The Sun Tarot Card Meaning and Art Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Designation
About the Deck
Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
These cards are featured in my book, "A Concise Guide to the Tarot" by Loren Lundgren. I took the information for the meanings on these tarot cards from "The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Being Fragments of a Secret Tradition Under the Veil of Divination", by A. E. Waite, 1911, now in the public domain. I edited the tarot card descriptions and meanings for clarity and brevity, modernizing the text. I scanned in the original black and white illustrations of the cards drawn by Pamela Colman Smith, from the 1911 book. I digitally retouched and painted those illustrations in detailed color.
Provenance
Loren Lundgren, © 2021
Description
A naked child mounted on a white horse displays a red banner. The sun shining above represents consciousness in the Spirit—with direct, as opposed to reflected, light. The archetype of humanity has become a little child beneath its rays—a child in the sense of simplicity, with innocence in the sense of wisdom. In that simplicity, he bears the seal of Nature and Art; in that innocence, he signifies the restored world. When the self-knowing spirit has dawned in the consciousness above the natural mind, that mind is renewed and directs the animal nature in a state of perfect conformity.Meaning of The Sun from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Upright
Material success, fortunate marriage, contentment.
Reversed
The same, in a lesser sense.
According to Many Schools of Thought
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
The Sun. The luminary is distinguished in older cards by chief rays that are waved and salient alternately and by secondary salient rays. It appears to shed its influence on earth not only by light and heat, but--like the moon--by drops of dew. Court de Gebelin termed these tears of gold and of pearl, just as he identified the lunar dew with the tears of Isis. Beneath the dog-star there is a wall suggesting an enclosure-as it might be, a walled garden-wherein are two children, either naked or lightly clothed, facing a water, and gambolling, or running hand in hand. Eliphas Levi says that these are sometimes replaced by a spinner unwinding destinies, and otherwise by a much better symbol-a naked child mounted on a white horse and displaying a scarlet standard.
S. L. MacGregor Mathers's Divinatory Meanings
Upright
Happiness, Content, Joy
Reversed
These in a minor degree.
Papus's Divinatory Meanings
Material Happiness. Lucky Marriage.
