Tarot Tuesday: The Sun’s Path, Five Cards From Sunrise to Sunset
On the equinox the Sun does something it only does twice a year. It rises due east, sets due west, and draws a perfectly even arc across the sky, the same shape on the way up as on the way down. Every other day of the year that arc leans one way or the other. Today it is balanced.
So today’s spread is that arc, laid across the face of a sundial. Five cards in a curve, like the Sun’s path over a horizon. The first card on the left is sunrise: what is just starting for you. The second is mid-morning: what you are building. The third, at the top, is noon: the thing with the most light on it right now. The fourth is mid-afternoon: what you are adjusting. The fifth, on the right, is sunset: what is ending. Lay them left to right. Read them the same way. The pointer in the middle of the dial marks noon, the moment the Sun stops climbing and starts to fall.
Deal it now if you have a deck. If you don’t, pull five at SASS Tarot and lay them in the same arc.
🌅 SUNRISE: Ace of Swords
An otter lifts its head toward a crowned blade held up against a pale morning sky, water and cloud behind it, a few gold petals scattered across the card. Something has just become clear to you. Not finished, not decided, just clear, the way a thought is clear the first time you can say it in one sentence. That sentence is what is rising for you this season. Write it down today, exactly as it came, before you start improving it.
🏗️ MID-MORNING: Three of Pentacles
A prairie dog stands upright at the mouth of its burrow in dry golden grass, the whole colony’s work under its feet and out of sight. Three of Pentacles is the card of building something that will still be standing when you are not the one standing on it. The clear idea from sunrise only becomes real when other hands touch it, so this is the week to show it to the one person who can help you dig, and to accept that the first version will be theirs as much as yours.
🌞 NOON: Justice
A white egret stands in still water among lily pads, its reflection exact beneath it, a small pair of scales hanging from a reed at its side. Libra’s own card sits at the top of the arc on the day the Sun enters Libra. Noon is where the most light is, and what is lit right now is the fairness question: who is doing more, who is getting more, and whether the two match. Justice does not ask you to be nice about it. It asks you to be accurate. Say the true ratio out loud, once, to the person it concerns.
🏺 MID-AFTERNOON: Temperance
A swan bends its neck to a golden cup among lotus flowers, pouring from one pool into another in pink and blue light. Once the ratio is on the table, this is the card of fixing it a little at a time. Not a dramatic correction, a pour from one cup to the other until they look the same. This is most of your next month: small transfers of time, money, and attention from the side that had too much to the side that had too little.
🏮 SUNSET: The Hermit
A black bear sits on a rock at dusk holding up a small lantern, bare trees behind it, a pale moth drawn to the light. The light goes down and you carry your own. The Hermit is what you take with you into the darker half of the year: one thing you understand now that you did not in March. Name it. That is the card you keep.
Now look at the whole arc. Today it is even. From tomorrow it is not: north of the equator the Sun’s arc gets lower and shorter every day until December, and south of it, higher and longer. Wherever you are, the arc you dealt today is the last balanced one you get until March, so this reading is the one to keep.
Tarot Tuesday runs every week in Daily SASS, the free astrology newsletter. Get it in your inbox, or pull your own cards at SASS Tarot.
