The Sun - Welcoming Joy in the Tarot
The Sun is a card about basking in the glow of your own joy.
Hit play below to listen to an audio lesson, or scroll down to read the lesson in text form.
To give you a bit of context whilst you reflect on your own relationship to the card, here are a few key things to know about the Sun:
Given its name, it's probably not a surprise that the Sun is one of the warmest, brightest lights in the tarot. It’s a card about freeing yourself to enjoy your life and allowing the brightest parts of yourself to shine out into your world.
The Rider Waite Smith version of the card depicts a naked child - rather cherublike - riding a white horse and waving a long red flag. The child wears a feathered flower frown (similar to the feathered headband the Fool wears in the very first card of the tarot deck). Behind a garden wall, sunflowers rise up, and in the sky, an oversized sun shines down on the whole scene.
The child’s exuberance and freedom feel infectious to look at - even the sunflowers turn away from the sun and train their faces instead on the child - that’s how bright and brilliant the energy the child emits is.
But this card does more than celebrate childlike joy - it insists on the life-saving necessity of it. The white horse and victorious flag elevate the child - suggesting that the kind of jo, freedom, and wonder we see on their face is not just lovely, but heroic. Accessing the inner child is a victory because its attitude can free us from so much that we spend our days trapped in.
In your tarot journal, you’re asked to reflect on what this card means to you, now, in this moment, and what actions and thoughts it inspires in you. As you journal, pay attention to what you’re personally picking up in the card, but also consider what the key themes and symbols in the card might be telling you. How could infusing more genuine joy into your day be life-saving? What areas of your life need more Sun energy? What’s one thing you could do to welcome your inner child to the center stage of your life today?
This mini-tarot lesson was brought to you by me, Chelsey Pippin Mizzi, founder of Pip Cards Tarot. I hope you gained a little context to help you continue reflecting on the card in your own way, and I’ll see you tomorrow for another mini-lesson.