Start of Autumn (立秋, pronounced "liqiu") is one of the 24 solar terms of the traditional Chinese calendar. Yang yields to yin; the year turns toward harvest, refinement and gentle consolidation.
Autumn terms are harvesting and refining: completion, gratitude and release. Align with them by finishing, editing and keeping only what serves you.
Start of Autumn arrives around August 7 each Gregorian year (08-07). In 2026 it falls in early-to-mid August, marking the shift from the previous term (Major Heat) toward End of Heat.
If this page answered the question you came with, the natural next step is one of these. Browse today's horoscope, follow today's sky report, or go deeper with astrology and tarot guides. Each one is written to be read in a couple of minutes, and they cross-check each other.
The twenty-four solar terms divide the year by the Sun's position rather than by months, which is why Start of Autumn lands on roughly the same date each year — and why it is a better guide to what people were planting, eating and resting through than any calendar month. Start of Autumn (立秋) describes a default setting rather than a fixed behaviour: it is the style something is done in, not a promise about the result. In practice it shows up in the weeks on either side of this term, and it is most visible under pressure — when you stop choosing how to behave and simply behave.
Treat it as a map of tendencies: it tells you where something starts from, not how far it can go, and it tends to read differently at 25 than it does at 45. Like any symbolic language this describes pressures rather than outcomes, which is why two people can read the same line and take completely different things from it.
The usual failure mode is this: the strength you are known for quietly becomes the thing you overdo. That rarely arrives as a dramatic mistake. It arrives as a small preference repeated until it hardens into a pattern, which is why it is easier to spot in hindsight than in the moment. Naming it early is most of the fix; the rest is deciding once instead of re-deciding every time the same situation comes round.
It is only one layer. Reading it alone is like judging a conversation from a single sentence — useful, incomplete, and easy to over-read.
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All 24 Chinese Solar Terms