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.