Parting the Mists

In the mornings, I drive my stepdaughter to school. Before we get to it, there is an open field. Often on sunny days, there is a young man with long, sun-kissed hair simply standing on the edge of the field watching the sun come up. We have no idea what he’s doing there: a mediation perhaps? Every time I see him, it reminds me of this card and that from the energies around us (and especially that of the sun), we receive energy for creation. What are you going to do with it today?

THE SUN OF LIFE

ROOTS & BRANCHES: The creative fire, light of the land, the furnace of potential, the inner sun, the primal melting pot of matter and energy, the heart of eternal life

READING POINTS: A powerful symbol of light and fertility, the Sun of Life heralds a season blessed with joyous enlightenment, robust health, and emotional harmony. As the glorious rays of cleansing sunlight spill into the shadows of your heart and life, so the warmth reaches into your very bones and energizes your spirit. It is time to let the inner sun at the core of your being shine for all to see, bringing warmth, light, and harmony to others, and by doing so to connect with the consciousness of the universal mind. The Sun of Life also beckons you to see beyond the noise and clatter of human reality and become aware of the vastness and generosity of the cosmic soul.

MEANING: Viewed as if from the center of the summer Wildwood, the Sun of Life is surrounded by fecundity and growth. The power and importance of the sun cannot be overstated as the bringer of life, warmth, and light into the human world. Many Stone Age sites were created to mark the rising of the sun, especially at Midwinter. This was done not only out of respect for the various solar deities but because the sun meant the coming of plentiful food and the return of life after the death of winter. It was a very real and practical salute to the source of primal power that meant survival and comfort during the warm months of the year to the ever-renewable promise of the sun’s return after its sojourn below the horizon during the winter months. Without the light of the sun on our world, life would never have begun, let alone evolved into the vast, complex, and varied sprawl of fertility we now see across the face of the globe.

On a more complex level of human consciousness, the Sun of Life represents the next step into awareness of the universal mind. After the initial movement from the potential still point of the moon, the sun beckons us beyond the Earth-Lunar relationship to an awareness of concepts on a solar level. At the heart of the sun is the secret process of nuclear fusion from which everything we perceive and comprehend on a physical, galactic level was created – and will one day return to. The figure at the heart of this process reminds us that we really are made of the matter of the universe. Our physical bodies were created from the waster matter of the cooling and turning of the sun. We are truly at one with the cosmos and the same interactions between matter and energy that bind the sun together, work both within and through us, moment-by-moment.

The Wildwood Tarot by Mark Ryan and John Matthews, art by Will Worthington