The Sun

The Sun is clarity, warmth and success with nothing hidden in it. It is the deck's most straightforwardly good card, and its particular quality is visibility: everything is lit, and there is nothing that needs not to be.

The child rides without a saddle, arms open, entirely unguarded, and the tradition reads this as The Fool's energy after the whole journey rather than before it. That is why the card sits at nineteen and not at the start. Innocence regained is a different thing from innocence never lost.

The wall behind is real, and the child is on the far side of it. Something was got through to arrive here.

Joy, vitality, success, and the confidence that comes from being seen accurately. Things go well and are what they appear to be, which is rarer in the deck than it sounds.

It is particularly strong for anything that has been in the dark: a project finally launched, a truth finally told, a person who has been managing something privately and no longer has to. Also the traditional card for children.

Its one demand is exposure. The Sun does not offer success that is kept quiet, and where somebody is hoping for a good outcome that nobody notices, this is not the card providing it.

Temporarily clouded. Delayed success, dimmed enthusiasm, or unearned optimism papering over a real problem.

It is rarely a bad card even reversed, and is better described as a good one running late. The tradition treats the reversal as an obstruction between the thing and its visibility rather than as a reversal of fortune.

The version worth watching is the third: cheerfulness doing the work that a conversation should be doing. That is easy to sustain and expensive over time, and the card reversed is often pointing at it.

Happiness, warmth, and a relationship in the open. Honesty is easy here, which is not a small thing and is mostly what the card is describing.

It is the clearest card in the deck for a relationship that is uncomplicated, public and enjoyed. Where the Lovers weighs and the Two of Cups meets, the Sun is the part afterwards where the two of you simply have a good time.

Reversed, a happiness being performed rather than felt, which is the reading that gives this card its only real teeth. A couple who look wonderful and cannot say anything true to each other is the Sun reversed, and it is usually visible only from inside.

As somebody's feelings, it is about as good as this position gets: warm, uncomplicated, and not hiding anything. The card offers no timeline and makes no promises, which applies to every good card as much as to every bad one.

Recognition, achievement, public success. A role that suits you visibly, and work that is going well in a way other people can see.

Strong for anything requiring you to be seen: teaching, performance, leadership, anything client-facing. Also the card for work that has finally become enjoyable, which the tradition treats as a legitimate professional goal rather than a luxury.

The practical reading is that being noticed is available and is being avoided. Where somebody has been doing good work quietly and waiting to be discovered, the Sun is fairly direct about putting the hand up.

Prosperity and financial good news. Straightforward abundance, without the complications the deck usually attaches to it.

Associated with money that arrives openly and is not tangled with anybody: earnings rather than windfalls, a raise, a business doing well. There is no hidden catch in this card and readers who go looking for one are adding it.

Reversed, success arriving later than hoped rather than cancelled. The card reversed is a delay, and the tradition is consistent that the correct response is to keep going rather than to reconsider.

Enlightenment in its plainest sense: illumination, clarity and joy, with nothing esoteric required.

The card is a rest from the deck's harder teaching, and its position is that the state everybody is working towards is not complicated when it arrives. The four sunflowers turning over the wall are the four suits: everything in the deck oriented towards this.

Associated with practice that has become uncomplicated, and with the finding that joy is a legitimate spiritual result rather than a distraction from a serious one.

Vitality and recovery, and one of the strongest health cards in the deck. The Sun rules the heart and the body's overall vitality in the traditional correspondence.

Read as reflection rather than diagnosis, it describes energy returning and a body working as it should. It is the card most associated with convalescence completing rather than beginning.

Its advice is famously unsophisticated and is not wrong: get outside, in daylight, regularly. That is as far as a card should go, and anything that is not improving belongs with a doctor regardless of how good the draw was.

A naked child rides a white horse under a face-bearing sun, arms open, holding a red banner, no saddle, no fear, nothing concealed. Four sunflowers turn over the wall behind: the four suits, everything in the deck turning toward this. The wall is real, and the child is on the far side of it.

Early decks showed two children or a couple beneath the sun, sometimes with a spinning wheel. Waite's single unclothed child on horseback emphasises innocence regained rather than innocence never lost. It is The Fool's energy after the whole journey, which is why it sits at nineteen and not at the start.