The Sun upright
The Sun is the card of joy, happiness and well-being. It says you are glad to be alive and that you enjoy simple pleasures, or that you can do so now. It indicates success, honor, achievement and contentment, and it applies whatever situation you are in. You may have reached a long-awaited goal or put your talents and interests to their best use. Something may be at the center of your life, such as your children, your work, your relationship, your home or your health, and everything revolves around it.
It marks the passage from a period of confusion, murky images and fears to a steady clarity. What remained obscure becomes clear, and what was scattered regains its unity. What was hidden, including motives, comes out into the open. You may suddenly grasp a truth that enlightens you. You stop getting lost in interpretations and you understand things more simply. Your reason and your intuition, your intelligence and your heart, stop fighting each other and act together. What you understand deep inside enters your everyday life. Your thinking keeps working, but the truth seems to you an inner certainty and no longer a laborious construction. This simplicity comes from having been through the trials and the inner divisions.
You feel free: you leave a narrow way of seeing life and feel part of the world rather than isolated. The card also speaks of brotherhood and reconciliation: what opposed one another begins to cooperate. Happiness and success are lived here, in the concrete world, and not only in another world.
You are joyful, optimistic and full of drive, and you have a sense of wonder. You have spontaneity and a playful side, and you act with the freshness and innocence of a child. You are self-confident and you express your individuality freely. You are sincere. You can brighten other people's lives and inspire them with your optimism, creativity and vision. You are generous and readily share your good fortune. You work with joy when you love what you do.
What holds you back
- You may show arrogance and vanity.
- You rely only on your senses and on what you see, and that keeps you from going further.
What helps
- Letting your reason and your intuition work together.
- Sharing your good fortune and lighting up others with your optimism.
- Relying on the heart as much as on arguments: the understanding that brings people together comes from the heart far more than from intelligence alone.
- Taking on your work willingly, out of taste and love.
- Looking for happiness and success in the world where you live.
Love
You can experience a conscious union, a reconciliation, happiness as a couple.
Friendships
You confirm your friendships, and good friendship is associated with this card.
Children
You may work with children or look after your inner child.
The Sun reversed
Reversed, it keeps the same meaning, but weaker or too strong. Its effects are dimmed rather than changed: pleasure and contentment are reduced, without disappearing.
In your situation, this card says joy is there, but it comes through poorly or you do not let it in. You may refuse to acknowledge the joy in your life, or see it as veiled. You sometimes misread what seems clear to others. You are afraid to have fun, to accept what is good, or you doubt it will last, as if it were too good to be true. You lack confidence and do not believe you deserve recognition or success. You hold back your inner light. You may also fear that people will see your vulnerability and your playful side.
The reversed card also has an opposite version: your life is then too intense. You may be self-centered and seek to show off. Your energy becomes overwhelming and overzealous, and your ego, too inflated and too sure of itself, burns others. Or you feel burned out and exhausted. At worst, you put up a front full of boasting and pride, with an optimism or enjoyment that rings false. You may take credit that is not yours. You may act in a childish, immature way.
When this card describes another person, you see them as a creative leader full of optimism and youthful enthusiasm, but too self-centered, or gullible and naive. This person seems to shine and shares their happiness with others.
Your strengths
Inwardly, it represents loving acceptance of yourself as a unique person.
What holds you back
- You refuse to acknowledge the joy you are living, or you see it veiled.
- You doubt that happiness will last and you do not dare to enjoy it.
- You lack confidence and believe you do not deserve recognition.
- You hold back your inner light.
- You push yourself forward too much, with too much ego and certainty, and you burn others.
- You act out a false confidence or a false enjoyment, or you take credit that is not yours.
- You feel exhausted, as if burned out.
- You act in a childish way, or you fear people will see your vulnerability.
What helps
Looking for the inner Sun and its guiding light, instead of seeing it only as an outside source. Accepting yourself as a unique person. Asking yourself whether your problem is a lack of light, which you hold back, or an excess, which burns and wears you out.
What the card shows
On card 19, a large sun shines above a wall, and two children stand beneath it. The wall suggests an enclosure, like a walled garden, and the children stand in it nude or barely clothed, playing or running hand in hand. In another version of the image, a single nude child rides a white horse and carries a red banner. In one version, sunflowers grow in front of the wall: four are open and the fifth is about to open.
The sun
It stands for light and clarity: after the Moon, where you see through reflections and illusions, the Sun brings a direct and steady light. It gives warmth as much as light, and its rays recall the twelve signs of the zodiac, that is, the seasons and life on earth. It knows everything that happens in the world, and so it stands for knowledge and lucidity, meaning seeing clearly. On some cards it has a human face, which means it is a living, conscious energy, close to us. The golden drops that fall on the children mean that the riches received arrive freely, without obstacle.
The number 19
In the sequence of the cards, the Sun comes after the Moon: by accepting the frightening images, you give life back its light and move into an active, vigorous state.
What the card means
It means joy, happiness and a great sense of the beauty of life; above all it is a card of optimism, energy and wonder. In its deepest sense, it means looking at the world in an entirely new way, with life unified in joy. It speaks of success, honor, prosperity and fulfillment, but sometimes only of a moment when you feel it. It can announce a reconciliation or a confirmed friendship. It also means that what stayed hidden becomes clear and that situations are brought into the open. It is a card of triumph and success, whatever the situation.
Your strengths
The card names optimism, spontaneity, frankness, self-confidence and pleasure in simple things. You can brighten the lives of others with your optimism, creativity and vision, and share your good fortune with them.
What holds you back
- You can go as far as arrogance, vanity and shamelessness.
- Upside down, the joy is still there but becomes confused: you are no longer lucid and you have to work to realize it.
What helps
- Accept the images that frighten you rather than running from them, because this acceptance gives life its light.
- Do not rely only on your five senses, because what you perceive is real but limited.
- Work with joy, by choice and of your own free will, rather than feeling compelled.
