The Sun Tarot Card Meaning: Upright & Reversed

Keywords, Symbols, Colors, Astrology, Love, Timing & Yes or No

A naked child rides a white horse with no bridle on it, carrying a red banner under a sun with a face. Four sunflowers lean over a grey wall behind them, and nothing in the picture is hidden from anything else.

Most people meet this card and relax, which is fair, though it’s doing more than they think.

Welcome to the twentieth entry in my tarot glossary.

The Fool leapt, The Magician built, The High Priestess listened, The Empress grew, The Emperor framed it, The Hierophant taught it, The Lovers chose, The Chariot drove, Strength gentled the lion, The Hermit went quiet, the Wheel turned, Justice weighed it, The Hanged Man waited, Death closed the door, Temperance mixed it, The Devil named the chain, The Tower brought it down, The Star let you breathe, The Moon took the light away, and now the tarot deck gives it all back at once.

Below you’ll find the card’s symbols, its color psychology, upright plus reversed meanings with keyword lists, what it means in love or as feelings, how other cards amplify or diminish it, its planet, its zodiac sign, timing, whether it leans yes or no, and my own intuitive read after years of pulling it for clients.

Stay to the end for how to read the deck’s happiest card without sounding like a greeting card.

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What Does The Sun Tarot Card Actually Mean?

The Sun is card nineteen of the Major Arcana, and it’s the only card in the deck with nothing withheld in it.

Eighteen was reflected light and guesswork. Nineteen is the source, directly overhead, showing everything in the scene at the same time.

Picture the relief of not having to interpret anything.

Nothing left in shadow

In the Rider Waite Smith image, a naked child sits on a white horse holding a red banner, riding out from behind a grey wall topped with four sunflowers, beneath a sun with a human face.

Count the control mechanisms. There aren’t any.

No bridle, no saddle, no clothes, no reins, no hand on anything. Joy in this card is what’s left when a person stops managing their own impression, which is why children keep showing up in it.

The card’s earliest versions showed two children beneath the sun rather than one on horseback, with the pair surviving in several older European decks.

Rachel Pollack’s 78 Degrees of Wisdom reads it as consciousness fully lit, the simple state that follows once the unconscious material has been dealt with.

What Are the Symbols on The Sun Tarot Card?

Pamela Colman Smith kept this card uncluttered on purpose.

Fewer objects than almost any other Major, with each one carrying more weight for the lack of competition.

• The sun with a face: consciousness looking directly at you, awake rather than symbolic. Twenty-one rays, alternating straight and wavy, for the active and the receptive.
• The naked child: no persona, nothing arranged. The one figure in the deck with nothing to manage.
• The white horse: clean strength with no bridle on it. Power that doesn’t need steering because nothing is pulling against it.
• The red banner: vitality held up rather than hidden. The same colour as the appetite cards, pointed somewhere useful.
• The four sunflowers: the four suits, the four elements, every one of them turned toward the source. Growth that tracks the light without being told.
• The grey wall: what’s been left behind. Joy on this card is on the far side of a boundary rather than in the absence of one.
• The wreath and feather: the same red feather The Fool wore at card zero, back again on somebody who now knows what it cost.
• The open ground: no obstacles, no path to follow, nothing to navigate. Direction stops mattering under this much light.
• The number nineteen: one and nine, reducing to ten. A full cycle, with the next one already visible.

What Do the Colors on The Sun Tarot Card Mean in Psychology?

Color does quiet work on the mind before a single meaning gets read.

Psychologists have long tied specific hues to specific responses, and this is the highest contrast palette in the Major Arcana.

How Do Other Cards Amplify or Diminish The Sun?

No card reads alone. In every spread, the neighbouring cards either widen The Sun’s light or put something in front of it.

This is called adjacency: two or more cards working in unison, building one cohesive story instead of a list of single card definitions.

When two cards disagree, don’t pick a winner. Acknowledging the disagreement is the reading.

Is The Sun a Yes or No Card?

Yes, and it’s the clearest one in the deck.

The Sun answers in favour of almost everything, with none of the conditions the other positive cards attach to their answers.

Its yes comes with visibility rather than secrecy, which matters: this is a yes you could explain to anybody without lowering your voice.

Reversed, the yes doesn’t become a no. It becomes a yes that’s running late.

In a live reading I steer away from flat yes or no answers anyway, since your free will does the real work and no card gets to choose on your behalf.

Speaking in glossary terms, though, this is as close to an unqualified yes as the Major Arcana offers.

What Is The Sun’s Timing in a Tarot Reading?

Timing under The Sun is quick and uncomplicated.

The Sun crosses a sign in roughly a month and lights everything it passes immediately.

Expect days to weeks, with the development arriving in plain view rather than quietly.

Fast, and impossible to miss

High summer is the traditional window, roughly late July into August, when the light runs longest.

Nineteen is the other timing clue, showing up as nineteen days, nineteen weeks, or nineteen months depending on the question.

When I see The Sun for timing, I read it as soon and obvious.

Nobody has ever had to ask me whether the thing happened yet when this card was the timing card.

What Planet and Zodiac Sign Rule The Sun?

The Sun belongs to the Sun, which is the only card in the deck where the answer is that simple.

No zodiac sign attaches to it directly, and through the Sun’s rulership it borrows from Leo, warmth, visibility, and the confidence of being looked at.

Astrologers tracing the solar current through this card describe the same vitality and the same lack of pretence.

Worth flagging that Strength already holds Leo outright. Same light, used differently: one card tames with it, this one simply shines.

Fire is the element tying it together, warmth rather than force, the kind that grows things instead of clearing them.

Performers, teachers of small children, gardeners, anyone recently out of a long difficult stretch, plus everybody who stopped pretending and found it easier, all live under this light.

There’s a fuller breakdown of The Sun and its solar symbolism if you want to go deeper.

What Does The Sun Mean in Love, as Feelings, and as a Person?

The Sun is the warmest love card in the tarot deck, with no complications written into it.

Here’s how it tends to read in the questions people ask most.

• In love, if you’re single: visibility and ease, somebody who likes you without a strategy behind it.
• In love, in a relationship: a good stretch, honesty that costs nothing, often holidays, family, or children.
• As feelings: open, warm, uncomplicated feelings. Somebody is glad about you and isn’t hiding it.
• As a person: generous, confident, easy company, usually somebody whose mood changes a room on arrival.
• As advice: stop managing it. The thing works better when you’re visible in it.
• Reversed in love: a flat patch rather than a problem, or somebody performing happiness they don’t feel yet.

How Do You Read The Sun Without Sounding Like a Greeting Card?

Here’s the part no keyword list covers, learned from pulling this card for clients rather than from a book.

This is the easiest card in the deck to read, which is exactly the problem. Good things are coming is accurate, useless, and forgettable within the hour.

Specificity does all the work here. Ask what the light is falling on, since The Sun illuminates something particular in every spread and the neighbouring cards will tell you which.

Read the exposure as well as the warmth. Full daylight hides nothing, so this card frequently marks the week something became plain, and clients remember that detail far longer than any promise about happiness.

Use the picture for the strongest line you have. No bridle, no saddle, no clothes. Joy here is what shows up once somebody stops arranging how they come across, and most people recognise themselves in that immediately.

Watch for the client who gets The Sun and feels worse. It happens more than you’d expect. A bright card in a dark week reads as mockery, and the fix is to say so out loud rather than insisting on the good news.

When that happens, point at the wall. Four sunflowers, grey brick, and a child riding out from behind it. This card sits on the far side of something, which means it describes an after rather than a denial of what came before.

Go easy on reversals here. Beginners dramatise a reversed Sun into disaster, and it almost always means delay, flat energy, or joy that hasn’t landed yet.

Resist stacking promises on it. Same discipline as The Star: name the state, describe what’s visible, leave the forecasting alone.

Handled with specificity, The Sun stops being the nice card and becomes the one that tells somebody precisely what they’ve stopped hiding.

The Sun Tarot Card: Quick Answers

Is The Sun the best card in the deck?

Most readers would say so. It carries the fewest conditions and the clearest yes of anything in the Major Arcana.

Does The Sun mean children?

Sometimes literally, especially beside the Empress or Ten of Cups. More often it means the quality children have, which is being entirely unguarded.

What does The Sun mean in the future position?

A bright, clear stretch ahead, arriving soon and visible to everyone around you.

What number is The Sun in tarot?

Card nineteen of the Major Arcana, right after The Moon and just before Judgement.

Where The Sun Might Be Pointing You Now

If The Sun keeps turning up for you, in a reading, a dream, a tarot deck you shuffle at midnight, it’s worth listening.

This card tends to appear right before people stop performing a version of themselves.

Yours might already be slipping.

When you’re ready to look at it with someone who’ll hold the whole picture, your reading is waiting.

Click here to book your reading to find what’s finally in plain sight, plus what you no longer have to explain.

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Keep Reading

The Devil · The Tower · The Star · The Moon · Reversed cards · Start reading

About the Author

One link, five countries, no commute. Chris Bennett is The Tarot Medium, counted among the best tarot readers in the world and one of the most trusted psychic mediums working today. Every reading happens online, which is how his week takes in Bozeman, Helena, Kalispell, Coeur d’Alene, Lewiston, Walla Walla, Wenatchee, Klamath Falls, Roseburg, Corvallis, Vallejo, Merced, Lompoc, Hemet, Brooks, Camrose, Selkirk, Edmundston, Bairnsdale, Sale, Wangaratta, Echuca, Dundee, Stirling, and Vryheid, along with clients right across the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and South Africa. Evidential mediumship, intuitive tarot, psychic life path readings, plus grief support with real psychological depth behind it make up the practice, with no fear and no theatrics in any of it. Anyone ready to read for themselves can start with his online tarot courses.