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.

Joy, vitality, success, and the confidence that comes from being seen accurately. Things go well and are what they appear to be. Excellent for children, and for anything that has been in the dark.

Temporarily clouded. Delayed success, dimmed enthusiasm, or unearned optimism papering over a real problem. Rarely a bad card even reversed, more a good one running late.

Happiness, warmth, a relationship in the open. Honesty is easy here. Reversed, a happiness being performed rather than felt.

Recognition, achievement, public success. A role that suits you visibly. Strong for anything requiring you to be seen, teaching, performance, leadership.

Prosperity and financial good news. Straightforward abundance. Reversed, success arriving later than hoped, not cancelled.

Enlightenment in its plainest sense: illumination, clarity, joy. Nothing esoteric required. The card is a rest from the deck's harder teaching.

Vitality and recovery. One of the strongest health cards. The Sun rules the heart and the body's overall vitality. Get outside.

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.