Significators

HOLMES said:

somehow I am not sure when in my development in the 2000s I turned that into the soul message which I read it like this.
0. soul message
place card here.

for me this freed up the energy of the spreads,, and added so much that anyone who used clarifying cards would or could easily use this instead of that.. well that is if they were open to their spirt guides, or soul , or the creator giving them a message they need to hear that could have no relation on to the question. hmm perhaps they could see it as a message from their innerself, or childself.

so in the beginning and end.. nope I do not,, yet in a roundabout way I did .

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It's interesting that I came up with a similar idea in a spread I created last week. I place the Fool card (from a second deck) in a kind of "overseeing" position above the main spread and call it the "Fool's Insight" card. See the fifth post in the thread for the final version.

http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=268745

On the main topic, I used a Significator in my Celtic Cross spreads for decades but stopped after gaining a different perspective from discussions here; I don't need one when I have the querent sitting right in front of me. I sometimes create smaller spreads that use one for a very specific purpose, usually drawn from a second deck to avoid the problem you mentioned. But I never use them in the typical 3-card and 5-card line spreads. Most of the time the center or "focus" card in the line serves this purpose, as long as I'm not doing past/present/future.

In a broader sense, I think we can get way too tied up in our "technique" at the expense of "flow" in the spread. I know I have to guard against that in my own spreads because I like analytical detail.

Solandia said:

Do you use a significator card when reading the tarot? (Do you choose a card beforehand to represent yourself or your question?)

~ Solandia

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No, I never have.

I don't like to remove any of the cards from the deck, I want them all available to answer. Although I do highly connect to the High Priestess which is my soul card and a lot about who I am inside. So IF it came up on its own, I often see it as the card that represents me. But I don't purposely CHOOSE to use a signigicator and the HP doesn't come up all the often for me. But it could mean that if it does for me.

Babs