The Sun

Origin and iconography

In the Visconti-Sforza Tarocchi of c. 1450 the Sun is rendered as a winged putto holding a great solar disk above his head, in the style of Renaissance allegory of celestial bodies. The Tarot de Marseille of the 17th century shows two children, often boys, standing or playing in front of a low brick wall beneath a large rayed sun whose face looks down upon them. Sixteen rays alternating straight and wavy emanate from the disk, and small drops of yellow, red and blue fall through the air, the same drops that appear under the Moon trump but here colour-coded for daylight.

Pamela Colman Smith's 1909 Rider-Waite-Smith Sun shows a single naked child mounted on a white horse, riding out from a sunflower-covered wall. The child wears a scarlet feather in the hair and a long red banner streams from one hand. The horse is bareback, indicating that no saddle of strain is needed. Behind the wall four large sunflowers turn their faces toward the rider rather than the sun, suggesting that the child carries the sun's warmth onward. A great rayed solar face dominates the upper half of the card. The Thoth deck of Crowley and Harris (1938-1943) shows two winged children dancing on a green hill within a zodiacal disk.

Upright and reversed meaning

Upright, the Sun signals open joy and the visible success of long effort. It marks happy children, healthy bodies, marriages that thrive, recovered health, and creative work that has come into the open. The card describes simple clarity, the disappearance of the shadows that the Moon evoked, and the kind of confidence that is grounded in lived achievement rather than performance. It often appears around births, summer holidays, public celebrations, and the moments when the seeker simply enjoys being alive without apology, having earned the right to feel daylight.

Reversed, the Sun can describe a temporary cloud over a generally bright situation, the postponement of a celebration, or a clarity that has not yet been integrated. It may show the seeker who is so accustomed to struggle that joy feels suspicious, or who is hiding from the visibility that the Sun confers. As a phase, the reversed card invites you to step into the warmth without needing to earn it again, and to permit yourself the success you have already achieved. The Sun returns upright when the seeker accepts the daylight rather than apologising for it.

In readings

When the Sun appears in your spread, expect good news. In love readings he favours engagements, weddings, the announcement of a pregnancy, the return of joy to a partnership that has weathered storms, and the unguarded ease of new love that lacks complication. With The World he completes a cycle in celebration; with The Star he confirms that the recovery promised after the Tower has been fully realised.

In professional readings the Sun signals successful launches, public recognition, healthy collaborations, and the fruits of long apprenticeship. He often appears around graduations, promotions, awards, and successful product releases. In a Celtic Cross he may occupy positions of outcome or hopes. Spiritually he describes the moment when practice has begun to radiate outward, when the seeker's presence itself becomes useful to others. In a Rider-Waite reading the child's nakedness is the cipher: nothing is hidden, and the joy is uncostumed.

Symbolic depth

In the Golden Dawn system the Sun is assigned to the Hebrew letter Resh, the head, and to the path connecting Hod to Yesod on the Tree of Life. Its astrological attribution is, naturally, the Sun, the centre of the solar system and the giver of life. The number 19 (1+9 = 10, then 1+0 = 1) returns to The Magician, indicating that the original creative will has now been realised and made visible.

Mythologically the trump draws on the Greek Helios riding his chariot across the sky, on the Egyptian Ra and Horus the child of light, on the Vedic Surya, and on the Christian solar Christ. The child on the white horse echoes the Roman Sol Invictus and the Christmas-day birth of light. Carl Jung read this archetype as the integrated Self in its conscious, radiant form, the centre that has become luminous. In Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey the Sun corresponds to the Crossing of the Return Threshold, the moment when the protagonist has emerged with the boon, ready to be summoned by Judgement.

Also known as

• Le Soleil
• Il Sole
• Key XIX
• Sol
• The Solar Child