The Sun Card, Solstice and Sunflowers.

The Sun card in Tarot forecasts sunny weather at its most literal.   It is the card of high summer, no surprise there. Metaphorically it is recovery from illness, respite from care, the gift of the moment. It is playful. It is children, the state of childhood and sometimes predicts the imminence of a birth. It is success. It is travel, particularly to hot places. It is the return of the sun after the winter solstice. It is the zenith of the sun in the summer solstice. In terms of trying to establish timings, we are looking at the zodiac signs of Cancer (the solstice) and Leo.

Reversed it’s the setting sun, delays and lesser joys, the passing away of childhood, nostalgia and beautiful, bittersweet twilight. It may mean getting something less than you hoped for, but what you get is still something to be happy for.

The visionary Star card on the other hand, can- and in readings it often has-indicated a recovery from depression, sickness and despair, a guiding light. Someone can sees a way ahead now, they couldn’t see before. This is a more cerebral card; Aquarian in character, both visionary and analytical. This is the card of the collective, of space

Klytie (or Clytie) was a figure in Ancient Greek mythology, one of the oceanids, a daughter of Oceanus who fell in love with the sun god, Helios or Apollo. Each day she would watch him cross the sky in his chariot of fire. There is a darker version of this story, that Klytie was a demented stalker bunny-boiler whose jealousy brought about the horrific death of a love rival. A gentler version of the story says that Apollo could not come closer without destroying her, but when she pined away and died, he changed her into a sunflower so she could watch him forever, understanding that his love was far distant, it was constant, and he would never desert her absolutely.

The sun means Life itself. The fire of the sun can also be cruel, savage when ‘reversed,’ and then we need shelter. We need ‘dark sacred night’ or we need rain. But in a sense, aren’t we all sunflowers…looking for the sun by day and the stars by night. Like Klytie, we live with our memories of many sunsets past and the hope of a bright new dawn. We are sustained in adversity by resilience, determination and hope.

Venus or Hesperus, ‘The Evening star,’ is also Lucifer, the bringer of Light- the Angel before the Fall-‘The Morning star’.

The Sunflower

Klytie stands and tracks the sun
From dawn until Apollo’s gone
A patient and a hopeful eye
In contemplation of the sky
Her days are rooted, quiet, spent
In upward focus, still, intent
With other suns of earthly gold
Arms outstretched for light’s sure hold
And rich with cargo, every one
Built strong with sugar from the sun.

She’s etched with frosts and winds of  loss
But comfort comes with Hesperus
The Morning Star’s deliverance
Alone she stands in fields of fellowship
Hands asking to receive
But with no strength to grip
Yet keeping faith and trusting to the light
The faintest and the coldest star
Still promises Apollo from afar
A spark to resurrect a phoenix in the night.

c. Katie-Ellen Hazeldine 2010.

Till next time 🙂