1. Tarot
2. Card meanings
3. The Sun

Major Arcana · XIX

The Sun

• material happiness
• contentment

Upright meaning

Warmth and contentment. Waite gives material happiness and contentment, and calls the child on the white horse the heart of a child: openness, clarity and simple joy.

Reversed meaning

Reversed, Waite says the same in a lesser sense: the warmth is there, perhaps quieter.

• the same in a lesser sense

Symbolism

A naked child on a white horse carries a red standard beneath a great sun, a wall of sunflowers behind.

Group

Major Arcana

Element, astrology

Not given by Waite, so we give none

Source

Our own plain-English summary of A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London: Rider, 1911), Part II §2 (symbolism); Part III §3 (divinatory meanings). The keywords are Waite’s own words. Waite’s fortune-telling lists also contain harsher terms; we keep to the reflective readings he gives and never state an event as certain.

Tarot is a tool for reflection, not a prediction of fixed outcomes. This is not medical, legal or financial advice.