The Sun is one of the easiest tarot cards to like. A bright sun fills the sky, a child rides openly on a white horse, sunflowers rise behind a wall, and a red banner moves through the centre of the scene. After the uncertainty of The Moon, almost everything here feels open and exposed. There are no shadowy paths, hidden figures, or distant destinations that we have to struggle to understand.
The Sun is often described through words like happiness, success, joy, and positivity. Those meanings certainly belong to the card, but I think they grow from something even more fundamental. The Sun is about what becomes possible when we can finally see a situation for what it is.
The Sun Before Modern Tarot Reading
The Sun has appeared in tarot for centuries, although its imagery has changed across different decks and periods. Early tarot was created for card games rather than the psychological or spiritual readings familiar to modern readers, so today’s ideas about confidence, authenticity, and personal fulfilment should not automatically be projected onto the earliest cards.
In the Rider–Waite–Smith Tarot of 1909, Pamela Colman Smith gives The Sun a remarkably open composition. A large sun dominates the sky while a child rides a white horse beneath it, carrying a bright red banner. Behind them is a wall topped with sunflowers. Compared with the complicated landscape of The Moon, there is very little ambiguity here. We do not have to search very hard to understand what is happening in front of us.
What Happens When We Finally Know Where We Stand?
Knowing where we stand can be a relief. If you have spent weeks wondering how someone feels and they finally tell you directly, a lot of mental noise disappears. If you have been waiting for the result of an application and receive an answer, you finally have something definite to respond to. Even when the answer is not exactly what you wanted, knowing feels very different from endlessly guessing.
This is where I find The Sun more useful than a simple good things are coming card. Clarity and happiness often overlap, but they are not the same thing. Sometimes the truth confirms what we hoped; sometimes it shows us something we would rather not have seen. Either way, we are no longer trying to navigate the situation in moonlight. We can respond to what is actually there.
Why Is There a Child?
The child is one of the most distinctive parts of the Rider–Waite–Smith Sun. Unlike the carefully dressed figures we see on many other cards, this child is naked, with arms open and no visible armour or protection. The posture feels relaxed and unrestricted.
It is tempting to turn the child into a complicated symbol, but the image already tells us quite a lot. There is very little concealment here. The child does not appear to be performing a role, defending a position, or worrying about how they are being perceived.
For a modern reader, this can connect naturally with openness and authenticity. There are times when we spend so much energy managing how we appear that simply being honest about what we want or how we feel becomes surprisingly difficult. The Sun can describe the relief that comes when there is less distance between our inner experience and what we are willing to show.
That does not mean saying everything we think or ignoring appropriate boundaries. Openness is not the same as having no filter. It is more about reaching a point where hiding is no longer necessary.
The White Horse
The child rides a white horse without the obvious saddle or heavy equipment we might expect. The horse is moving, but the scene does not feel forceful or competitive. There is no battle to win and no opponent to defeat.
This feels very different from The Chariot, where movement depends much more obviously on direction, control, and determination. The Sun has an easier quality. Things seem to move without the same sense of struggle.
I sometimes find this useful when The Sun appears for someone who has been trying very hard to make a situation work. Once you understand what you want, what another person actually means, or which options are realistically available, you often need less energy just to figure out where you stand. Progress can feel easier not because every obstacle has disappeared, but because you are no longer fighting confusion at the same time.
The Sunflowers and the Wall
Behind the child is a wall with four large sunflowers rising above it. The wall is interesting because walls usually separate one space from another, but here it does not feel threatening. It is low enough that the flowers easily rise above it.
The sunflowers naturally reinforce the warmth and growth that run through the card, but I also like the contrast between the flowers and the wall. Something living has grown beyond a fixed boundary.
I would not turn that observation into a rigid symbolic rule. Still, it can be useful in a reading. Sometimes confidence does not come from removing every limitation around us. It comes from discovering that a limitation is not as defining as we once believed.
The Sun Is Positive, but It Is Not a Promise of Perfection
The Sun is widely considered one of the most positive cards in tarot, and I would not try to make it darker simply for the sake of being different. Joy, confidence, vitality, success, and optimism genuinely belong here.
But a positive card does not mean a perfect life. Someone can receive good news and still be worried about something else. A relationship can become more open without becoming effortless. A successful project can create new responsibilities, and an achievement can be exciting while also bringing pressure.
The Sun does not need to promise permanent happiness to be positive. Sometimes it simply describes a period when something is working, we understand where we stand, or we are able to enjoy what is happening without immediately searching for what might go wrong.
Being Seen Can Feel Vulnerable Too
There is another side to the openness of The Sun. Being seen can be liberating, but it can also feel uncomfortable.
Think about finally showing someone a piece of work you have kept private for months, admitting that you genuinely want something, or allowing yourself to be proud of an achievement. None of these experiences is negative, yet they can leave us feeling surprisingly exposed.
The Sun can therefore speak not only about recognition from other people but also about our willingness to accept that recognition. Sometimes the challenge is not achieving something. It is being comfortable enough to say, Yes, this matters to me. Yes, I did this. Yes, I am happy about it.
That kind of confidence does not require making anyone else smaller. It is simply being able to stand comfortably in something good.
Success Depends on the Question
Because The Sun is strongly associated with success, it is easy to treat it as an automatic yes. In many readings it can certainly be encouraging, but context still matters.
If someone asks about a project, The Sun may indicate strong potential, recognition, progress, or the satisfaction of seeing results. In a relationship reading, it can suggest warmth, openness, enjoyment, and more direct communication. But it does not guarantee that every relationship will last forever or that every desired outcome will happen exactly as imagined.
This is one of the reasons I prefer understanding cards rather than memorising whether they are “good” or “bad.” Once we understand what The Sun is doing in the image, we have far more ways to work with it than simply translating it as yes, success.
What Does The Sun Mean in a Tarot Reading?
In contemporary tarot, The Sun is commonly associated with happiness, success, vitality, confidence, warmth, openness, optimism, and clarity. When it appears, I usually look for the part of the situation that is becoming more direct or easier to understand.
In work and creative readings, it may show confidence in what you are doing, recognition, progress, or the satisfaction of seeing your efforts produce something tangible. In relationships, it can point toward openness and enjoyment, especially when people are able to communicate without constantly trying to interpret hidden meanings. In personal readings, The Sun often fits periods when someone feels more comfortable being themselves or begins reconnecting with energy that had been missing.
But sometimes its meaning is wonderfully uncomplicated. You are enjoying something. Something is going well. You feel proud, relieved, excited, or alive. Tarot does not always need to turn a happy moment into a deeper lesson.
Sometimes joy is already enough information.
The Sun After The Moon
The difference between The Moon and The Sun is one of the clearest visual contrasts in the Major Arcana. In The Moon, we followed a path through uncertain light. Feelings, instincts, fears, and imagination could all influence the way we understood what we saw. The Sun changes the atmosphere completely.
The possibilities that felt difficult to separate under The Moon are easier to evaluate here. That does not mean every mystery has disappeared. It simply means we have enough information to stop treating every possible explanation as equally likely.
This also helps explain why happiness, confidence, and success fit The Sun so naturally. Uncertainty itself can be exhausting. Once we know where we stand, decisions often become easier and our energy can go toward participating in the situation rather than constantly trying to interpret it.
As with the other card comparisons in this series, I use this as a modern way of studying the Major Arcana rather than as evidence that early tarot makers deliberately designed The Moon and The Sun as consecutive stages of a psychological journey.
Understanding The Sun Beyond “Happiness”
The Sun does not need a complicated hidden meaning. In fact, trying too hard to find one almost works against the card itself. Its image is unusually direct: there is light, warmth, movement, growth, and a child who seems completely at ease in the scene.
For me, that is what holds the familiar meanings of happiness, confidence, success, and vitality together. When we understand a situation well enough to stop constantly second-guessing it, we can participate in it more fully. We spend less energy imagining every possible outcome and more energy responding to what is actually happening.
And sometimes what we discover is very simple.
There is something here worth enjoying.
Continue Exploring
The Sun follows The Moon (XVIII) in the Rider–Waite–Smith Major Arcana. The Moon explores what happens when feelings, intuition, fear, and incomplete information overlap. The Sun brings us into a more open landscape, where we can begin responding to what is actually in front of us rather than everything we imagine might be there.
You can also explore The Major Arcana Explained for a broader introduction to the Major Arcana.
Next comes Judgement (XX). Rather than reducing that card to awakening or second chances, there is a more interesting idea to explore: what happens when we understand something well enough that we can no longer respond to it in the same way we did before?