The Sun
Out we come, from the darkness of night, and into the light of the sun. In the moon, we struggled to separate illusion from reality. But in the sun, all is revealed. And what we see is something that is sure to bring a smile to our face.
One of the most traditional and classical interpretations of the Major Arcana of the tarot (further expressed and popularized in North America by Eden Grey, when she wrote about the Smith-Waite tarot in the 1970s) is that the Major Arcana represent the arc of a grand narrative journey. On this path we are taken from the start of a significant voyage of spiritual enlightenment and advancement, to its inevitable conclusion, where one reaches an apex of spiritual awareness and mental and emotional development. In very broad brushstrokes, Jung writes about the similar concept of Integration, the uniting of the disparate parts of the self into one unified whole, especially the Shadow Self with the conscious self. Along the way of this grand journey, we learn important lessons about our development through our interactions with the scenes and figures of each of the Major Arcana cards, from the Magician all the way to the enigmatically beautiful figure in The World.
We’re now close to the end of our journey. Exciting isn’t it?
The Sun is an awesome card indeed, perhaps only eclipsed by the grand majesty of The World. But it’s so damn awesome that this is what A.E. Waite had to say about it:
19.THE SUN. — Material happiness, fortunate marriage, contentment. Reversed: The same in a lesser sense.
This card’s awesomeness is so great that it’s reversed meaning, which is usually symbolic of the “shadow” or oppositional aspect of any given tarot card’s divinatory meaning, is simply “still awesome, just less so”.
There’s really not much else to say except that this is the card where you’ve made it — you’ve reached an incredible milestone in your development. The person depicted here symbolizes a state of happiness that is so joyous that it is almost child-like in its innocent exuberance, and the solid wall behind them symbolizes a sense of protection and isolation. The sunflowers in the background are especially symbolically important here; in nature, they usually move to face the sun (at least before maturing), and for a short time after they bloom. Here however, they are focused not towards the sun, but towards the child.
I can’t help but think about how much this symbolizes that point in life when we finally achieve what it is we’ve been working so hard, and enduring so much to get: it could be a community (online or offline) that gives you the support and protection you need from family and other “friends” who are aphobic and queerphobic (hence the solid grey wall behind the child). It could be a similar sense of love and acceptance from chosen family, or a stable and healthy relationship with a partner, finally achieved at long last after a long string of abusive, or toxic relationships.
In your life — no matter what your starting goal — you’ve finally reached the place where you’ve wanted to be.
It is tempting, after living a life characterized by hardship, to over think things at this point. How long do you have until your idyllic community falls apart? How long can you can you enjoy the warmth and the presence of the key members of your chosen family, until they are forced to move away? How long will your relationship last with your new partner until the difficulties and challenges of being in a relationship as an aro or ace person (let alone the difficulties and challenges of being in a relationship regardless of your sexual orientation) lead to your relationship dissolving or souring with your partner?
The Sun tells us to put aside such questions. To enjoy being in the moment. To not worry about the potential hazards and stressors that come with tomorrow, and enjoy the bounty of what you have today. After all, you’ve worked so hard to get to where you are now. You deserve to enjoy it.
Truth be told, I’ve never been one to put too much stock into Waite’s interpretation of the Smith-Waite tarot beyond seeing them as elementary stepping stones to deeper discussions. I say this because there’s a lot more to be said about The Sun besides the super-positive message that often comes with it. The tarot speaks to the importance of balance, and while we see this with how The Sun comes after The Moon, the theme of balance also speaks to us from within the cards themselves.
Notice how large the sun looms in this card, utterly dominating the sky with its brightness; from another perspective, it almost looks overbearing in the way that its stern, firm expression gazes at the scene unfolding below it —as well as you, the viewer. One person I met at a tarot group meetup once told me how for them, the sun can evoke thoughts of what happens when the sun becomes an overwhelming and excessive influence: sunburns, drought and desolation, from the sun’s oppressive heat and light. The sun’s radiant energy may symbolize joy, happiness and warmth, but as with all things in the tarot, there is always another side to its power, even one that on the surface may seem to herald nothing but positivity. As it turns out, you truly can have too much of a good thing.
The phenomenon of toxic positivity was a reality I was blinded to until a pointed conversation I once had with a partner who identified as disabled. After going at length into the overwhelming odds they faced against their survival — long-term poverty, chronic food and housing insecurity, institutional ableism and ageism at their school, classism, queerphobia and misogyny from government and health care workers, and a lifetime of isolation, abuse and trauma at all levels inflicted by family, partners and trusted friends — I quickly and dutifully adopted the role of admiring cheerleader. They were so strong and resilient, I maintained. They could handle it. They could go on. They had the strength to survive and keep going. The reality of course was that they were neither a superpower-equipped wünderkind, nor an invincible pillar of unfailing resolve — they were simply a disabled, poor queer woman, trying to keep themselves and their cat going for as long as they possibly could. What may seem like feats of cinematic strength for one person, comfortable in their own privilege, is to another the daily reality of living in a society that in many ways is dead set against their existence. My primal desire to flood their words and experiences with positivity caused me to overlook what they really needed: someone to listen and validate their lived experience.
Toxic positivity is not something that is limited to the disabled community. With the multitude of social, economic and health challenges that have arisen in the wake of the pandemic and the erosion of democratic principles around the world, it easily feels as though we all share the experience of fighting an uphill battle against the struggles of daily life. Hand in hand with that is an honest need for us to be heard, and our experiences acknowledged, in ways that go beyond simple platitudes and reassurances that everything’s going to be okay.
This is of course true of people in the asexual and aromantic community as well. Among aces and aros in online spaces, it can seem as though we have to always keep up the appearance that our asexuality is one filled with gleeful memes about cake and garlic bread, punctuated with reassurances that we don’t need icky things like relationships, rantings about representation, and of course, looking down with disdain upon the allo peasantry with their talk of sex. But the reality is that ace and aro people are more than just the fulfillment of positivist narratives. Ace and aro people do feel lonely — from a lack of access to supportive peer resources and groups, or a lack of a community able to provide viable options for friendships or platonic partners. Ace and aro people do feel isolation, especially when facing aphobia from other queer people and queer groups. And while it may seem threatening to how some people view the ace/aro experience, ace and aro people can feel a need for relationships — and yes, that can even include sexual relationships. There are people out there for whom the ace and aro experience is very hard — and there are likely far, far more of those people out there than we might expect. It’s easy to look on the experiences of such folks, and give them the reassurance that all will be better in the end…that you just need to try just a little bit harder to enjoy your asexuality, and that soon you too will be living your best ace life with your soon-to-be queer platonic partner that you haven’t met yet.
My ultimate point here is that the ace and aro experience isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, as much as we might indirectly project that image when debunking typical aphobic talking points like “I bet you must feel really lonely”, or promoting the idea that asexuals have a better life because we don’t think about sex or sexual relationships. When aces and aros speak about their struggles with loneliness or relationships, they aren’t asking the rest of us to simply tell them that it’ll all be all right. They’re asking us to listen to their voices, and understand that their experiences are just as valid as any other under the ace and aro umbrella.
Taking a wider view, and circling back to the Sun in the tarot, this card additionally serves as a general reminder that beyond the positivity and light in which some may bask, exists a broad range of lived experiences in which difficulties and struggles are an unavoidable everyday facet of life. We can’t all act like the Sun is the card we’ve taken in our daily card pull. Maybe someone in our orbit just happened to draw Death, The Tower, The Devil, or the Three of Swords today. Maybe instead, they’ve been drawing those cards every day, for a long while. We do those people — as well as ourselves — a grave disservice if we try to simply act as though there is something inherently wrong or shameful in feeling and expressing the emotions that stem from these experiences.
Just as how these is no shame in acknowledging one’s own feelings of loneliness as a part of their ace or aro experience, there is no shame in acknowledging one’s own feelings of negativity in times of hardship.
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Next: Judgement
