The Sun card is one of the most positive cards you can get when doing a tarot reading or when simply asking for guidance or advice from one card.
Its strong, full, colorful, and vibrant graphic gives us an immediate pleasant and joyful feeling of deep warmth and hope.
The Sun card in the Rider Tarot
Mythologically, the Sun card is linked to sun gods from any culture, all of which symbolize the rising spirit, the generative principle, “enlightenment,” higher truths, or the “true light.”
The mystery of divine energy is expressed in this card, and at the same time, it represents half of a cycle: night and day, death and rebirth, ending and beginning again.
In tarot, the principle, concept, or mythology of the Sun embodies both the Divine Child and the mythical hero.
Together they represent all that we have yet to become, potentialities that will be shaped and “crystallized” by our experiences and the insights we gain in response to them.
The good omens of the Sun card
The Sun is one of the most positive and auspicious cards in the entire Tarot deck.
It represents fun, warmth in attitude and emotion, success, positivity and vitality, happiness, purity, and unity—everything is calm and joyful.
This card has an unbeatable forecast because the sun represents life, light, illumination, joy, and feeling full of life and blessings.
Weddings, unions, pregnancies, and births are predicted by this card, always under the rule of the idea of a new beginning or “birth” that the Sun card entails, much like the Ace of Cups and Ace of Wands.
The dominant figure of the child in the foreground foretells both a real birth and matters related to children, but figuratively, it also speaks of “births” in general.
A new relationship, a new job, a project starting, a trip, a partnership, a new phase in family or social relationships, a brilliant idea we come up with—any of these can be a birth and a new beginning.
The Sun card is also tied to a full and satisfying sexuality, to desire, human warmth, and warm, fun, and dynamic relationships—definitely not boring.
On the flip side, relationships can also be too “heated” and intense. With the card upright, it can mean constructive but intense arguments, and when reversed, it can indicate violent and negative disagreements.
Basic concepts of the Sun Arcana
With the Sun card upright:
Fun, warmth in attitude and emotion, success, positivity and vitality, life, energy, joy, illumination, warmth, manifestation, happiness.
It’s also associated with wealth, marriage, conception or birth, good times, success, clear thinking, optimism, blessings, good fortune, a great holiday, good weather, or a trip.
Meanings with the card reversed:
Feelings of lack, scarcity, temporary depression, temporary absence of success, partial success, sadness, hope for improvement, a reduction in vitality, delays in success or happiness.
It also suggests being overly sentimental, things not being as rosy as they seem, false impressions, difficulties in conceiving, arguments, and breakups.
Associations and correspondences of the Sun
Kabbalistic:
It’s associated with the Hebrew letter *kuf* ( ק ).
Numerology:
Represents number 19 and number 1 (19=1+9=10, 1+0=1). It’s the starting point when something arises, is born, or occurs.
It represents the universe, self-sufficient and self-sustaining, the power, creative force, development, evolution, and creation that becomes material or concrete.
Element:
Associated with the element Fire ( 🜂 ) and the season of winter.
Astrology:
Linked to the Sun ( ☉ ), which represents illumination, the self, and the ego. Also associated with the sign of Leo (♌).
Key symbols in the Sun card
Child
The child symbolizes the drive of our psyche to fulfill itself. They play joyfully in the foreground, representing the happiness of our inner spirit when we are in harmony with our true self.
The child rides bareback with their arms outstretched and is naked, with nothing to hide. They carry all the innocence and purity of childhood. (In alchemical analogy, the naked child represents the alchemist who has been reborn as a spiritual child.)
At the same time, they represent the divinity and unity inherent in all of us, the distillation and combination of all our previous consciousness, from which we can create a new form.
In Jungian terms, the child in the card may also represent the archetype of the eternal child, a combination of opposites that constitutes wholeness—a wonderful blend of simplicity and complexity, “consciousness in spirit,” and “innocence in the sense of wisdom.”
Although traditionally thought of as a boy, the gender of the child in the Rider-Waite-Smith deck cannot be precisely determined from the illustration, thus presenting a trait often attributed to the World card: androgyny.
Sun
As the source of all life on Earth, the Sun represents the source of life itself. This sun has 22 rays, referencing the 22 Major Arcana or Hebrew letters.
It’s drawn with alternating straight and wavy rays. These could indicate direct and indirect influences, radiant and vibrational, positive and negative, feminine and masculine, as well as their balance.
Horse
The white horse on which the child rides represents strength and purity of spirit.
The horse has no saddle and is controlled without the use of hands, symbolizing perfect balance between the conscious and subconscious.
Consciousness doesn’t need to control unconscious forces and instincts (the horse) because they trust each other and can work together to bring information, knowledge, and understanding “into the light.”
Flag
The child holds an orange-red flag in their left hand, showing that control has passed from the conscious to the subconscious.
The flag represents action and vibration, and the sun’s rays represent the same thing.
Crown of flowers
The child wears a crown of flowers and the red feather we first saw in the Fool card of this deck.
The crown, now made of flowers instead of the leaves worn by the Fool, hints at the proximity of the final harvest of realization and liberation.
The six flowers may be connected to the sixth sephiroth of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, which corresponds to the sun.
Delving deeper, considering the crown is made of sunflowers (six of which are visible), it may symbolize an emphasis on soul development, as sunflowers and the number six are associated with the human soul.
Sunflowers
The sunflowers in the background represent the life and fertility of the spirit under the nourishment of the sun.
There are four sunflowers, representing the four suits of the Minor Arcana, as well as the four elements.
Traditionally, the four sunflowers also represent the four Kabbalistic worlds and the four realms of nature: mineral, vegetable, animal, and human.
Together, the stone wall and the sunflowers symbolize the human world and the natural world.
Wall
The stone wall represents the construction of the self over time, the strength with which the self builds itself, brick by brick, minute by minute.
Waite described it as the “walled garden of sensitive life,” from which the illuminated mind can emerge into freedom.
It also symbolizes that there is only the possibility of moving forward, as we see there is no path backward.
