The Sun

Two winged children dance in freedom on a green mound before a low wall, beneath a great sun ringed with the twelve signs of the zodiac; a rose blooms; the whole picture is light and play.

Resh, the head or face, on path 30 from Hod to Yesod: the face of the Sun turned toward the Moon, the intellect illuminating the foundation. Resh is the head that the sun-god wears; the card is the light of consciousness itself.

The Sun, the centre and the heart: vitality, identity, the light by which everything else is seen. The Sun rules Leo, is exalted in Aries, and is the planet of Tiphareth.

Nineteen, and Resh's value 200. Nineteen is the number of the Metonic cycle by which sun and moon return to the same alignment, the reconciliation of the lights.

The realised Self, illuminated consciousness, the Divine Child pair as the renewed psyche. Jungian readers place here the moment after individuation's crisis when the ego stands in a right relation to the Self.

Waite's single child rides a white horse beneath sunflowers; Crowley's two children dance on the mound, freed from the wall that once bounded them, and the zodiac ring shows the sun as the whole year.