Ear

Traditional meaning: hanging tree / grave

Meanings when upright:

• death and loss are part of life
• for one thing to live, another must die
• your life needs a reboot
• it is certain your life will be radically upended
• all you can control is how you react to it
• passage from one state of being to another
• let go and move on

Meanings when inverted:

• Jett's promise ("I will never leave you behind")

Ear can be useful for:

• welcoming gradual but inevitable change

Anglo-Saxon rune poem:

Ear byþ egle eorla gehwylcun,
ðonn[e] fæstlice flæsc onginneþ,
hraw colian, hrusan ceosan
blac to gebeddan; bleda gedreosaþ,
wynna gewitaþ, wera geswicaþ.

The grave is horrible to every knight,
when the corpse quickly begins to cool
and is laid in the bosom of the dark earth.
Prosperity declines, happiness passes away
and covenants are broken.

There is not a Norwegian rune poem for Ear.

A modern poem:

Death and loss are a part of life.
For one thing to live, another must die,
or maybe a great many things,
the blood on my hands accumulating over time.

When our bodies have decayed
and the earth has our flesh reclaimed,
it will for archeologists be hard
to tell our skeletons apart.
And that is if they can even plumb Yewiffe,
can descend down the roots of that massive tree
where tangled and intertwined lies
the forgotten, the repressed, the passed parts of my life.

Maybe one of them will find
a moment that has yet to happen
where my parents finally of my wretched blood ken
and toss me out onto the streets.
This is, of course, if they do not deem
me a demon, a thief,
a persistent adept-at-lying possessor
of what they all this time called their daughter
and grant me at their own hands a slaughter.

For this to come to pass I know is certain,
for even the best of my secrets I could not hide forever.
In Ragnarok even the gods from their lives were severed.
It mattered not
how mightily anyone fought:
for all ill-fated was drawn life's curtain.

All that anyone could control
was how they reacted to it,
how the coming end they greeted.

And the coming end I seek,
if this is the fate I am doomed to keep,
is that this time
for once in my life
I do not from my beliefs
back down.
Instead of snapping in the hurricane,
I rest on these roots dug so deep
and refuse to recant my name.

And when I die,
I will be able to look you in the eyes
with no burning guilt and no unsettled regrets.
I will have proved to you my loyalty
and you to me your promise
to never leave me behind.
Now take me to Sablade, set us free.
We have earned our three days of rest.