Qiūfēn, 秋分, Autumn Equinox

Welcome back to Qiūfēn, 秋分, the Season of the Autumn Equinox, and day of my birth! Qiūfēn is one of the classical Eight Gates of Chinese Astrology – the Eight times of Year that rectify the Annual Qì. This period is one of only two times a year that yīn and yáng, day and night, are in a relative state of balance. As I have said before, balance is a taut situation, nothing other than a temporary fulcrum in an otherwise imbalanced and dynamic continuum of constant movement.

The Autumn Equinox is a time of peaceful stillness preceding our full decent into the yīn of Winter. Yáng begins now to drain down and in as the environment grows cooler and drier. The nights grow longer as the world around us becomes more dreamlike, and the power of imagination begins to dominate the landscape. The Qì of this time is quiet, focused, and reflective.

In short, this temporary state of balance offers us a capacity for rest and recalibration that comes only twice a year; so, make good use of it. The rest is a kind of still clarity, like the surface of a pond becoming smooth and reflecting the sky above it. The capacity to take stock of life and to self-reflect is enhanced in the mirror of Nature. This time zeros out the scale.

As Yīn takes charge, the world changes as outward productivity and creation are reversed. To the uninitiated, the craziness of our world goes on, it seems, unchanged, but beneath the surface, the reversal of Yáng to Yīn moves the available Qì from generative to re-generative, just like every day, when we must at some point cease productivity and prepare to sleep and dream. The world is now of the same quality as 5-7 pm. In the grand scheme, the harvest should be complete, and everything begins the slow process of storing and planning. Will we survive the coming Winter?

Yīn takes the form of Princess about to become Queen. In the coming months, she reverses all the Emperor’s mandates for productivity and expansion and instead turns our focus local to the art of being human, to our personal relationships, and to the mandate of our Ancestors to keep the wheel turning.

Although modern culture allows us to be independent, for most of our history, no human being survived the Winter alone and without community. From here on out, the collective Qì, the interwoven tapestry of human relationships is brought forward into the realm of necessity. For better or worse, we in this together!