The Sun
Marseille: Le Soleil (XVIIII)
“Everything in plain daylight: warmth, clarity, and nothing you need to hide.”
At a glance
Keywords
joy · success · vitality · clarity · confidence · warmth · openness
Yes or no
Yes
Clearly and gladly; this has every chance of going well.
Keywords, reversed
dimmed joy · delayed success · flagging confidence · tiredness · overexposure
Yes or no
Lean yes
The answer is warm, though slower or smaller than you hoped.
Advice for
Enjoy it openly, share the warmth, and let yourself be seen.
Advice against
Don’t dim yourself to fit in, or pretend everything is bright when it isn’t.
Meaning
The Sun is happiness you don’t have to explain. Things are clear, warm and going right: a success, a good season, a reunion, a day when you feel fully yourself. The card points to vitality and confidence, and to the relief of seeing what is what after a stretch of doubt. There’s nothing to hide and nothing to prove.
It often marks a time to be seen and to enjoy what you have, with the open-hearted trust of a child. Let yourself celebrate. Share the warmth, since it grows when it’s given. Success here is as much inner as outer: feeling at home in your own life, glad to be alive in it.
In the Thoth deck
The joy turns outward and shared: the sun of a new age freeing humanity, which Crowley sums up as light, life, liberty and love. Read it as freedom that still keeps a frame, warmth that doesn’t need to burn.
Reversed
Reversed, the light is there but dimmer. Success may be delayed or quieter than you’d hoped, or your confidence may be bright on the outside and tired underneath. Sometimes it’s too much light: too much performing, too much visibility, not enough shade to rest in.
The warmth hasn’t gone. Step out of the glare for a while, rest, and let one ordinary pleasure remind you what it feels like.
Shadow
Keywords
vanity · needing attention · forced cheer · denying problems · outshining others
Brightness can become a performance. You need to be seen as happy, keep the mood sunny by refusing to hear bad news, and take up so much light that others can’t shine. Joy that can’t allow any shadow turns brittle, and other people stop telling you the truth.
In your life
Love
Warmth, affection and happiness together; honesty without fear.
Reversed: good feeling that’s quieter or slower to show.
Work
Recognition, success, a project going well.
Reversed: success delayed, or burning out from being always on.
Money
Abundance, a good return, things looking up.
Reversed: gains smaller than hoped, but still gains.
Health and energy
Vitality and high energy.
Reversed: running bright but tired; you need rest.
Inner life
Feeling at home in yourself; plain joy.
Reversed: a cheerful face over low spirits.
Spiritual keywords
joy · clarity · vitality · innocence · radiance
Timing
Fast and bright: good things come quickly and openly. The card has no season of its own; its planet is the Sun.
The image
A great sun with a calm face shines above a grey wall lined with sunflowers. Below, a naked child wearing a wreath and a red feather rides a white horse bareback, arms flung wide, while a long red banner streams beside them. Waite has the child “displaying a red standard”, and says the light of the world to come is “typified by the heart of a child”. Joy with nothing to hide.
A sun charged with a rose blazes over a green mound, its twelve rays reaching out through the signs of the zodiac. A red wall rings the top of the mound, and outside it twin children, a boy and a girl, dance in the light, with the rose and cross at their feet. Crowley notes the colours are reversed, the mound green where it should be red: the old formula transformed. Freedom with a boundary that still holds.
Le Soleil (XVIIII). A great sun with a face sends out straight red and wavy yellow rays, and coloured drops fall around it. Below, two children in loincloths stand before a low brick wall. One rests a hand on the other’s chest, and the other touches the first one’s neck and reaches back toward the wall. Simple, open companionship.
Place in the story
After the night comes full daylight: what was uncertain is seen plainly, and joy is allowed.
As XIX it follows the Moon and comes before Judgement: clarity first, then the call to rise.
As XIX it follows the Moon’s midnight and comes before the Aeon (XX), the new age it lights.
Le Soleil (XVIIII) comes after La Lune (XVIII) and before Le Jugement (XX): daylight before the awakening.
Correspondences
The Sun is the centre that everything turns around: vitality, will and a clear sense of who you are. Resh, the head, is the waking mind, alert and aware. Its path runs from Hod, the thinking mind, to Yesod, the foundation of imagination and instinct, so clear thought reaches down and lights what lies below.
| Card | The Sun (XIX) |
|---|---|
| Element | Fire |
| Astrology | Sun |
| Hebrew letter | Resh |
| Path | 30, Hod to Yesod |
| Card | The Sun (XIX) |
|---|---|
| Element | Fire |
| Astrology | Sun |
| Hebrew letter | Resh |
| Path | 30, Hod to Yesod |
Crowley calls the card Heru-ra-ha, lord of the new age, revealed to humanity as the spiritual, moral and physical sun.
| Card | Le Soleil (XVIIII) |
|---|
The Marseille method uses no astrology or Kabbalah.
Card of the day
Let today be a good day on purpose. Step into the light: go outside, say what you enjoy, be seen doing something you love. Share some of the warmth with someone who needs it. Things are clearer than they seem.
Card of the year
Your year card. Add the month and day of your birthday to the current year, then add the digits of the total until it is 22 or less. 22 is the Fool. Or take the 22 Majors out of your deck, shuffle them and draw one.
The year shines on what you do. Success, recognition, warmth in your relationships and energy to spare are all in reach. Let yourself enjoy them without waiting for a catch. It is a time to be seen, to show what you can do and to share your good fortune. Clarity comes easily. Long after it ends, you may still be carrying some of its light.
Journal prompts
- What makes me feel most alive and most myself?
- Where am I dimming my light to fit in?
- What success or joy am I not letting myself enjoy?
- Where am I enjoying the fun and leaving the cleanup to someone else?
Common misreads
“It means everything is perfect.” It points to joy and clarity, not to a life without problems.
“Reversed means bad news.” It is still a warm card; reversed, the warmth is slower, smaller or tired.
Associations
- Myth and archetype
- Apollo, god of light; Ra crossing the sky; Jung’s Divine Child, the self reborn whole.
Sources
RWS image and quotations: A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911), The Sun; the 1909 scan; public domain.
Thoth image and reading: Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth (1944), Atu XIX, The Sun.
Marseille: Nicolas Conver, Tarot de Marseille (1760), BnF btv1b10520316w, Le Soleil.
The Sun, Resh and the path: Golden Dawn, Book T, as published by Regardie.
Meaning in practice: Waite (1911), divinatory meanings; Joan Bunning, learntarot.com, The Sun.
Practice: Arcanis Tarot, The Sun, arcanistarot.com.