The July Fire refers to
July Fire refers to a weather phenomenon.
In the seventh month of the lunar calendar, the weather turns cooler, and the sun sets later in the summer. Naturally, there will be a lot of blushing in the west. Relatively speaking, it is not too common for the weather, so it will It is thought that there are a lot of sparks falling downwards, which makes the rumor of July Fire continue to be passed down. This is actually a solar term and the changing characteristics of the climate during the corresponding period. The current "July Fire" has been often mistakenly used to describe the heat for many years.
The ancient Chinese calendar has always been related to celestial phenomena. The "fire" here refers to the "big fire" star, which is the main star of Scorpio - Antares. Antares appears in the south of the sky at dusk during the fifth month of the lunar calendar in the "Book of Songs" (that is, around the midsummer solstice), with the most positive direction. The position is the highest. After June, it gradually moves westward and downwards.
At dusk in July, its position gradually drops from midday to the west, "knowing that the heat is gradually receding and autumn is approaching." People call this phenomenon "July Fire", which means that Antares slowly sets towards the west at night, which indicates that the cold season is coming soon and the weather will gradually become cooler.
Related information:
"Fires flowing in July" was originally a poem in the Book of Songs: Fire flows in July, and clothes are given in September. The general idea is: every seventh month of the lunar calendar At dusk, when a star named "Fire" appears in the western sky, the summer heat begins to subside, and it will get colder in September, so you need to wear more clothes. What is particularly important to point out here is that this star named "Fire" The stars are not Mars, but the three stars in the Scorpio constellation in modern astronomy, which belong to the fifth planet of the Eastern Air Constellation.
"Liu" means moving downward. By the dusk of the seventh lunar month, it has moved to the western sky, so it becomes "July Fire". It can be seen that "July Fire" does not refer to the hottest dog days at all, but refers to the season when the weather gradually turns cooler. Therefore, using "July Fire" to describe high-temperature weather is a mistake that is literal.