Beginning of Autumn

Wait, that’s September 23…

We are modern humans. We’ve outsourced so much of our cognition and awareness that we don’t even realize what we’ve lost. Look around you (please step outside first)- things are changing. The feel of the air, the sounds, animal movement patterns. Nature is inexorable. If plants and animals get the seasons wrong, they don’t survive. If we get the seasons wrong, we head to Walmart.

More ancient civilizations like the Celts and the Chinese took a different viewpoint. They saw the solstices and equinoxes as the height of the season, not the beginning. Think about it- winter solstice is the shortest darkest day of the year. This is yin at its height. How could that be the beginning of something?

So consider the cross-quarters, the midpoints between the solstices and equinoxes. You could reference Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasad or Samhain for example. If you are a complete nerd, you can reference this site.

August 7 as the beginning of Autumn

From a Five Element perspective, Autumn is governed by the element of Metal. Bear with me while we wander a side road…as modern humans, we are ever increasingly left brain dominant. If you would like to go for an amazing albeit challenging trek off into the hinterlands, listen to Iain McGilchrist. I will paraphrase. The right side of our brain does big picture and complex systems, the left side is there to create simplified maps and parse things into ever smaller bits. So we currently tend to see things as separate- this is an element, this is a season, this is a color. Chinese medicine and its accompanying theories are based in Taoist philosophy which revels in complex systems (come on, what else is there?). It also delights in the fact that depending on where you stand, you may see something different.

So if we see the season as simply a manifestation of the metal element which can also manifest as a color or an organ or a sound etc. etc., we are standing in a very different place. A different viewpoint.

You could even bring in that word that defies definition- ‘qi’. Or use the word energetics. If that word conjures granola and pixie dust, substitute dynamics.

Dynamics of Autumn

The descent that began as soon as we achieved summer solstice is gathering speed. Trees and perennials are retreating internally to gather the forces necessary for surviving winter. Wild animals are gathering what’s needed as well- food stores, more fur. It’s time to harvest the bounty of summer. To collect what has matured so we too can become more yin.

My mentor always talked about the perfectly ripe peach- at that moment of perfection, it detaches from its stem and begins its descent towards the ground. Freefall. A glorious return to the earth and its accompanying decay and transformation.

Modern humans hate freefall, if only because we have lost faith that change brings transformation. We’ve decided that more more more is our birthright. That up is the only way and summer should last forever…

Medicine is anything that contains power…

And the medicine is all around us. It’s in the breezes that now contain the beginning of coolness, the creaking of the crickets and grasshoppers, the whispers of the falling leaves. So much beauty waiting to be beheld. There are forces in the world that transcend time and politics, that cannot be constrained by dogma or doctrine. The spirits (however you define that) are always with us. Thankfully, they are not enablers. It is for us to turn our senses towards them and rejoin the ten thousand beings…

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