The Sun Tattoo Meaning
Joy, clarity, vitality, and the warmth available after the long night.
The Sun is the tarot's brightest and most joyful card — card XIX, a child riding a white horse under a blazing sun, everything warm, clear, and radiant. It is the joy and clarity that arrive after the dark confusion of the Moon, the full illumination in which things are finally seen as they truly are. To carry the Sun is to carry joy, clarity, and vitality — the warmth and light that come after the long dark night, the genuine happiness that flows from clarity and knowing who you are, the radiant success of consciousness arrived at last in the full light of day.
The Sun is card XIX of the tarot's Major Arcana, and it is among the most positive and joyful cards in the entire deck. The classic image shows a young, naked child riding a white horse beneath a great blazing sun whose rays pour down, with tall sunflowers growing behind a wall in the background and a banner streaming from the child's hand. Everything in the card is bright, warm, open, and clear — the very picture of joy, innocence, and radiant vitality in the full light of day.
In the journey of the Major Arcana, the Sun comes after the Moon (card XVIII), and this placement is its key: where the Moon was the dark night of confusion, illusion, and things half-seen, the Sun is the dawn of full illumination — the consciousness that has passed through the darkness and emerged into clarity, warmth, and joy. The naked child signifies innocence and the joyful, unguarded self; the white horse, purity and strength; the sun, life, truth, and full awareness. The Sun is the card of arriving in the light. The tarot Sun is the child under the blazing sun — card XIX, the naked child on the white horse beneath the radiant sun and sunflowers, the deck's brightest card of joy, clarity, and vitality, the dawn of full light after the Moon's dark confusion.
The Rider-Waite Sun shows a large radiant sun — with both wavy and straight rays, representing heat and light — above a scene of a naked child riding a white horse with a red banner. Sunflowers grow behind a low wall. The child wears a crown of flowers and carries the red banner of victory. The nakedness of the child represents the innocence and transparency of the consciousness that has nothing to hide — it has passed through the Moon's confusion and the Tower's collapse and arrived at genuine clarity. The Sun is the most unambiguously positive card in the Major Arcana. It corresponds to the Sun in astrological tarot attribution.
The Sun across cultures
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