Who Are You?: Choosing a Significator

As the Caterpillar asked Alice, so too does the tarot ask, before a single card turns: Who are you?

Your significator is your answer to this question. It’s the card you choose to play your part in the stories tarot tells.

But how do you choose?

Some reach for the Major Arcana, trusting the greater patterns of their soul’s journey speak for them. Others see themselves in the personalities of the Court cards, where energy takes on human faces and moves through the world.

Is your reflection found in the still waters ruled by the Queen of Cups, sovereign of the tides, shimmering with the promise of secrets too deep to ever break the surface, yet bubbling with the gentle kindness of one who never lost the magic of childhood?

Or is your truth illuminated by the lantern of the Hermit, wanderer of psyche and soul, traversing the shadows of self in a journey that folds ever inward and, paradoxically, expands?

It’s okay if you, like Alice, hardly know who you are just yet. You don’t have to be certain before you choose.

Try them on like hats. Play dress-up. Pose in the mirror. Notice which ones don’t quite sit right and which bring out your favorite features. Which ones feel like you.

Change your mind as often as you need to. The tarot won’t mind. It understands that identity isn’t some fixed thing. That it turns with the Wheel, always in motion, evolving, ever-changing.

But to begin, simply choose.

With your significator, you’ve introduced yourself to the tarot. You’ve shaken hands and given your name, energetically speaking. When your significator appears, it’s saying, you.

The cards around your significator speak to the energies, lessons, events, interactions with others, and how they relate to you personally.

You aren’t the only one, after all.

When a person’s energy appears again and again, it may be time to give them a card of their own. To assign someone else a significator is to say, this person has a role to play. They belong in the conversation too.

You don’t have to capture their likeness exactly to name them. It isn’t like trying on hats; you don’t wear their head or look out through their eyes. Instead, play the witness. Notice how they appear in your readings, what archetypes gather around their name, which cards echo their presence. Choose for them the card that best reflects your experience of them.

If someone leaves the table, you can reassign their card or simply let it speak for itself again. You might think of your conversation with the tarot as a bit like the Mad Tea Party: though those gathered round the table may change seats or faces, it never really ends.