The Sun (XIX): Tarot Card Meaning

Upright

Truth that is plain, and warm with it.

Uncertainty is unpleasant and it is also a shelter. While a thing is unclear you are not obliged to act on it, and nobody can reasonably ask why you have not. That protection is worth more than people admit.

This card takes it away. Upright, the situation becomes plain, and the moment it does the question stops being what is true and becomes what you intend to do — which is a harder question and one with your name on it.

It answers yes, straightforwardly, and the yes is warm rather than gentle. What you needed to know is now visible. The next move is yours and there is no longer anywhere to file it under pending.

Reversed

Glare that hides the detail.

Reversed, glare that hides the detail. The light has not gone anywhere and there is not less of it. What has gone is the ability to make out shape inside it.

The usual form is too much candour delivered in one piece. Everything said, accurately, in a single sitting, and the result is not understanding but a listener who has closed their eyes. Undosed brightness works exactly like dark.

So the verdict turns to no, and it is not refusing the honesty. It is refusing the delivery, because the person receiving it has a capacity and that capacity is not a character flaw.

Yes or no

Upright

Yes

Reversed

No

Upright, yes, and plainly: what you needed to see is visible. Reversed it turns to no — not because you are wrong, but because delivering all of it at once makes the listener close their eyes.

Where the card comes from

Resh, the head

The letter is Resh, which means a head. Not an eye and not a heart: the part that assembles facts into a conclusion. For a card everybody reads as joy, that is a notably cold assignment, and it fits the reading above better than the picture does.

The Golden Dawn title is Lord of the Fire of the World. Fire of the world rather than of heaven — heat that reaches the ground and lands on everything standing on it, without selecting.

Sol, and a name that had to be kept in Latin

The attribution is the sun, and the tables call it Sol. That is not affectation. This card is already called The Sun, and labelling its attribution The Sun as well produces a line reading "The Sun: The Sun".

The same problem sits on card two, whose attribution is the moon and whose label is Luna — while card eighteen is called The Moon. Two bodies, two cards, and four names that have to be kept from colliding.

A field of dead sunflowers

The familiar card puts a wall of sunflowers in full bloom behind the child, all of them turned towards him. The message is uncomplicated: everything is fine.

Ours blackens them and bows their heads. The sun above is flat and white rather than gold. The child still has both arms open and the banner on the horse is in rags.

Stripping the supporting evidence makes the original claim sharper rather than weaker. The child’s delight was never contingent on the field, and this version proves it by removing the field.

Nineteen, and its root

Nineteen folds to one, The Magician. Two trumps fold there — the other is Wheel of Fortune — and all three are about force at work: the kind you hold, the kind that turns, and the kind that simply shines on everything.

Read the lore for Wheel of Fortune (X)

In a reading

As a Daily Card it usually marks the thing that stops being private today. That is not always pleasant and is very nearly always a relief.

In a three-card reading, ahead of you it is one of the most direct cards in the deck: the thing you asked about will become visible. Behind you it marks a period when everything was clear, which is worth holding up against now.

Common questions