The naked child mounted on a white horse and displaying a red standard has been mentioned already as the better symbolism connected with this card. It is the destiny of the Supernatural East and the great and holy light which goes before the endless procession of humanity, coming out from the walled garden of the sensitive life and passing on the journey home. The card signifies, therefore, the transit from the manifest light of this world, represented by the glorious sun of earth, to the light of the world to come, which goes before aspiration and is typified by the heart of a child.
But the last allusion is again the key to a different form or aspect of the symbolism. The sun is that of consciousness in the spirit—the direct as the antithesis of the reflected light. The characteristic type of humanity has become a little child therein—a child in the sense of simplicity and innocence in the sense of wisdom. In that simplicity, he bears the seal of Nature and of Art; in that innocence, he signifies the restored world. When the self-knowing spirit has dawned in the consciousness above the natural mind, that mind in its renewal leads forth the animal nature in a state of perfect conformity.
the plate, in waite's words · the painted card will hang here in time
In divination
Material happiness, fortunate marriage, contentment.
Reversed:The same in a lesser sense.
The library's note
A naked child rides a white horse under a bannered sun, leaving behind the walled garden that has stood, since the Lovers' card, for the sensitive life. Waite reads the sun twice: first as "the manifest light of this world," then, in a different aspect, as "consciousness in the spirit, the direct as the antithesis of the reflected light" the Moon showed one card earlier. The child stands for both meanings folded together, wisdom described as innocence rather than achievement. Waite calls the whole scene "the restored world," the trumps' clearest picture of arrival before the darker business of Judgement still to come.
a young page · the keeper's voice pass on the note is still to come