Significator Card

What is a significator card?

A significator is a card chosen from the deck before a reading to stand for the querent, the person asking, or sometimes for the matter asked about, and laid at the centre of the spread so that the other cards are read in relation to it. It is the only card in a classic reading that is picked face up and on purpose; every other card is drawn blind. Where an ordinary card position describes a part of the situation, the significator simply says “this is you” before the reading begins.

Readers choose it in one of four ways:

• By court card and age. Page for a child or a beginner, Knight for a young adult or someone on the move, Queen or King for a mature person, often matched by gender as well in older books.
• By element or sign. The suit follows the element of the querent’s sun sign: Wands for fire signs, Cups for water, Swords for air, Pentacles for earth. A Leo might take the Queen or King of Wands.
• By the matter. A Major Arcana card that names the question: the Lovers for love, the Wheel of Fortune for a change of circumstances.
• By chance. The first card drawn from the shuffled deck becomes the significator, so the deck chooses how you appear.

Two neighbouring terms are easy to confuse with it. A clarifier is drawn after the spread, to shed light on a card that is hard to read; a significator is set down before anything else. A tarot birth card is calculated from your birth date and stays the same for life, while a significator can change from one reading to the next as your role in a question changes.

The significator in older tarot methods

The word comes from the Latin significator, “one who signifies”, from significare, to show by a sign. Like querent, it was at home in astrology first. In horary astrology the significator is the planet that represents the person asking or the thing asked about, usually the ruler of the house concerned.

In tarot the term is fixed by Arthur Edward Waite’s The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910). His version of the Celtic Cross opens with a Significator laid on the table; the first card drawn covers it and the second crosses it, and Waite describes the following cards by their place around this central figure. Older handbooks of the period matched the court card to the querent’s age, sex and colouring, a method that now reads as dated.

Through the twentieth century many readers stopped using a significator. Taking a court card out of the deck means it can never appear in the reading, and readers came to value the information of seeing which card turns up for the querent by itself. Spreads built later usually give the first position the job of describing the person or the present situation.

Choosing a significator, or doing without one

Decide before you shuffle. Choose the card, or decide to use none, before the question is asked. Picking a significator after you have looked through the cards turns it into a wish.

Choose by role, not by flattery. A King is not a better card than a Page. If you are just starting out in a new job, the Page of Pentacles is a truer mirror than the King, and the reading will fit better for it.

Read the cards that touch it. With a significator on the table, the cards laid across and around it are the forces acting on you. In Waite’s layout the crossing card is literally on top of you: the obstacle in your way, not a judgement of who you are.

Don’t read it as a forecast. The significator says nothing about what will happen; it only marks your place. Choosing the King of Wands does not make you bold, and the reading does not change because you chose a Queen instead of a Knight.

If you leave it out, let the first card speak. Without a significator, the first position of most spreads, such as Present situation in the Celtic Cross or Past in a three-card line, does part of its work. A court card that appears there unprompted is often read as the querent in the moment.

Significator examples

The Queen of Pentacles for a small business owner. A woman in her forties with a Taurus sun asks about her shop. Earth suit, mature rank: the Queen of Pentacles. When the Five of Pentacles crosses her, the reading is about a lean season pressing on someone who knows how to manage resources.

The Lovers as the matter. A couple asks whether to move in together and chooses the Lovers as significator for the question rather than for either of them. The cards around it then describe the relationship’s own situation, not one partner’s view.

A significator drawn at random. You draw the first card as your significator and get the Knight of Swords, though you see yourself as calm. The deck is pointing at the part of you that is charging ahead in this matter, perhaps faster than the facts allow.

No significator at all. In a Celtic Cross without one, the Page of Cups lands in the first position. Many readers would take this as the querent appearing on their own: open, sensitive, ready to feel something new.