The Sun (XIX)
The Sun and the Moon as the central motif, with the Horse in a secondary part. From The 1909 tarot.
Key · 2 motifs
Tap a motif on the picture, or a line below. Its note opens under the line, with the reading its author gave it.
- Primary motif
- Secondary motifs · 1
The picture
A sun with a face, straight and wavy rays; a naked child crowned with flowers rides a white horse and carries a red banner; sunflowers over a garden wall; the Sun as the central motif, the Horse by eye. By eye
Readings quoted
Waite, 1911 “The characteristic type of humanity has become a little child therein--a child in the sense of simplicity and innocence in the sense of wisdom. In that simplicity, he bears the seal of Nature and of Art; in that innocence, he signifies the restored world.”
Waite, 1911 “When the self-knowing spirit has dawned in the consciousness above the natural mind, that mind in its renewal leads forth the animal nature in a state of perfect conformity.”
Decoded: every motif is marked, and each mark carries the reading its author gave it, quoted from the text, or says that it is observed on the picture and not read. The composition, the picture read whole, comes with the entry.

Gold, the perfected metal, and the illuminated intellect. The most overloaded symbol in the tradition.
By eye The central motif, the disc with a face, at the top.
Waite, 1911 “The sun is that of consciousness in the spirit - the direct as the antithesis of the reflected light.”
Waite, 1911 “The card signifies, therefore, the transit from the manifest light of this world, represented by the glorious sun of earth, to the light of the world to come, which goes before aspiration and is typified by the heart of a child.”
Waite, 1911 “The luminary is distinguished in older cards by chief rays that are waved and salient alternately and by secondary salient rays.”

No entry yet for this motif. The wall gathers every work that carries it.
By eye A secondary motif, the white horse the child rides.
Waite, 1911 “The naked child mounted on a white horse and displaying a red standard has been mentioned already as the better symbolism connected with this card. It is the destiny of the Supernatural East and the great and holy light which goes before the endless procession of humanity, coming out from the walled garden of the sensitive life and passing on the journey home.”
Waite, 1911 “Eliphas Lévi says that these are sometimes replaced by a spinner unwinding destinies, and otherwise by a much better symbol-a naked child mounted on a white horse and displaying a scarlet standard.”
Also carrying the Sun and the Moon
15 works, 5 with it as the central motif. The symbol.
Also carrying the Horse
6 works. The symbol.
In the same series
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