Archetypes of the Sun Card

Intro/Outro Music 0:13

Aloha and welcome to your Heart Magic , an illuminating space where psychology , spirituality and heart wisdom meet . Here's your host , Dr Bethann Kapansky-Wright , the clinical psychologist with a mystic mind .

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright 0:33

Aloha everybody , welcome to your Heart Magic . This is Dr Bethann Kapansky-Wright , and today we are continuing our archetypes of the tarot series and we are talking about the card , the sun card 19 in the tarot deck , and it's so fun to bring you this card today . We are getting close to the end of our tarot series and we have a couple ones left , but the sun is the brightest card in the tarot deck . It is exactly what it sounds like it is about joy and optimism , success and victory and abundance . The card is a sun of standing in the light and receiving a sense of completion . Enlightenment the sun can mean many things transformation , enlightenment the sun can mean many things . I wrote down a few key words to share with you joy , success , vitality , exuberance , good health , abundance , innocence . The sun can signify success and career or art or some sort of a personal victory , something that you have been striving to achieve or to complete for yourself . So it is a very optimistic card and again encourages us to step into the light in our life . And when we talk about the tarot series , we've been looking at how to take all of these cards and draw on the archetypes from them , draw on the inspiration they offer us and apply that to our own life . And , admittedly , some of the cards are a little bit more challenging than others . When we're talking about a card like the Tower , or the Devil or the Hed man , or cards that sometimes have a connotation that isn't always positive , when you look at the images , especially in traditional decks , some of the art that goes with it sometimes is a little shocking , and so you don't pull the card the tower and think , oh good , good news is headed my way . The challenge in those cards is to work with the energy and to see that all of these are part of the human experience . So it's not bad . There's not a bad card .

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright 2:54

We don't need to get scared if we are working with the cards in our personal practice and we see that card , we can look at some of the more challenging cards in the deck and see them as an invitation for growth or for looking at them differently or rethinking them . We can always see a card as an invitation to grow bigger than a fear . If a card elicits a sense of fear in us , then how can we be bigger than that ? So , instead of fearing a card , we embrace it and say , oh , this is an opportunity to grow in discernment or wisdom or working with chaos or storm energy in my life . So there's many things that the tarot gifts us and helping us to work with life and see things more holistically .

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright 3:40

Having said that , the sun is such an easy card because we don't have to look that hard or challenge ourselves to see the sun through a supportive lens . The sun is supportive If you pull this in a reading and you're working with cards for your personal contemplation practice . It usually means something good , some sort of blessing , good fortune , something like that . For those who might work with a reversal in a reading . It can sometimes signify where we might need to shine light on self-doubt or a fear that we have inside of ourselves . It can signify when we might need to shift how we're looking at something and find our inner sun . But it's still a card that helps us connect to the positive and again look on the bright side of life . And that brings us to the first idea

Looking on the Bright Side of Life

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright 4:36

that I want to share about the sun card is that it does encourage us to look on the bright side of things .

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright 4:43

The sun is our optimist and the tarot deck the sun says what is the best thing that can happen , and oftentimes we get so used to the scripts running through our mind , we get so used to default thinking that might be steeped in negative thinking or darker thinking Sometimes , if we've been going through a hard period . Thank you . Is there a way to look at this differently ? Is there a way to find gratitude for this situation ? Is there a way to find what is positive ? Is there a way to focus on the outcome that you'd like to see ? Even if the sun is shining a light on a challenging situation in our life , it gives us the message that hey , it's all going to work out . I think there is often an equation that success equates to what we see as success , and so if we have a challenging situation in our life and we pull the sun card , certainly it might mean that we will get the outcome that we're hoping for , but it could also mean success or some form of abundance in a way that we will get the outcome that we're hoping for , but it could also mean success or some form of abundance in a way that we might not necessarily anticipate . Spirit and life in this bigger process that we're in is so much bigger than us , so we can't foresee all outcomes , but the sun asks us to not only keep hope , like the star card does . The star card is about hope and finding hope in a situation , but the sun says not only are we invited to connect with hope , but that a good outcome , that some kind of light will come to this situation . So it's a wonderful card to receive and I've often thought about the fact that so many times we're really familiar with our mental chatter and we're familiar with whatever stress or negativity or worry that we might have swirling around in our mind and we don't always stop to think about what's the best that could happen .

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright 7:00

How much time do we spend thinking about the worst outcome , thinking about what we fear , thinking about how nothing's going to change , thinking about a worry in a situation , whatever that situation is . And oftentimes , when we worry , we're trying to control something or we're hoping to find solutions so we can try and troubleshoot whatever might come our way and have a plan , if we need to , to avoid something worse happening . And there's certainly a utility to thinking about what would I do if this happened ? How might I deal with that ? But there comes a certain point where thinking only gets us so far and we're just running circles around our mind . We're not producing anything that's insightful , anything that might solve something . We're just focusing and dwelling and ruminating and obsessing and being compulsive . And that's an excellent time to think what's the best thing that could happen .

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright 7:57

So oftentimes , if I am working with something in my life and I don't know how it's going to work out and I can't quite visualize an outcome where it works out because I don't know what that would look like , I might visualize myself being like wow , I'm so relieved that that's over . I never imagined it would work out that way . I might visualize myself talking to a friend and saying I didn't see how it would all come together , but it did , and I feel so supported . I will visualize what I can that represents a successful outcome . So if I don't have an attachment to trying to visualize exactly what I want to see and that's okay , because sometimes we want to be open-ended I'll visualize how do I want to feel ? How would it feel to think this has reached a successful completion or that I'm in a place of abundance ? How would I like to feel ? What energy would I like to cultivate in my life ? And then I might visualize something where I am actively in that energy and I'm giving gratitude and I'm thinking thank you so much , universe , for bringing such a successful path and so much good energy and light to this . I feel so happy .

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright 9:16

So we can always focus on something good and we can always find a way to intervene in our own thoughts , and sometimes we might need a little bit of inspiration to do so . And that's okay , because the sun invites us to find inspiration . The sun really invites us to explore the idea of joy in our life and what is joy and how can we work on cultivating joy and how can we tap into things that might bring us joy . And again , we often have an attachment to what we might think joy looks like . If we imagine joy being a all paid vacation to some resort where our needs are taken care of and we have no worries and no stress , Certainly we might work on manifesting that if that is what joy is to us .

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright 10:09

But sometimes when we think about joy , we think about these pinnacle moments . Or if we are working on writing something or creating something , joy might be it gets published and it's well-received . It might be something that we quantify in a certain way , some kind of milestone , our yardstick , where we say , if I were to do this with this project and I had X amount of whatever it is that might represent this pinnacle to us . That's not really joy . That is success in some form . Certainly that might give us a sense of personal satisfaction in the moment , but joy is something deeper than that . Joy is a quality that is available to us at any time . Sometimes it's easier to tap into than others , but joy is something that we potentially could be able to access every single day , because joy is often found in these golden moments of life that invite us to savor , to relish , to appreciate , to step into the light within our everyday world

Cultivating Joy Through Inner Light

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright 11:21

.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright 11:21

Joy is not necessarily some pinnacle . Again , I don't really think that's joy . I think that is like false light or false joy , and we might truly have joy in that moment and maybe this is just me and my opinions but I feel like if we make the big stuff represent joy , then we're always chasing it and it's really elusive and we never really find it . And then we get it and we're already focused on what's going to be the next thing . I think we have to make joy more beautiful than that and a little bit more , finding the sacred and the everyday and cultivating that feeling inside of us , which the sun invites us to do .

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright 12:04

Many of us are out of touch with joy because sometimes our life hasn't felt very joyful , and so we forget what joy feels like in our nervous system . We forget what the energy , what the feeling , what the emotion of joy feels like . We might have blockages in our body or blockages in our chakras or in our energy field that keep us from really experiencing joy , and so I think about joy as something that we can tune into . It's a vibrational energy , an opportunity , an essence that is always happening , and sometimes we can use things in our normal life to cultivate it . Sometimes we might focus on something that brings us joy . When I think about joy , I think about a big field of yellow daffodils and golden sunshine and the sense of being in that field and being free and seeing nature around me , and so if I am working on cultivating joy , that might be an image that I meditate on and I notice . Where do I feel joy in my body ? What does it feel like , even if it's just a quiet hum ? How does it feel to tune into the frequency of joy ? And so the sun invites us to tune in to the frequency of joy . It also promises the blessing that something joyful might happen in our life that we recognize as joy .

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright 13:24

But if you're listening to this and things don't feel joyful right now , don't be discouraged . You can work on cultivating the quality of joy in your life through visualization and developing an eye for noticing joy . So a really wonderful exercise for this is to work with the sun archetype and ask ourselves where was the sun in my life today ? Where was joy happening ? And reflect on our joyful moments in the day . What if we don't receive joy and we miss the moment because we're too busy in our mental chatter or with our worries or thinking about something else ? We can have a reflection time in our journal and our prayer time and quiet contemplation and think about where was the sun shining in my life today ? What do I have to be grateful for ? Where was the light today ? We might make a gratitude list . We might think about what am I taking for granted ? That if I didn't have it , I would give anything to have it back , and how might I use that to inspire more joy in my life so I can appreciate it now ? So that's a beautiful way to work with the sun every day , whether or not we're feeling the sun's energy .

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright 14:43

Where is the sun going to shine in my life today ? How did the sun shine in my life today ?

Even If We Don't See It, The Sun Is Always Shining

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright 14:49

And that brings me to the last point that I want to make about the sun , and that is the idea that , even when we don't see it , the sun is always shining in our lives . Now , this is true for life , it's true for nature and it's true for natural cycles . Somewhere in the world , the sun is shining , even if it's not shining in our corner of the world . We also know that a sunrise always follows the dark of nighttime . Even again , if we can't see it because it's behind the clouds , daylight comes . The sun is there . The sun is shining somewhere . It is shining over us , it's shining in our life somehow , and I've made it through many a dark season in my life by remembering that the sun will rise again , I will feel a sense of sun in my life . I will feel a sense of light in my life . I might not feel it right now , but I can put my faith in that .

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright 15:42

I remember really vividly . This is back in 2016 , and that was the year that I lost my brother Brent , and it happened in January . So I was going through my grief journey during the heart of an Alaskan winter and it was a really gray winter . It was not a particularly sunny one , spring did not come early that year , there was a lot of gray days . But when the sun did shine I would just take it into my heart as medicine and even if I could not feel the impact of sunlight in my mind , I would let that sun shine down on me . And I remember sitting in my car at the park on lunch break , the heaters going it's winter , it's freezing out , but the sun was out that day and it was really bright and just letting it pour into me , almost like I was receiving the medicine of not just vitamin D but vitamin soul , and trusting that light , like I was taking it into me to kind of stockpile for when I could connect with it again and knowing that it might be there when I need it . And I really had to hold on to faith during that season of my life and really believe that I will be able to connect with sunlight again . I will find hope , I will find joy . Someday I will feel these things . I can't feel them right now . I was in so much grief and I think the effects of what grief does to our nervous system and to our mind and how it presses down upon the body can make it really hard to genuinely feel joy .

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright 17:17

I remember about four or five months after his loss I think it was about four and a half having my first real laugh . I was watching Friends and something happened on the show that elicited a genuine laugh for me . I don't remember what it was . Friends is a great show , genuine laugh for me . I don't remember what it was . Friends is a great show and I watched it while I was in college and my younger years , and so this was some . I'd seen the episode I don't know how many times before , but I happened to catch it and it just hit me just right and I remember having spontaneous laughter and it was really joyful and it was just a glimpse and it kind of went away , but I remember thinking that that might be my first real , deep , genuine laugh .

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright 18:00

That happened spontaneously , of its own accord , in like about four and a half , five months , and so it was such a gift to reconnect with joy again and it was such a gift that I could start to feel these little droplets of joy , and at first there wasn't a lot of them . They were these glimpses , these glimmers , these little sparkles that I would have a moment and then it would kind of go away and I would go back to feeling like I was in hibernation or something in me was kind of in stasis . It's like half of me just shut down and felt like it was suspended in time around that loss , while the rest of me was going through the motions . And it took a while for not only the grief to lift but that deeper self , that soulful self , that part of me that was busy integrating and trying to figure out . What does this mean for me ? What does it mean for my life ? What's the process of my heart in this ? It took a while for that to figure out . What does this mean for me ? What does it mean for my life ? What's the process of my heart in this ? It took a while for that to come out into consciousness and for me to feel more integrated again . So I felt like I was operating at half capacity . But those little glimpses of joy , they were so good for my heart and they did so much to remind me you will have more of this again . So don't give up , stay with yourself and stay with your journey .

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright 19:22

And I've often said sometimes we have to make our own sunshine . I learned that lesson hardcore in Alaska , especially during the winter time . There was many times in the winter not just that year but many years where I really had to search for the good and make myself notice what was good , because I wasn't living on a tropical island like I am now , where the sun is more readily available . Kind of interesting psychologically . I think that sunshine , which often felt like a scarcity in Alaska , is something that I moved to a place where it's not a scarcity . We have rainy seasons but more often than not we still see the sun quite a bit and they don't last that long .

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright 19:59

And I think , after having to make my own sunshine and search for it literally so hard for so much of my adult life , I just wanted it to be readily available . I was ready to learn different lessons about the sun . How about that ? At any rate , sometimes we do have to work at finding our sunshine , but I love the universal truth that it's out there . It's available for us

Embracing Joy and Inner Light

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright 20:23

.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright 20:23

Joy is available , the energy of the sun , the archetype of the sun , it's available when we look up , when we go within , when we find our light , when we develop a mindset that helps focus on the light of a situation , when we connect to our personal sense of power and our heart , magic and our spiritual connection . All of those things invite us to step into our natural sense of empowerment , abundance and joy and find the sun in our lives . Thank you so much for joining me for today's archetype of the Tarot episode and talking about the sun , I hope you go do something joyful after this podcast , I will be back next week with a mental health toolbox episode and we will be talking about some kind of topic pertaining to wellness and well-being and looking at practical tools for supporting our mental well-being on the journey . In the meantime , have a beautiful week . I hope joy finds you . I hope you find joy and , as always , be well , be love , be you and be magic .

Intro/Outro Music 21:43

You've been listening to your Heart Magic with Dr Bethann Kapansky-Wright . Tune in next week for a new episode to support and empower your light .