For You to See Life - 4u2c.life

The Sun ~ symbolic meanings painted in the card.

The card of the Sun portrays a classically handsome, beautifully proportioned man with golden hair, crowned with laurel leaves and bearing on his head the golden disc of the sun. He has golden wings and wears a short robe of dazzling white. In his right hand he holds a bow and a quiver of arrows; in his left he cradles a lyre. Framing him are two columns and a portico built of pale golden stone. Behind him a golden-green landscape, dotted with laurel trees, glows under a hot blue sky.

If sorrows and fears were brought to Apollo in a song, he would take them away. Music as an expression of the sun-god transforms our darkness into light and meaning.

The laurel wreath was used to crown the victors of athletic and artistic contests. The striving spirit and the crown of victory are both aspects of the sun-god.

Apollo’s far-shooting arrows earned him the epithet ‘Apollo Longsight’, thus implying that he is an image of the part of us which can see the purpose and reason for experiences long before we have emotionally processed them and left them behind.

Major Arcana ~ The Sun

Here we meet the radiant sun-god Apollo, the gentleman of Olympus and lord of prophecy, music and knowledge. His nickname was Phoebus, which means ‘the brilliant’, and in myth he delighted in the heights of the mountain peaks. He was the son of Zeus by Leto, the goddess of Night. Unlike other children, Apollo was not nourished on his mother’s milk. He was fed nectar and sweet ambrosia, and immediately the newborn baby threw off his swaddling clothes and was endowed with manly vigour. He set forth with the bow and far-shooting arrows which the smith-god Hephaistos had made for him, seeking a place for his sanctuary. But the place he chose was a mountain gorge which formed the lair of the vicious female serpent Python, a beast sent by Hera out of jealousy to destroy Apollo’s mother Leto. The god killed Python with one of his arrows, crowned himself with sacred laurel, and called his new sanctuary Delphi.

At the shrine of Delphi he established his oracle, spoken by a priestess who became known as the Pythoness. Meanwhile, he left Delphi every year in the autumn and travelled to the mysterious land of the Hyperboreans, where he could enjoy an eternally bright sky. Apollo was the enemy of all darkness, and could lift from men the curse of blood-guilt and the toils of sorrow. But he was a tricky deity, for his oracle was double-tongued and elusive, and his arrows could slay not only monsters but also men. Thus he was the god of sudden death as well as being a healer who drove away illness and shadows. Prophecy, normally the gift of the underworld deities, was gradually appropriated by Apollo until he himself became the embodiment of far-reaching vision.

On an inner level, Apollo, the sun-god, is an image of the power of consciousness to dispel the darkness. Like Hecate, who under the name of Artemis was Apollo’s twin sister in myth, the god personifies something greater than one individual’s capacity to gain knowledge and insight. Apollo is an image of the urge toward consciousness which exists in all life, and therefore he is the natural complement and antithesis to Hecate. Through many long centuries and through the rise and fall of many cultures and civilizations, the thrust toward knowledge and the craving for freedom from the bondage of dark, unknown nature has driven humankind toward impressive although dangerous heights.

Apollo represents the spirit of intellectual striving, combined with a vision of the future which encompasses an ideal of perfection. Thus the Fool’s encounter with Apollo the sun-god brings him the hope and clarity of daylight after the long night of waiting in the womb of Hecate. Through many trials and losses the Fool has maintained his goal and his integrity; but the card of the Moon is a dark place where, although the end of the journey is near, the Fool has lost both his confidence and his power of action. But Apollo is the dispeller of fear, and his bright light casts away shadows. The shadows of the Moon are like the night-fears of childhood, where we feel small and unimportant in the face of the vastness of the unknown, threatened by gigantic shapes that loom in the darkness. Apollo is an image of that hope and faith which spring not from any one person’s striving, but from all of us, a human inheritance of nobility and determination which can restore the Fool’s faith in himself because it is also a faith in the meaningfulness and purpose of the human journey.

The card of the Sun symbolizes that indomitable spirit that has always struggled against superstition, helplessness, ignorance and bondage to fatalism and despair. It is this spirit which battles with the serpent Python, the embodiment of the negative power of blind instinct and primitive fear. Apollo’s music also lifts us out of ourselves, for music speaks with a transperson- al voice, crossing cultures and centuries and embodying human tragedy and triumph. Thus Apollo is a great deity, respected by all the gods, and even the Moirai were once made subject to his will - although only once. But the sun-god too is ambivalent, for too much light too soon can kill if knowledge is premature and destroys the necessary time and darkness for things to gestate. Therefore the card of the Sun follows after the card of the Moon. The burning heat of the sun can scorch, for it does not respect nature’s laws. Thus Apollo in myth was often rejected in his advances toward women, for his light was sometimes too bright.

On a divinatory level, the card of Apollo, the sun-god, augurs a time of clarity, optimism and renewed trust. It is possible to understand the pattern, to plan for the future, to move forward. The curses of the night are dispelled, and the Fool is now armed with foresight, purpose and a aith in the striving human spirit. Thus he encounters that great masculine principle in life, working through both men and women, which moves forward toward the goal.

I will explain in my readings what each card means, this is a general interpritation taken from the Mythic Tarot Deck

Information Source: Mythic Tarot Deck
[published in 1986 by Juliet Sharman-Burke and Liz Greene and Illustrated by Tricia Newell (not the New Mythic Tarot)]