Archetypal Magic: The Sun

As spring beckons us outside and vaccine rollout allows us to (tentatively for many of us) begin to fill out our social calendar again, we might be feeling a sense of hope, and play and newness. The archetype of The Sun, drawing from tarot, is present as we here in the northern hemisphere are watching winter melt away.

This card can feel confronting! This playful energy or sense of hope can feel hard to be around if we aren’t in a place where we feel we can trust it’s safe to access it. Or maybe it’s unreachable for you right now. And that’s okay, we’ve been through the ringer. But The Sun isn’t just whimsy for whimsy’s sake. The Sun isn’t bypassing or ignoring the difficulties in the world or in our individual life, it’s enjoying the moment because it knows how precious it is to be able to feel joy. To be able to watch our cycles and see that after some hard knocks comes healing and eventually an expansion of ourselves. It bolsters us for the inevitable hard times that lie ahead. The Sun encourages us to remember that we are beings of the earth and deserve and need time to play and enjoy ourselves and other people (human and non-human beings alike).

The Sun comes after the Tower, after the Star, after the Moon, and before Judgement. Things fall apart and perhaps everything we’ve learned to build our lives around gets knocked down in order to be rebuilt again. This is painful and heartbreaking. The Tower is one of the most recognized cards in tarot- we know this feeling, we know it sucks. But after it comes The Star, this beautiful space of reveling in the natural world that’s uncovered after the rubble of the Tower has been cleared away. This feeling of being free and unattached and uninhibited and close to nature and our own natural state. This is healing and alchemy. And it’s playful. It’s a place that feels good to stay in. It’s beautiful and often internal. Once we’ve stayed in The Star for as long as we need to, we move into The Moon. I have a lot to say about traditional interpretations about this card that I’ll save for a different time. What I will say about this card/archetype/time in our lives is that it’s a deepening of power. A deepening of our primal selves. The lessons we learned through the tower falling and the healing that happened afterwards are being integrated. New parts of ourselves are coming into focus and there may be some more shedding of older pieces that don’t suit us. This is a luscious, dark, and liminal space. It can be hard to be with if we aren’t expecting it and aren’t allowing it the space it deserves. There’s an invitation to deepen our relationship with ourselves and our true nature and it’s bold and brave to accept that invitation. Here, the soil is being turned over. And then we move into The Sun.

To fully appreciate this archetype we have to understand where it comes from (and what comes out of it). Now, life doesn’t always follow this formula. But it can be useful to look at this cycle and see if you find yourself in one of these states. Perhaps we can find solace in knowing that The Sun appears for all of us eventually, even if it’s not in the order laid out by the cards. 

Anyway, The Sun is like waking up one day and being like, “OH! This gets to be part of my human experience too”. The Sun feels like a huge fucking accomplishment on a healing journey. Moving through trauma takes so much courage and so much resiliency and so often it feels like it’s something we have to do in order to even just keep our heads above water (annnnd they don’t always stay above water, do they?). The Sun appears after we’ve worked through some really hard and heavy stuff, felt the hard and heavy feelings and have taken the time to integrate that into our experience in the world. It shows up unexpectedly. It’s warmth kind of spills over you and you feel yourself standing on ground you can trust (which was maybe unimaginable in times passed). It’s gentle and unabashed at the same time. It helps us to slow down and savor a little bit. To enjoy being human and allowing us to delight in our senses and trust that, while things won’t always feel this way, we know we have access to these feelings within ourselves and that we will always circle back around to it. The Sun can anchor us and help us to weather any upcoming storms. The Sun isn’t naive, The Sun has seen some shit and is here to play because it can. There is wisdom in this. 

After The Sun comes Judgement. I won’t get in the weeds on this but in Judgement we are asked to look back on the last cycle and really assess what happened and what we are going to do with this knowledge moving forward. The Sun comes before Judgement to help us see these things clearly. It also just gives us a boost before we get to the task of sorting and reviewing which is what Judgement asks of us. 

So anyway, if you’re feeling The Sun right now but are having a hard time letting it in or trusting that it’s okay to feel- I totally get that AND try and let yourself feel it. You deserve to have that. It doesn’t mean you’re forgetting about the hard and difficult stuff. We need this time to let yourself play and bask in what The Sun has to offer in order to keep going. You deserve to give yourself a pat on the back. AND! To have others pat you on the back too. That’s another piece of this archetype- it’s social. It’s coming out brand new and changed after a period of isolation and internal revolution. 

Celebrate and let yourself be celebrated. You’ve worked hard for this.