Help determining the best card for my friend

Hello! As a follow-up to my recent other thread about The Magician, I ask for some assistance.

My friend (a male ENFP, and a true "Champion" as Kiersey would call him) has a very strong will. He's sociable and energetic, and a Communications major. He is very mature for his age, and he is very much in tune with the "world's energies," to put it one way. He says he can feel in his gut that he is something special in a spiritual sense. He recalls times in his life where he made contact with some sort of spritiual "6th" sense. I am a notorious skeptic, very Apollonian in my view of things. He is a little more Dionysian, yet is neither religious nor superstitious. Still, he cannot deny there is something spiritual about himself that he has been aware of since childhood, and neither of us can deny that science cannot explain everything.

Now that his background is covered, my topic:

In a tarot card reading, which card should I use to represent him? I am torn between the Magician and the Hanged Man. The Magician seems obvious, as he's a natural communicator and seems receptive to the divine. However, his situation deeply reflects the Hanged Man; he purports that he feels he will die young, and feels spiritually close to the afterlife, or perhaps some post-mortal enlightenment. Therefore, the Hanged Man describes him well--he is "close to" Death, hanging in limbo between the physical and the spiritual, close to the cosmos, yet not quite within its grasp just yet.

I truly cannot decide. Any help?

ThusSpokeZarathustra said:

In a tarot card reading, which card should I use to represent him?

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Why should you choose a card ahead of time to represent him? Shuffle your deck and lay cards out in the spread you choose - his nature and situation will become apparent in the whole of the spread.

If you choose one card in advance and pull it out of the deck, who's to say that if it was left in it wouldn't have been the most important, pivotal card in the whole spread? But you're not letting it come out naturally.

And everyone could be represented by several cards long-term, nad even many cards per day depending on what is happening.

Just do the reading - don't bother with pulling out a card. It's unnecessary, and leaves you dealing the reading from an incomplete deck.

I agree with nisaba. I'm using the Motherpeace deck and the spread found in that book, which I find to work extremely well. You let the deck choose the significator. You just name the position you intend to use for the significator position and then whatever card is put there in the course of laying out the cards is the significator for the person for that day. I'm going to continue to use that method even if I change to another deck for awhile.

People are ever-changing, sometimes even within the 24 hours of a day, and letting the card determine the significator at the time of the reading is the most efficient way to do it, in my opinion.

Incidentally, I had that same feeling when I was young. I expected to die young and have always known I had a purpose that I was to fulfill here. Well---no cigar---I'll be 69 years old in November. No dying young for me. Not that I didn't foolishly flirt with death a great many times in my younger life, but I'm still here. I'm sure we all have some special things to do while we're here on earth, and I think most people are aware of it at some time or other.

My enneagram or whatever it's called is the same as Eleanor Roosevelt and Ghandi. I don't remember the letters of it now but I remember those two people being mentioned as sharing the whatever-it-is. I don't mean to be disrespectful of the theory, I just can't remember all about it.

If you are looking for a significator, I would go to the Courts. The Trumps are more archetypal and are not generally used as significators (or should not be, in my opinion). If you know his approximate age and sun sign (preferably date of birth), I can suggest a card.

I agree that letting the cards decide which card represents a person is usually how you do it. However, that leaves it entirely up to chance--I personally am someone who doesn't believe the cards hold much power. I like to pre-determine which card represents what person as a sort of focus, amd then see what connections can be made with other cards.

I don't particularly like using the Court Cards. Part of it is that my understanding of them is low, but another part is that I find them to be somewhat ill-defined and a little frustrating to use. My readings are not typical, as my intent doesn't match the typical reader's intent.

Hence why I ask: Which card, Magician or Hanged Man, do you think best suits my friend here?

I agree with the other posters statements, personally I do not use significators. But just for fun, while reading your post the Devil came to mind. I do not know this person, perhaps it was how you described him, or my mood . As a court, Knight of Cups. He is young and full of dreams. You know him and feel his energy, if a significator is needed choose one that you feel is right.

ThusSpokeZarathustra said:

I agree that letting the cards decide which card represents a person is usually how you do it. However, that leaves it entirely up to chance--I personally am someone who doesn't believe the cards hold much power.

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So ... if you don't trust a significator drawn by chance, how can you possibly trust more important cards talking about someone's life and situation to be drawn by chance?

And why do you even need one? I've been reading Tarot since the 1970s, and I've never needed to pick a card to represent the client. I just get on and *do* the reading.