to Tacitus, they acknowledged only spring, summer and winter. Perhaps
they regarded autumn as a summing up of the entire year, rather than
as a separate and equal quarter.
Generalized Ger is any revolution or cycle of change. A change of
luck. A cycle of life, All natural cycles such as the phases of the moon.
The change of the seasons. Ger has variously been defined by scholars
as year, spring, summer and harvest season. Its broader meaning
encompasses all these.
For the Teutons, the most obvious cycle was the change from winter
to summer, and from summer to winter. The joys and plenties of the
harvest are opposed to the silent hardship signaled by the freezing
over of the lakes, rivers and ocean. The stillness of Is is in sharp contrast
to the cyclic motion of Ger. In winter everything stops; with the return
of the sun, things begin to move once again, Ger is change, and change
is always cyclical.
Even the shape of Ger suggests this whirling energy. It is a tourbillion,
a vortex of active forces. The alternate form of Ger shows an axis
through the center of a circle. This is a Hindu symbol for generation.
MEANINGS:
UPRIGHT:
Favorable change of climate, revolution of circumstance, alteration,
transformation, fulfillment, fruition, turning of the wheel, revising of
opinion, reappraisal, second look, stroke of luck, cycle turns up.
REVERSED:
Inversion, turning of things on their head, reversal, setback, change
for the worse, disappointment of hopes, the high cast down, pride
humbled, evil returned for evil given, bad karma, cycle turns down.
KEY: CHANGE
