Autumn occupies a distinctive and recurring position in the depth-psychology corpus as a symbol of the second half of life — the season of culmination, wisdom, and the acceptance of necessary decline. Esther Harding's extended treatment in 'The Way of All Women' remains the most psychologically elaborated account: she reads autumn as the moment when libidinal energies, released from the adaptive tasks of youth and midlife, may crystallize into what she calls 'pure beauty' and 'the beginning of wisdom.' This reading resonates with Jung's own framework of individuation across the life-course, in which the afternoon of life bears a meaning irreducible to its morning. The I Ching commentators — both Wilhelm and Ritsema/Karcher — position autumn structurally as the harvest phase within a cosmological Time Cycle, the season of gathering and fruition before the rigors of winter, a temporal locus where 'autumnal decay' signals the withdrawal of yang and the ascendancy of yin. Robert Romanyshyn's treatment is more phenomenological: autumn becomes a quality of soul — a liminal style of awareness that minds the gap between noon and winter sleep. Dōgen and the East Asian Zen tradition deploy autumn's moon as an icon of enlightened consciousness, and McGilchrist notes that in classical Japanese poetry, autumn held a privileged, even dominant, place as the season most freighted with aware — the bittersweet pathos of impermanence. Across traditions, autumn is not merely seasonal decay but the very precondition for wisdom, beauty, and inward illumination.
In the library
14 passages
as the first forewarnings of coming winter make themselves felt, an autumn of brilliance and beauty may be ushered in. The psychological energies which in earlier life were fully occupied with the inner and the outer adaptation are released from that arduous task and shine forth in pure beauty. This is the period of culture—the time of the beginning of wisdom.
Harding argues that autumn is the psychological season par excellence of the second half of life, when libidinal energy released from earlier adaptive tasks transforms into cultural radiance and the onset of wisdom.
Autumn and spring, these seasons of the soul, are qualities, activities, styles of being in and knowing the world, rhythmic tides of the soul... autumn minds the gap between the summer of the soul's high noon and its winter sleep.
Romanyshyn reframes autumn as a phenomenological quality of soul — a liminal, threshold mode of awareness marking the passage between the soul's noon and its wintering — rather than a calendar notation.
Romanyshyn, Robert D., The Wounded Researcher: Research with Soul in Mind, 2007thesis
midautumn follows under the trigram of the Joyous, Tui, which, as autumn, leads the year toward its fruition and joy. Then follows the stern season, when proof of deeds accomplished must be
Wilhelm's I Ching places autumn within a cosmological sequence as the phase of fruition and joyous harvest (Tui) before the stern reckoning of winter, linking it structurally to the completion of action.
Richard Wilhelm, Cary F. Baynes, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950thesis
midautumn follows under the trigram of the Joyous, Tui, which, as autumn, leads the year toward its fruition and joy. Then follows the stern season, when proof of deeds accomplished must be
Corroborating Wilhelm's cosmological placement of autumn as the joyous, fruit-bearing phase of the year-cycle under the trigram Tui, preceding winter's severity.
Wilhelm, Richard, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950supporting
the seventh month (August–September), when the year has passed its zenith and autumnal decay is setting in.
Wilhelm marks autumnal decay as the cosmological context for Standstill (hexagram 12), associating autumn with the withdrawal of yang energy, social disorder, and the superior person's retreat into inner worth.
Richard Wilhelm, Cary F. Baynes, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950supporting
the seventh month (August–September), when the year has passed its zenith and autumnal decay is setting in.
Parallel to the Baynes translation, this passage identifies autumnal decay with cosmic and social Standstill, foregrounding autumn's association with decline, the ascendancy of yin, and interior faithfulness.
Wilhelm, Richard, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950supporting
autumn, the West, sunset; the season's yield of natural produce; the product of an action or effort, gains, profit, interest on money; reaping and gathering in; benefit, nourish; the edge or point of a knife; sharp, acute.
Ritsema and Karcher's divinatory lexicon defines autumn as the third phase of the Time Cycle — the season of harvest, sharpness, and profit — associating it with the Li/Harvest principle and the reaping of what has been sown.
Rudolf Ritsema, Stephen Karcher, I Ching: The Classic Chinese Oracle of Change, 1994supporting
in the quiet, rather lonely scenery of late autumn twilight people can find a much more profound beauty. This beauty is not something we proclaim loudly and enthusiastically with other people. Rather, we quietly savor it within ourselves.
Dōgen's commentary identifies late autumn twilight as the occasion for a silent, inward beauty linked to 'turning the light inward and illuminating the self' — aligning the season with meditative self-inquiry.
the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month is mid-autumn... all the ground is autumn. Reed flowers on the Wei River, snow on Song Peak, Who would resent the endlessness of the long night?
Dōgen treats the mid-autumn harvest moon as a symbol of enlightened consciousness and impermanence, linking the autumnal season to the Zen image of the moon as awakened mind.
the moon, unless qualified by another seasonal word, was always the moon in autumn… Japanese poets have been unusually sensitive to the changes that accompany the seasons… the mood is more often bittersweet than either tragic or joyous.
McGilchrist notes that in classical Japanese poetry autumn held privileged status as the season of aware — bittersweet awareness of transience — a disposition he connects to the right-hemisphere's mode of knowing.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009supporting
On a withered branch A crow is perched, In the autumn evening.
Watts cites the Bashō haiku as an exemplar of sabi — the thrilling loneliness of Buddhist detachment — with autumn evening as the quintessential sabi-moment, where things appear in their spontaneous 'suchness.'
Man masters these changes in nature by noting their regularity and marking off the passage of time accordingly. In this way order and clarity appear in the apparently chaotic changes of the seasons.
Harding, quoting Jung, situates the seasonal metaphor within the broader project of individuation, in which consciousness imposed on natural cycles — including the autumn of later life — enables psychological preparation and meaning-making.
Harding, Esther, the way of all women, 1970supporting
In autumn God gives us two boons—one the joy of Dionysus not to be laid up—the other to be laid up.
Plato's Laws treats autumn primarily as the agricultural and sacred season of the vintage, with Dionysiac joy attached to the harvest — a pre-psychological but mythologically resonant framing of autumnal abundance.
the summer cicada knows nothing of spring and autumn. They are the short-lived. South of Chu there is a caterpillar that counts five hundred years as one spring and five hundred years as one autumn.
Zhuangzi deploys spring and autumn as markers of temporal scale and understanding, contrasting the short-lived who cannot conceive autumn with vast beings for whom an autumn spans centuries — a relativist meditation on perspective and duration.
Watson, Burton, The Complete Works of Zhuangzi, 2013aside