Upright
Everything visible and going well. The most unambiguously positive card in the deck — warmth, clarity and things working out plainly.
Major arcana 19 · Fire
The Sun
Reversed
Delayed success or dimmed enthusiasm. Good things happening without being felt as good.
ArcanaMajor
Number19
ElementFire
PlanetSun
Yes or noYes
Keywordsclarity, joy, success
Where it sits in the sequence
The major arcana run 0 to 21 as a progression — the Fool's journey from unguarded beginning to completed cycle. Card 19 falls in the final stretch, which deals with forces larger than the individual.
The image
What is on the card
A child rides a white horse beneath a blazing sun with a human face. Sunflowers rise over a wall behind.
Every detail in the Waite-Smith deck was placed deliberately by Pamela Colman Smith in 1909, and reading the picture usually gets you further than reading a keyword list. Notice what the figure is doing, where they are looking, and what is behind them.
The Sun in love, work and health
In love
Joy and clarity. A relationship in the open, without ambiguity.
In career and money
Success that is visible to others. Recognition and things working plainly.
In health
Vitality, energy and genuine recovery.
Reading it in a spread
A card means different things by position. In a past-present-future layout, The Sun in the past describes something already worked through; in the future it describes a direction rather than a fixed outcome.
Read it against its neighbours rather than alone. Two cards from the same suit intensify each other; a major arcana beside a minor tells you the situation is larger than the everyday.