Significator

One of the Court Cards or Major Arcana chosen, A card chosen by the reader that will represent the querent in a reading.


Only add to, or discuss your views on the Signifcator...please

The card can also be chosen by horoscope, date of querent's birth or by the querent. The card is then shuffled and the deck split into 4 elemental piles,  The reading will or will not continue depending on which pile the significator is in. Also used in the Celtic Cross layout.

I have always wondered about the meaning of the Significator and the above two posts have not so far shed any light on my confusion.
Is a significator a card we choose manually and knowingly before a reading?
Why is the first card on the Celtic spread called Significator?
Can someone explain this to me in detail, please?

Many thanks.

The way I understood it is that in a celtic cross layout the significator is a random generation of the reading which is to give the reader/queriant a basic understanding of the queriant or the question.

In Thoth tarot as in some others the significator is a pre-determined card based on either the astrological, physical or general characteristics of the queriant.  the question is not determined first as in some readings.  the cards are shuffled and cut into four piles.  based on the location of the piles the question is based on money, love, work or bad luck.  

after cutting the cards and finding the pile which contains the significator the reading will either continue or not depending on the queriant's answer to whether this is what he/she wants to know about.

I have seen some use the pre-determined significator as the first card in the celtic cross, but no where do I see instructions to do so.

almost forgot, when using the significator in the thoth usage, the significator should be based knowledge of the person's attributes, not the physical characteristics whenever possible.  the four stacks are not reshuffled together to do the reading; the stack in which the significator is found is used for the reading.  the other cards are placed aside and not used.