19 - The Sun Tarot Card

The Sun is tarot card number 19, although it is the 20^th card of the Major Arcana because the 1^st of the 22 Major Arcana cards is number 0 (The Fool).

The Sun tarot card is one of the most joyful cards in the tarot deck, which is clearly depicted on most traditional cards that include detailed images.

Examples of the imagery used include dominant images of a sun - often with many rays emanating outwards in all directions, sunflowers, a man and a woman (e.g. in the Golden Dawn tarot deck), and a smiling person (often a child). In the cases of the popular Rider-Waite and Robin Wood decks The Sun tarot card depicts a smiling naked child riding a bareback white pony, the naken child being consistent with the association of this card with the concept of liberation. In contrast, some other decks, such as the The Quest Tarot Deck which depicts the Sun above a sea-scape, include completely different, original, images.

The Sun tarot card is filled with cheerful positive energy. It always has positive implications when it appears in a spread.

Some of the possible indications of The Sun tarot card in a spread include the ideas that optimism and good cheer are an aspect of the subject of the reading, that appreciation of accomplishments feature in the situation, the suggestion that a more playful or child-like attitude may benefit the person or situation, and that the querent should enjoy the moment.

Concise ideas associated with The Sun tarot card include:

Success
Happy marriage or partnership (personal or business)
Freedom
Liberation
Pleasure

Note: The image of this tarot card shown on the right (above-right) is from an early French tarot deck that has been made available for general use via the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. This shows a distinctly different style of illustration from that of modern tarot decks but is of historical and artistic interest.

The Gilded Tarot (Book and Tarot Deck Set)

More about the Major Arcana

The cards of the Major Arcana are widely considered to be the most powerful cards in the Tarot Deck. The 22 cards of the Major Arcana tell a complete story when arranged in upright and numerical order (beginning with 0 - The Fool then progressing through the sequence of Major Arcana cards until 21 - The World).
This is a story of personal development and enlightenment that is sometimes referred to as "The Fool's Journey".

Some texts also include meanings for "reversed cards". These are for the situation in which the cards are shuffled in both order and orientation. The theoretical advantage to this is that it effectively doubles the number of possible "cards" in the deck from 78 to 156. However, in terms of the calculation of obtaining results according to chance alone, it is not a simple mathematical doubling because once a card has been drawn it cannot be drawn again in the opposite orientation in the same reading.

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