The Sun, The Wheel and The Magician share a concern with and expression of the importance of time and change. The Sun adds its roundness and constant periodicity to the circularity and endless revolutions of The Wheel. In this, they share the femininity of cycles and dependable repetition. The Sun adds the linear directness and the overwhelming power of its rays to the perfect focus and unbending intent of The Magician. In this, they share the masculinity of limitless energy and unwavering certainty.
The Sun reveals the shape and nature of everything, and fills whatever it touches with confidence and energy.
The Wheel experiences and accepts everything, and is excited by whatever happens to it.
The Magician manipulates everything with skill and intention, awakening and enlivening whatever he pays attention to.
The Sun is clear, steady, bright and simple. It dispels fear and doubt with its presence, lending energy and optimism to the task at hand. Its rising is the source of all optimism and brings with it the joy of awakening and continued existence. It is the certainty at the center of things, the clear awareness of what is and is not. The motto of The Sun is "I am." The job of The Sun is to be the engine that turns all the wheels of the world.
The Wheel is restless, driven to move ceaselessly from place to place, from drama to drama. At once actor and audience, it is simultaneously involved and detached. At the mercy of what it cannot foresee or prevent, it alternates between exhilaration and lassitude, high spirits and depression, good and bad fortune. Aware of the patterns and repetitions that link seemingly random events, it is unimpressed by them and is capable of patience. The motto of The Wheel is "Wheeee!" The job of The Wheel is to enjoy, both the intensity of the unpredictable moment and the serenity of grand and dependable cycles.
The Magician makes things appear and disappear like rabbits out of a hat. With focused awareness and skill, he opens up possibilities and closes them. Graceful, eloquent and logical, he charms the willing and persuades the unwilling. Armed with unbending intent, he approaches obstacles with serene confidence and faith in his powers. His motto is "I will," and he discounts the possibility of failure. The job of The Magician is to make intention into reality, no matter how unlikely or improbable, and in the process, to amaze all who watch him do it.
Unintegrated and imperfectly realized, The Sun's directness can cast shadows as intense as its light. It can be pitiless and absolute, dismissing what it cannot see as worthless, foolish or insane, and it can be an implacable enemy of whatever is hesitant or weak. Unable to abide a secret, it can be indiscreet. Impatient with frailty or innuendo, it can fail to see the humor in a joke.
The Wheel can be fatalistic and melodramatic. Helpless in the face of events, it feels alternately victimized by circumstance and unaccountably lucky. It accepts what happens as destiny, fate or fortune. It experiences everything that happens to it as intensely important, but with no sense of control, it seeks reassurance from seers and oracles, and believes what they say. When things are going well, it hopes that they will continue. When things go badly, it waits for them to get better. The Wheel lives on hopes and fears, guides itself by past experience, and never stops moving.
The Magician can be willful and petty. A controlling perfectionist, he can demand the impossible from himself and others. Given to self-deceit and out-and-out lies, he pretends to powers he does not possess in order to enhance his image and instill unwarranted confidence in others.
The Sun, Wheel and Magician form the sides of a triangle, the only triumvirate in a universe of pairs. It contains that universe's only nonlinear interior space, a place of privacy, complexity and reserve.
Together, they coruscate — unpredictably glistening, flashing, darkening, reflecting and revealing, multiplying the unexpected and expanding the boundaries of the known and normal by a whole dimension.