covenrochester | Entries tagged with palmistry

I was intent on checking a hand for travel and journeys when I immediately noticed that the hand had a somewhat uncommon diamond shape. I had seen it in textbooks, but I had never held one in real life. Where the quadrant of the hand for the Jupiter mount is raised up, and the quadrant of the hand for the Moon mount is sunk. It is very noticeable in person, and I hope I have captured it in the photograph and diagram. I lost my interest in the travel question at once, for here is a point where hand analysis can really help someone in life.

I told the woman that this shape of her hand indicated to me that she must always have a goal in mind, something to aim for, an ambition. "You probably hate the exercise where you have to think about where you will be in 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, etc., don't you?" She confirmed that she did. I told her it was absolutely essential for her to always to be aiming for something, even something minor or in the short-term because, when she did not, she would automatically sink into making irrational choices. These are the two balance pans in your hand, and you must do your best to keep yourself weighted here (pointing to Jupiter). You, more than most people, must keep in mind the quotation of Seneca the Younger: Ignoranti quem portum petat, nullus suus ventus est. "If you do not know the port to which you are sailing, no wind is favorable." Or, less literally, if you do not know where you are headed, all directions are wrong. This is not to say that she should never "cut loose" and enjoy herself. She should. But she should do it consciously, and not by default. It should be a break, a vacation, and not a lifestyle. I told her how marvelous it was that Nature had so shaped her hand, as a reminder to her to what she needed to do to be successful and happy.

What did she say? "What you have said . . . I have felt that way my entire life. When I am focused on getting something done, my life goes so smoothly. When I don't, I make bad decisions and everything falls apart. I feel like I've learned so much about myself in just the last five minutes."

It is important for each of us to have goals, naturally. But this hand shape goes beyond that generality. We all feel adrift, sometimes, without a goal or something to aim for, but we are not likely to drift into irrationality. This hand, however, will.

Another feature: it is a Water hand. Perhaps that can't be seen, exactly, in the photograph. I measured, though, so I am sure.

. . . but if you are serious about what you read and want to be efficient with your time, you have to read people who not only have book-knowledge, but practical experience and tested worth. I was reminded of this yesterday when I was looking for a book on palmistry on Amazon. You would not believe how many books there are on palmistry BY PEOPLE WHO HAVE NEVER PRACTICED PALMISTRY. Such books are merely summaries of other past books. I really had to dig a bit into the biographies of various authors before finally choosing a book (BTW, I picked KNOW THYSELF by Luke Sheedy).

One can learn palmistry a little bit at a time and still get great results, even with stealth observation of people's hands at a close-to-moderate distance. You will be able to observe---mostly---the shape of the hands, the shape of the fingertips, the texture of the skin, the openness of the fingers, the angle of the thumb, perhaps the comparative length of the thumb's two phalanges, and maybe the flexibility of the hand. And just these few things can tell you a great deal about a person.

I once sat across from an attorney signing documents. After observing his hands for 30-60 seconds, I said, "Mr. X, I have some knowledge of palmistry, and you have an engineer's hands. What are you doing in the law? Why aren't you building bridges or commercial buildings, or renovating houses?" He laughed and admitted that he entered college with a major in mechanical engineering, but he was not so great at the mathematics, so he switched to pre-law. Still, in his free time, he liked to build things and even had done all of his own house additions and renovations. I made my statement based on his spatulate fingertips, his grainy skin texture, and his fire-shaped hand (rectangular palm, short fingers). You won't always be 100% on the mark (just as I wasn't in this example), but you will usually be able to make relevant comments. In this instance, one would want to look at the hands in detail to see why he chose law. It would undoubtedly be marked in the Jupiter/Saturn or Jupiter/Mercury mounts. This is also the kind of hand that would like camping and fishing.

A Fire Hand will always be active, but the skin texture will tell you in what arena of life. The coarser the skin texture, the more physical the arena of life. Fire Hand + Paper Texture: Very active, but intellectually, not physically. A great reader of books. Not camping, not fishing.

I once stood in line at the sandwich counter with a man whose hands I was able to observe. Air Hand + Papery Texture + Conic Fingertips. I used my usual opener, "Sir, I have some knowledge of palmistry and, having caught a glimpse of your hands, I can't decide if you are an accountant or an architect . . . it is something precise with numbers but with an artistic angle. What is it?" He was the chief financial officer . . . for a large museum. :D

Velma the Seer was a talented palmist and crystal gazer who was based in London in early 1900s. He read the hands of many famous people of his day, including the last Czar of Russia, Nicholas, whose assassination he predicted; the former Queen Mother, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, to whom he predicted that she would give birth to a daughter who would be beloved around the world (that daughter was the recently-deceased Queen Elizabeth of the House of Windsor); King Edward VIII, whose abdication he predicted. Velma wrote a book in 1929, My Mysteries and My Story, in which he gives rudimentary information about his arts, a lot of interesting stories from his life of palmistry and crystal gazing, but very little else in the way of biographical information. There is no biographical information about him available on the internet. And I found no photographs. Here are two photographs of him from his own book:

MEDITATION

ABSOLUTE CONCENTRATION

Judging from his accounts, it seems that Velma would first read his subject's hand for some information. And then, if the subject desired further particulars, Velma would consult the crystal. It seems to me that he was a much better clairvoyant than palmist. His instruction on palmistry in the book is slight, and not terribly sound.

Of interest is that, after he read the Queen Mother's palm (back in the days before she had children, when she was still the Duchess of York), he sat down and drew the main lines of her hand from memory. He reproduces the drawing in the book. I was not very impressed by his interpretation, though. What I would have commented on, myself:

1. Spatulate hand: boundless energy, must always keep busy.
2. Long, Deep Life Line: excellent vitality, long life.
3. Fate Line arising from within the deep curve of the Life Line: Her fate would always be bound up with the fate of her family.
4. A ram-rod straight Head Line, ending on the Outer Mount of Mars: a clear thinker and reasoner, even in the face of danger or scandal.
5. A ram-rod straight Heart Line, extending across the palm: a lover of people, in general, but not emotional or sentimental toward individual people.
6. The Line of Influence from the Mount of Venus crosses the Life Life as it heads to the Mount of Mercury: Where the line crosses the Life Line, it shows the age at which she would marry: around 22 or 23 years old.

I would read more, naturally, but the above are the only lines that Velma reproduces in his drawing.

*** Blessed be to those who serve the Great Mother and the Horned Father.

* Copyright to Coven Rochester

There is a way to classify a hand according to one of the four elements: Fire, Air, Water, and Earth, based on the length and breadth of the palm, and the length of the fingers. The definitions are as follows:

EARTH: Square Palm, Short Fingers
AIR: Square Palm, Long Fingers
FIRE: Rectangular Palm, Short Fingers
WATER: Rectangular Palm, Long Fingers

Most palmistry books seem to take it for granted that the palmist will be able to determine squareness/rectangularness and shortness/longness at a glance. I do not think that is true for beginners, though. Moreover, if you know the Wisdom Traditions, you will have been instructed that the Eye is the Great Slanderer and can rarely be trusted to estimate things accurately unless after long, mistake-filled experience. The solution? Measure.

You will need four figures. See the above illustration. I use a metric ruler marked off in centimeters and millimeters because I think it is more accurate and it makes the simple math easier.

FL: FINGER LENGTH: Measure from the top of the middle finger down to its base, where it meets the palm.

PL: PALM LENGTH: Measure from where the middle finger meets the palm down to the first line at the bottom of the wrist (called by palmists a bracelet or a rascette).

PB: PALM BREADTH: Measure across the palm horizontally. It is the black line in the diagram above. I think it is marked a little too high in the hand there. The measurement should be taken just a little above the thumb and across the palm horizontally.

There are only three measurements marked on our diagram. You will need a fourth:

HL: HAND LENGTH: This is FL + PL, FINGER LENGTH + PALM LENGTH.

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SQUARE OR RECTANGULAR PALM?

Take the measures for PL and PB, and divide the smaller figure by the larger figure to get a percentage value. If the percentage value is 90% or above, you have a SQUARE PALM. If the percentage value is below 90%, you have a RECTANGULAR PALM.

EXAMPLES:

PERSON A: PL = 63 mm. PB = 57 mm. 57/63 = 90.4% This person has a SQUARE PALM.

PERSON B: PL = 120 mm. PB = 93 mm 93/120 = 77.5%. This person has a RECTANGULAR PALM.

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LONG OR SHORT FINGERS?

Take the measures for HL and FL and divide the smaller figure by the larger figure to get a percentage value.

VERY LONG: 45% and above
LONG: 44% to 45%
MEDIUM/AVERAGE: 43% to 44%
SHORT: 41% to 43%
VERY SHORT: 41% and under

Examples: Same people used as above.

PERSON A: FL + PL = HL: 57mm + 64mm = 121mm. FL/HL = 57/121 = 47.1% This person has VERY LONG fingers.

PERSON B: FL + PL = HL: 88mm + 120mm = 208mm. FL/HL = 88/208 = 42.3% This person has SHORT fingers.

If the person is in the MEDIUM/AVERAGE CATEGORY above, he or she may be a combination of TWO elements.

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PERSON A therefore has a SQUARE PALM and LONG FINGERS. He has an AIR HAND.

PERSON B therefore has a REGCTANGULAR PALM and SHORT FINGERS. He has a FIRE HAND.

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Here are some descriptive meanings for each type of hand.

EARTH: Square Palm, Short Fingers: slow, careful, deliberate, practical, dislikes change, likes to stick to one thing at a time, likes nature and the countryside, emotionally stable.

AIR: Square Palm, Long Fingers: mentally alert, curious, likes to learn, very good at talking or writing, emotionally well-balanced and does not get upset easily, likes finding out how things work or are put together, cheerful and happy although they themselves sometimes think they are unstable.

FIRE: Rectangular Palm, Short Fingers: active, busy, runs around doing things, always on the go, excitable, emotional, tries to influence people or control situations.

WATER: Rectangular Palm, Long Fingers: gentle, refined, peaceable, graceful, sensitive, tasteful, emotions more important than reason, influenced by people and circumstances.

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CAUTIONARY NOTE: These measurements and correspondences and meanings are extremely reliable in palmistry for character delineation. THEY ARE, HOWEVER, VERY GENERAL, and can be modified greatly by many other features of the palm. The Four Elements measure gives us only a VERY BROAD STARTING POINT. An analogy is to think of the person in front of you as a fabric. Is the person made of silk (WATER), cotton (AIR), leather (FIRE), or denim (EARTH)? This measurement will tell you.

But you must look to other features of the palm to determine how the fabric is cut (is it a shapeless bolt? a shirt? a miniskirt? an evening gown? a tailored jacket? a pair of slippers? a lacy veil?), how it is holding up (brand new? gently worn? torn? thread-bare?), how it is cared for (washed regularly? stained? holes patched? held together with tape or paperclips?), and so on.

Indeed, to palmists, different hands have these different tones to them. This woman's hand may be like a pristine silk evening gown, that man's hand may be akin to a tattered leather jacket, another woman's hand is a denim mini-skirt, another man's hand is a professor's patched tweed jacket, etc.

*** Blessed be to those who serve the Great Mother and the Horned Father.

* Copyright to Coven Rochester

"To those who toil in slavery,
"To those who writhe in pain, diseased,
"I'll teach the arts you taught to me,
"Their torments to allay:"

"To heal, to curse, to hide, to find,
"To calm, to rouse, to loose, to bind,
"TO READ THE HANDS and stars for signs.
"These magics I will teach."

And so the plan devised was done.
The child begat of Moon and Sun
Was born on Earth to live, become
Diana's messenger.

(Aradia, the First Witch, to her mother, the Goddess Diana,
From a poetic version of The Gospel of the Witches [emphasis supplied])

The art of reading hands is one of the traditional disciplines granted to Witches in our literature. It is mentioned specifically in the Gospel of the Witches, for instance.

It is a difficult, rule-based discipline, and it usually takes a long time to master. It's like tennis or horary astrology: the more you engage in it, the better you get at it. Most often it is done by an apprentice personally studying under a practicing palmist. The best astrologers learn that way too -- mouth to ear.

Διὸς δ’ ἐτελείετο βουλή -- and so the Will of Zeus moves to fulfillment. :D

A Long Top Thumb Phalange

Top and Bottom Thumb Phalanges of Equal Length

But palmistry does not have to be learned all-of-a-lump. There are some things that can be discerned in piecemeal fashion.

For instance, we know that two phalanges of the typical thumb should proportionally average 40% for the top phalange, and 60% for the bottom phalange. Palmists have known this for decades, of course, and perhaps centuries, by observation (see, for instance, The Practice of Palmistry for Professional Purposes by Comte C. de Saint-Germain [1897], where the author notes the proportions of 2/5 and 3/5 for the sections of the thumb). But, in more recent years, measurement studies of the hand have been undertaken by scientists, surgeons, and biomechanics experts, to benefit patients undergoing metacarpal and finger reconstructive surgery. And those studies generally confirm the 40%-60% proportion.

Above we have two photos of a young woman's thumb. I saw the top photograph first. On the whole, it is a good strong thumb, but I thought that top phalange looked too long at the expense of the bottom phalange.

I therefore searched for an image I could actually measure and came upon the second photograph. Although that second photo is small here, I enlarged it so I could measure it. The proportion of the phalanages is at 50% to 50%. So, my initial observations were correct. The top phalange is too large, at the expense of the bottom phalange.

The interpretation? This is a very willful and stubborn person. The advancement of her own ideas or plans is more important to her than logic. It will be difficult to reason with her. There are other indications of this in her hand: the gap between the first and second fingers (the fingers of Jupiter and Saturn) shows independence of thought. Her thumb is held close to her hand, indicating reserve and being closed off. Her head line is not particularly strong or long, giving her an average mentality at best. The deepest part of the heart line ends under the Saturn finger, which will doubtless bring her trouble in relating with people on a personal level. The palm is square in shape, so she is more of a doer than a thinker. Her fingers are relatively short compared to the palm, and that will give her quickness of action, but no mind for detail. This, therefore, is an "Earth hand." It shows no aptitude for science or law.

The old palmists say that the palms are the visible part of the brain. I think it is very likely true. If a person tells you one thing, but you see another thing in the palm, I would be more inclined to believe the palm.

The Left Hand of a Female Politician

For instance, this is the left hand of a female politician who has spent her whole career telling people how much she cares about them. There are, however, shocking discrepancies in the hand. An overlarge Jupiter finger, a well set but too short Mercury finger, a head line sloping to the Mount of Luna. I would not believe a single word that came out of this politician's mouth. She loves power and will lie both to herself and to others to have it. She is neither imaginative in a creative sense, nor particularly loving or passionate in a humanitarian sense.

*** Blessed be to those who serve the Great Mother and the Horned Father.

* Copyright to Coven Rochester