Here Comes The Sun
Doo Da Doo Doo
This morning I rolled out of bed around 9:30am, which is late for me these days thanks to being on a nanny schedule. Its a Saturday morning, though, and I don’t have anything pressing on my to do list, so I was enjoying the sun streaming into my apartment and a lazy start to my day. After I fed my cats (one of whom began her meow campaign to be fed hours before I finally got up), I glanced into my living room and noticed a tarot card face up on the coffee table. The rest of the deck sat a foot away, face down, like I left it. Now, to be clear, I’m not claiming divine intervention here in the traditional sense. I don’t think a ghost or God picked up the tarot card and flipped it over. I’m not the only person who was in my apartment yesterday, and I ended my evening with a couple of strong drinks at the bar followed by tipsy taco bell and an episode of I Love LA on my couch before passing out. There were opportunities for a card to fall and for it to have ended up in the position it did. However, it still feels symbolic to wake up on a Saturday morning in a phase of my life where I feel like I’m connecting to true joy for maybe the first time ever, and find The Sun card inexplicably out of my deck, greeting me.
The Sun is number nineteen in the Major Arcana, meaning its toward the end of the journey represented by the cards. It is known to symbolize happiness, joy, and freedom. When I was first learning tarot, I always felt like this card seemed overly simplistic and a little one-dimensional. An entire card that just means… being happy? That seemed pretty elementary compared to cards like the High Priestess and The Moon that carried an intense spirituality and depth. What I didn’t understand about The Sun is that there is nothing immature or naive about the light it has to offer.
Because of its position toward the end of the Major Arcana, The Sun is an energy we only get to experience once we’ve travelled through the highs and lows of the Fool’s Journey. We’ve experienced connection and rupture, divinity and disconnection, achievement and absolute ruin. The Sun is a light that only comes after The Fool has gone dark. But there is no darkness present in the card itself, because the light of The Sun shines on everything it touches. It illuminates—and exposes— everything within its reach.
One classic depiction of The Sun contains two characters; a man and a woman standing naked in the sunshine, mirroring the image presented in an earlier card: The Lovers. The Lovers is a card of divine union, but being so early in the journey, it can contain elements of codependency and bondage. Toward the end of the journey, The Sun mirrors this earlier Arcana but in a new and more liberated way. The elements that bind two people together through any type of illusion are removed. Everything is out in the open; each individual bare and exposed in their truth. Connection in The Sun card looks like complete and total respect for each individual’s autonomy, their wholeness, and the things that make them unique. There is no hiding, and there is no need to hide.
With The Sun, we’ve seen it all. The ugliest, spookiest depths of the darkness within ourselves and the world, and we survived. It is only through seeing, experiencing, and walking through everything reality has to offer that we are able to experience such an open, uninhibited, and honest type of love. Not a love that hinges on romance, or other people in general, but a love that radiates from within and reflects back to you in everything that you do. Love for yourself, for the process, and for every moment of connection and joy in an often dark and broken world. Love for the ability to be alive, to feel pleasure, to laugh, to make mistakes, and to have a hangover (who, me?? never).
The energy of The Sun does not necessitate constant smiles and good vibes. Being in the energy of The Sun can look like letting tears stream from your eyes the moment you feel them well. It can look like stubbing your toe and not holding back as you scream an explicative and shake away the pain. It can look like opening your heart to the possibility of having it broken with nothing but gratitude for the pain of loss because you know it means you lived and loved which is exactly what we’re supposed to be doing here anyway. It is the acceptance, the understanding, the complete and utter lack of shame for being ourselves and being human that defines the energy of The Sun card. It is a wide and deep capacity for grief that makes way for a wide and deep capacity for joy. When you can unequivocally embrace each and every part of life and the human experience, thats when it becomes second nature to return to joy and gratitude throughout all you do. That is when you become The Sun.
Receiving The Sun card in a tarot spread is a high compliment; it speaks to an individual’s wisdom and their ability to bring joy, happiness, and optimism into any situation. Not because they don’t know about everything there is to be sad about and afraid of, but because they know all too fucking well, and they still choose light. If you had asked me at the beginning of my tarot journey what my favorite card was, I would have told you it was the High Priestess. I loved her ability to know so much as an archetype who held all the answers. I yearned, pined, and strove to be like her; to have all the answers for myself. Now I know that there is a reason that she is only number two on the journey of the Major Arcana: anyone with real wisdom in this world knows that when it comes down to it, we know nothing. And we can spend our lives in misery trying to figure it all out, or we can accept the wide, expansive, unknowable nature of life and start fucking living. Today, its March, the snow is melting, and The Sun is on its way.