This week we entered the last rune of the calendar that I follow. It will have been another full year walking the Futhark, and as has become the way since COVID, this one has been a very trying cycle.

Well before I worked with runic calendars I felt that June Solstice — Summer Solstice where I live — was scathing. I could say that’s because this time of year carries loads of baggage, body memories I’ve long learned to expect. I could say it’s the heat; unrelenting humidity makes me think and say and do uncharacteristic things. The drama invariably kicks up. With the awareness that Summer Solstice intersects with the rune Dagaz, I can understand the tension a bit more clearly.

Over three decades of runic studies, and specifically working with a runic calendar for the last fifteen, I’ve lived into Dagaz’s relationship with Jera. I rarely discuss one without also discussing the other. In the runic calendar that I work with, they sit opposite each other in season — Dagaz the rune of Summer Solstice, Jera the rune of Winter Solstice.

In the traditional ordering of the Futhark we first encounter Jera in the middle of the second aett. It is, in fact, the middle rune of the entire Futhark. Jera means “year” — harvest, a full cycle, the totality of accounting for what has come to pass and how we use our agency to create from it. Jera brings inquiry and decision-making: What worked this year? What didn’t? What should we repeat? What should we never do again? How do we apply what we learned to next year’s crop? How much do we invest in next year’s harvest? How much do we reserve for emergency?

On a soul level, Jera urges clarity in how we lay plans and move forward with them. It underscores that our agency must always carry awareness of its impact — to us, our community, our ecosystem, the collective. There is always deliberate assessment followed by appropriate action. An often unaddressed aspect of Jera is consistency. We’re talking an entire year of assessing, applying, adapting. That attentiveness means we stay connected, deeply in relationship with all of our persons — human and other-than.

We don’t encounter Dagaz until the end of the third aett — the last rune in the annual cycle. By that point we’ve had a full year of Jera to understand what works and what doesn’t, how we respond. Dagaz gives us the word “day,” the 24-hour cycle, and also daylight — the bright, sunny part of a day. The ask of Dagaz is that we bring that same intense scrutiny into our day. On the surface that doesn’t seem like such a big job. But we have a full year to do the inquiry of Jera. Not many of us have that kind of energy to put into our daily focus. We have to cut to the quick of what harvest-in-a-day looks like — and from my perspective, that pushes us to find meaning in our day. How we spend our time on the micro level factors into everything.

When we examine our day with the same lens we bring to Jera, I think it comes down to relationality — the core facet of animism. With whom do we want to spend our time? With whom is it functional? With whom is it not? We are in relationship with our families, our ecosystems, our jobs, our thoughts, our beliefs, our languaging of it all. It all comes down to relationality, and understanding that we can change how we’re in relationship with every aspect of our lives at any time. We can’t always change the circumstances. We can’t change what’s come to pass. We can change how we’re in relationship with all of it, at any time.

That’s where the intersection of Dagaz and Summer Solstice truly stands out for me. Jera and Dagaz are in relationship with each other — bringing awareness to how we expend our agency daily adds up to a very intentional year. It makes for a powerful harvest. What we do at the macro and micro levels always impacts both, because they are in relationship with each other. Even the shapes of the staves illustrate this: symmetry, balance, polarity. With Jera we have an enmeshment of Kenazes — facing each other, linked in calling begetting calling. Dagaz is an hourglass, maybe a butterfly. And while our attention is likely drawn to the wings, it’s the center that holds it all together. In that juncture the power of the stave originates — just as the emphasis of Solstice isn’t what’s before or after it. The focus is standing still in its illuminated moments.

When we think of “year,” it always seems far away, whether looking behind or ahead of us. It’s never here, now. With Dagaz, we think of “day” — the present, this moment. In that way, Dagaz doesn’t shrink Jera — it reveals that the year was always made of moments like this one. The scale changes. The nature of it doesn’t. The year is never anywhere but here. Every harvest was once a single day. Every day contains the whole year.

Summer Solstice is that intersection — the space between scales, between what was and what will be. The void-like gap where all promise is available, all unknown and unknowable. Not about either extreme, not about what came before or what comes after. It is purely about what holds them together: the moment of the shift, which comes, occurs, and passes as quickly as everything on either side of it.

This year, standing at Dagaz, I find myself less inclined toward grand summations. The cycle has been hard in the way that slow erosion is hard — not one dramatic break, but the steady wearing down of what I thought I knew about my own endurance. What I carry into this solstice moment isn’t resolution. It’s more like an honest inventory taken in bright, unsparing light.

That’s the gift and the difficulty of Dagaz. It doesn’t let us soften the edges. The illumination is total. And yet — the rune doesn’t ask us to fix anything in that light. It only asks us to see clearly, to stand still in the seeing, before the wheel turns again and Jera begins her patient, rooted work.

So here I am. At the center of the hourglass. Letting it be enough to simply witness what this year has made of me, and what I might yet make of it.

The third aett begs that kind of honesty — the kind that notices what we’ve been carrying, what’s ending, and what still wants our care. In our work, this is where the old stories loosen their grip and the real one begins to speak.

Quietly. Plainly. With roots.

If something in this landed, that’s not coincidence. Born for This is a 55-minute session where we go directly to your creation story — the original power you carry and how it wants to move through you now. Not around the hard parts. Through them. Book your session here.

S. Kelley Harrell, M. Div.

Kelley Harrell is an animist, author, deathwalker, and death doula held by Tuscarora, Woccon, and Sissipihaw land. For the last 30 years, through Soul Intent Arts she’s helped others ethically build thriving spiritual paths. Her work is Nature-based, and centers soul tending through the Elder Futhark runes, animism, ancestral tending, and deathwork. She hosts the podcast, What in the Wyrd, and also writes The Weekly Rune as a celebration of the Elder Futhark in season. Work with her in the Runes for Change community or in her intensive soul tending training, The Spirited Path.  Full bio.

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