Here, Ice Reigns.
Everything freezes,
and only silence
and transparency
remain.
Time and space suspended
Forms fade away,
In the cold light of the ice,
The fullness of consciousness shines forth.
The evolution of the three runes speaks volumes: in Nauthiz, the two vertical lines displayed in Hagalaz have merged, indicating that the cause must be laid to rest, and here in Isa, the slash indicating obstacle and constraint has disappeared: only the verticality remains, absorbing the previous dualities.
This verticality evokes Yggdrasil, the tree of our consciousness. But this tree, which we saw unfold in Fehu, finds here its most stripped-down, most essential expression.
While in Hagalaz we became aware of the reactive forces within us, and then in Nauthiz accepted the necessary limits to dry them up, here this opposition dissolves. After the restriction is understood and accepted comes stillness.
Having set aside the incidental, we return to the essential, the root of what grounds us, what we are in the genesis of our Being.
Note that while the first rune, Fehu, marks the irruption of Fire, the eleventh rune, as we approach the midpoint, marks the consecration of Ice. This culmination of Form also signifies a tipping point: If all expansion of Fire is “frozen,” it is internalized, introverted. Here, Ice manifests a halt to all productive tendencies but also absolute transparency.
Paradoxically, the apex of Ice is accompanied by the fullness of the quality of Fire concentrated in its essence. There is no longer any oppression of Fire by Ice: everything is frozen. In this Crystal Realm, Form is nothing but cohesion and transparency, and no impurity disturbs the perfect lucidity of the Force. There is hibernation: Fire, the Life Force, is concentrated within Form.
If we have carefully navigated the previous phases, we have learned to recognize the aggregates that were throwing us off the path of our return, constraining the Force within its dynamics.
The opacities resulting from the upheavals initiated since the beginning of this second Aett have faded, now useless. The parasitic forces drawing us toward the periphery of our world no longer hold sway. If in the previous rune we learned to limit ourselves, here the resulting concentration signifies attention and lucidity.
We can thus enjoy the Inner silence, the “great White Silence,” that transparency which arises midway, where the dense becomes subtle and the subtle becomes self-aware. Fire, light, encounters no obstacle, for it seeks nothing but the awareness of itself.
Such an attitude is in no way akin to quietism: the isolation essential in Isa is not that of an ivory tower. What is at stake here is stability—stability in movement, stability amidst the whirlwinds that may assail us—an inalienable awareness of the clarity of Being.
If Isa always signifies simplification—simplification in our relationships with others, as well as clarification and simplification of our inner world—this rune, when lived well, establishes a purified form of relationship that may seem cold because it absorbs the incidental and the illusory.