What a significator is, in simple terms

The word comes from the Latin significare, “to signify.” The significator is “you on the table”: a card that portrays the person the reading is about. In Waite’s Celtic Cross it lies in the center, and the first two cards are placed directly on it: one “covers him” and one “crosses him”1.

The significator has no position of its own in the spread: it marks who the reading is about, but Waite advised taking it into account in the final conclusion1. That is why it is removed from the deck before shuffling, so this card can no longer come up in the reading itself.

How to choose a significator Waite’s way

Waite suggested taking a court card and matching it by age and gender1:

  • Knight — a man aged forty or older;
  • King — a man under forty;
  • Queen — a woman over forty;
  • Page — a woman under forty.

The suit was chosen by appearance1:

  • Wands — very fair people;
  • Cups — light brown hair;
  • Swords — hazel or gray eyes, dark brown hair, a dull complexion;
  • Pentacles — very dark-skinned and dark-haired people.

Waite noted that if a person’s character is well known, you can go by that instead of appearance1. Notice the unusual correspondence: in Waite’s system the Knight is older than the King, even though the usual hierarchy is the other way around1.

Modern ways to choose

  • By character and element. An energetic, impulsive person — Wands; a sensitive one — Cups; a rational one — Swords; a practical one — Pentacles. The court card’s rank reflects maturity and role: the Page is a student, the Knight a person on the move, the Queen maturity and care, the King responsibility and authority.
  • By zodiac sign. Fire signs — Wands, Water signs — Cups, Air signs — Swords, Earth signs — Pentacles.
  • By the topic of the question. Waite himself suggested this method: the significator can be a card whose meaning matches the question — for example, Justice (XI) for a legal matter1. In the same way, The Lovers is used for a question about a choice in love, and The Chariot for one about moving.
  • By your birth-date arcanum. The Major Arcana card derived from your date of birth — you can calculate it here.
  • Intuitively. Look through the court cards and pick the one you recognize yourself in.

Do you need a significator?

Not necessarily. Many modern tarot readers do without one: the spread already has a position describing the querent — for example, “Yourself” in the Celtic Cross. Our online tarot spreads don’t use a significator either.

A significator is useful when you are reading for several people at once or want the reading to focus on a specific role — for example, “me as a manager.”

How to place the significator

  1. Choose the card and take it out of the deck.
  2. Place it face up in the center of the table.
  3. Shuffle the rest of the deck and cut it — three times in Waite’s method, holding the cards face down1.
  4. Lay out the spread around the significator according to the layout.

A step-by-step Celtic Cross layout is in the article “How to lay out tarot cards”.

Frequently asked questions

What is a significator in tarot?

The card that represents the querent or the subject of the question in a reading. It is chosen before shuffling and placed face up1.

How do you choose a significator card?

Following Waite, a court card is chosen by age, gender and appearance1. Waite also allowed choosing by the topic of the question1; today people often choose by character or by the element of their zodiac sign as well.

Do you have to use a significator in tarot?

No. Many spreads do without one: one of the positions plays the role of the querent.

How this article was prepared

This text was written with the help of AI, based on the sources listed below and on the questions people actually search for. Every factual statement — about the history of decks, what a deck contains, what authors wrote — has a footnote. The text was then checked by a separate AI instance that took no part in writing it: it compared the facts with the footnotes, and errors were corrected. The English version is a translation of the original Russian article.

We describe reading practices — how to shuffle, charge or “cleanse” a deck — as traditions and habits of tarot readers, not as proven methods: there is no scientific evidence for divination. Read more on our editorial policy page. Found a mistake? Let us know via the contact form.

Sources

  1. A. E. Waite. The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Part III, § 7: An Ancient Celtic Method of Divination. Choosing the significator, shuffling, the Celtic Cross spread sacred-texts.com