Contemplating The Sun

Editor’s Note: If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article tells you how to use the spread. You can visit Sarah’s website here. –efc

By Sarah Taylor

Until quite recently, I confess that I had a bit of a struggle with The Sun. Maybe it’s because, as a Leo, I’ve experienced myself as more nuanced — more shaded — than the typical descriptions of Leos I’ve found in ‘popcorn astrology’ (highly consumable and lacking in substance); and, by extension, I have felt that as my ruler, The Sun has often suffered in tarot from the same approach: it has become a parody of itself, all sweetness, light and tweeting birdies.

I also believe that my experience has deeper roots, and that at a certain point in my life I came to mistrust something that promised what I had always believed too good to be true: unbridled joy, bliss and playfulness. Yes, I had those moments, but my conditioning led me to attach to those feelings the inescapable belief that not only were they transitory, but that there was an angry god who would punish me for ever believing that I could enjoy them. There would always be payback.

Although this experience has shifted and eased during the process of coming to know myself better, what still continued to confound me was why I managed to pull The Sun card during times when my life was anything but sunny, and with little hope of circumstances changing radically enough to justify its presence.

As I said, until quite recently. Because it seems that I am coming to a slow revelation about The Sun — and not a moment too soon. Yes, it can mean unbridled joy, bliss and playfulness. How wonderful when it does! At those moments, you are in no doubt as to its presence in your life, basking as you do in its rays of love, acceptance, joi de vivre. But what happens when those descriptions simply don’t fit with the timbre of the moment? What if you draw The Sun and you struggle to identify with it in any meaningful way — in a way that somehow clicks with the state of your life, or your state of mind? From the shadows in which I feel I’m dwelling, I’m inclined to see my world in absolutes: life is hard; The Sun is joy; never the twain shall meet. Surely the connection should be obvious? I mean, it’s not exactly a subtle card, is it?

…Or is it?

For this is what I have realised: when life is less than rosy and I draw The Sun, it is not The Sun, but my interpretation of it, that has the potential to lack subtlety.

On the surface, The Sun is about illumination, pure and simple. However, when we look a little deeper, we realise that if it’s about illumination, then it is simultaneously, if implicitly, referring to the object of that illumination. And here is the shift in emphasis: The Sun is about the illumination of darkness. There has to be shadow in order to experience the light. The Sun encompasses this duality.

In psychological alchemy, when we descend into the darkness we enter into a process known as fermentation. In chemical fermentation, “an agent causes an organic substance to break down into simpler substances” (WordNet Search), and psychological fermentation runs along the same lines: when we undergo fermentation, we, too, are being broken down by an agent so that we might come out in simpler form. As you can imagine, given the word ferment, the process isn’t neat, and it ain’t pretty. Once fermentation starts, it’s out of your control, it gets messy, and, quite frankly, it smells a little. In which case, follow the same instructions with your life as you would when you’re proving bread: cover, and put to one side. What happens at the end of that process, however, is what modern alchemist Catherine MacCoun refers to as Resurrection in her book, “On Becoming an Alchemist”:

Upon your return from below, you find yourself changed for the better. Often it’s a change that you had desired yet had been unable to effect through conscious effort. Other times it’s a change that you hadn’t thought of making, but that supports you in your aspirations. It can be subtle: you realize one day that an old familiar habit of thinking or feeling or behaving is missing. Exactly how or when the habit departed, you couldn’t say. Or it can be dramatic: you wake able to do something you couldn’t do before or knowing things that you haven’t made a conscious effort to learn. You may find that your subtle perception has sharpened, that your intuition works better, or that some former source of confusion has suddenly been replaced by brilliant clarity. [Bold type added]

The Sun.

If you look at both of the cards I’ve included with this article, you will see this idea of dualism expressed in different ways. In the Rider-Waite Smith card, there is the Sun, a row of sunflowers, and a naked child holding a red standard: brilliance, vitality, innocence. There is, however, also a grey horse with a grey wall behind it. Both are muted, yet hold a heavy presence, the horse’s head bowed and contemplative. To me, the wall and the horse represent the underworld — the place we descend to when we experience fermentation. Now look at the figure of the child and the horse. She is brought in upon its back. The illumination happens on the back of the darkness.

In the Xultun Tarot, this duality is expressed through the elements. In this card, we see earth (top right and on the panel below), water (top left), air (expressed in the movement of both plumes of earth and water) and fire, expressed in the Sun in the centre. All things co-exist; darkness and light are brought together under the Sun.

The Sun as illuminator, cognizant of the darkness. The Sun as uniter. But what does the figure of the Sun itself represent within the card? Here, we go back to the definition of “fermentation”: “an agent causes an organic substance to break down into simpler substances.” Just what is that agent, the one most obviously depicted in the Rider-Waite Smith version as a personified Sun?

Michael Owen, writer of “The Tarot Codex”, has this to offer us:

The number 19 is Higher Self. … This is our guardian angel — that part of us that is enduringly and uninterruptedly connected to the Godhead. In his journey across the sky Grandfather Sun sees everything so the sun is always associated with knowledge, as with Apollo the sun god who knew everything that happened. So the 19, the Higher Self, knows all things.

In other words, the figure of the Sun is that aspect of ourselves that accompanies us through our fermentation process — even when we are unable to feel its presence — and who shines its light on us in celebration when we are resurrected. It is “our guardian angel.”

Like all of the cards in the tarot, The Sun does not describe a permanent state; our lives are a constant process of shadow and illumination. Nor does it indicate that our lives are unbridled sweetness and light. But when it appears in a reading, there is an acknowledgment and celebration of an emergence into some form of illumination that has been hard won. It is a triumphant message from our soul, whose vantage point is higher and clearer than the limited view we have from our bodies. When we open ourselves to feel the significance of that, then we open ourselves to the joy that it offers us.