Palmistry

The Blessed, by Caravaggio (1594-1495; Canvas; Louvre), illustrates a reading of hands.

The Blessed by Enrique Simonet (1899).

The palmistry, palmistry, chirology or, in popular culture, palm reading, it is the attempt of divination through the reading of the lines of the hand. The term derives from the Greek χείρ or χειρός (kheír or kheirós), 'hand', and μαντεία (butter), 'divination'. It focuses on the study of the lines and hills found on the palms of the hands that, through observation, supposedly reveal the psychological and physiological profile of a person. Although it is usually closely linked to divination and the occult sciences, there has always been a certain popular acceptance. The practice is found throughout the world, with numerous cultural variations. Commonly, it is called reading the hand or reading the hands, although it is also known as casting, reading or tell fortune telling. Those who practice it are generally called palmists, palm readers, hand analysts, or chirologists.

There are various—often conflicting—interpretations of lines and features across the various schools of palmists. These contradictions between different interpretations, as well as the lack of empirical support for the predictions, contribute to scientifically considering it a pseudoscience where cold reading techniques have historically been used.

Scientific hypothesis

For some decades now, the scientific community has corroborated the existence of various chemical relationships between unconnected genes, thus linking different phenotypic characters. Palmists defend in this way the relationship that could exist between the grooves and folds of the palms of the hands with numerous physical and psychological features, thus being able to study the psychological profile of a person through palm reading. However, the defenders of this hypothesis do not present any relationship study between the genes that determine the lines of the hand, currently unknown, and those that determine other traits.

History

A Hand Reading Cab in Japan

Antiquity

Palmistry is a common practice in many different places in Eurasia; it has been practiced in the cultures of India, Nepal, Tibet, China, Persia, Sumer, historic Palestine, and Babylonia.

Acupuncturist Yoshiaki Omura describes his roots in Hindu astrology (known in Sanskrit as jyotish), Chinese Yijing (I Ching), and fortune tellers from Rome. Several thousand years ago, the Hindu sage Valmiki was thought to have written a book comprising 567 stanzas, the title of which translates as Valmiki Maharshi's Teachings on Male Palmistry. From India, the art of palmistry spread to China, Tibet, Egypt, Persia, and other European countries. From this region, palmistry advanced to Greece, where Anaxagoras practiced it. Aristotle (384-322 BC), discovered a treatise on the subject on an altar of Hermes, later presented to Alexander the Great (356-323 BC), who was keen to examine the character of his officers, by analyzing the lines of the hands.

During the Middle Ages the art of palm reading was actively suppressed by the Catholic Church as a pagan superstition. In the renaissance of magic, palmistry was classified as one of the seven "forbidden arts", along with necromancy, geomancy, aeromancy, pyromancy, hydromancy, and spatulamancy (scapulimancy).

Modernity

Palmistry has experienced a renaissance in the modern era, beginning with the publication of La Chirognomie dCaptain Casimir Stanislas D'Arpentigny in 1839.

The Palmistry Society of Great Britain was founded in London by Katharine San Hill in 1889 with the stated aim of promoting and systematizing the art and to prevent quacks from abusing the technique. Edgar de Valcourt-Vermont (Comte de St Germain) founded the American Palmistry Society in 1897.

A pivotal figure in the modern palmistry movement was the Irishman William John Warner, known by his stage name, Cheiro. After studying with the gurus of India, he practiced palmistry in London and enjoyed a long list of famous clients from around the world, including the likes of Mark Twain, W.T. Stead, Sarah Bernhardt, Mata Hari, Oscar Wilde, Grover Cleveland, Thomas Edison, the Prince of Wales, General Kitchener, William Ewart Gladstone, and Joseph Chamberlain. So popular was Cheiro as a "society palmist" that even those who were not believers in the occult let him read their palms. Skeptic Mark Twain wrote in the guest book that Cheiro had "[...] exposed my personality with humiliating accuracy."

Edward Heron-Allen, an English polymath, published several works, including the 1883 book Palmistry - A Manual of Cheirosophy, which is still in print. There were attempts to formulate some kind of scientific basis for art, more specifically in the year 1900, in the publication The Scientific Laws of Palm Reading by William G. Benham.

Divination

Lines of the hand: 1) Line of life; 2) Line of the head; 3) Line of the heart; 4) Ring of Venus; 5) Line of the Sun; 6) Line of Mercury; 7) Line of luck.

It is often said that in the hands you can know the destiny of a person and guess past, present and future events.

Palmistry is the practice of assessing a person's character or future by "reading" the palm of the hand. Various "lines" and "mountains" to which interpretations are supposedly suggested by their relative size, qualities, and intersections. In some traditions, readers also examine the characteristics of the fingers, nails, fingerprints, and skin patterns (dermatoglyphics), skin texture, color, palm shape, and hand flexibility.

A reader begins by reading the dominant hand (the one he or she writes with or uses mostly, which is sometimes thought to represent the conscious mind, while the other side is the subconscious) of the person. In some traditions, the other hand is believed to carry hereditary or familial traits, or, depending on the palmist's cosmological beliefs, convey information about "past lives" or "karmic" conditions.

The lines of the hand

Big lines of the hand

There are 3 major lines and numerous minor lines that do not always appear in their entirety.

The Palmists

Once, palmistry was a pagan rite, like all divination rites. Those who practiced it were accused of witchcraft and persecuted by the Inquisition.

Currently, the practice of palmistry, or chirology in general, is usually accompanied by tarot reading and other esoteric practices. You can find palmists with private practices and high prices for the study of the hand, as well as palmists installed in downtown areas of cities with a large influx of pedestrians who practice palmistry and other esoteric arts in exchange for payment by the client.

Hand Shapes

The mountains in the quiromancy: Jupiter, Saturn, Apollo, Mercury, Positive Mars, Negative Mars, Mars Plain of Mars, Mount of the Moon, Mount Neptune and Mount Venus.

Depending on the type of palmistry practiced, and the type of reading being performed, palmists can see the various qualities of the hand, including shapes and lines of the palm and fingers; color and texture of the skin and nails; relative size of palm and fingers; prominence of the knuckles and various other attributes of the hands.

In most schools of palmistry, the shape of the hands is divided into four or eleven main types, sometimes corresponding to the classical elements or temperaments. The shape is believed to be indicative of character traits that correspond to the indicated type (ie, a "hand of fire" exhibits high energy, creativity, genius, ambition, and all the qualities believed to be related to that element).

Despite the variations, the most common classifications used by palmists are:

• The earth: are usually identified by the breadth of the palm and fingers, thickness or thick of the skin and reddish color. The length of the palm from the wrist to the bottom of the fingers is generally equal to the length of the fingers.
• The air: are square or rectangular palms with long fingers and sometimes outstanding knuckles, low thumb and often dry skin. The length of the palm from the wrist to the bottom of the fingers is generally equal to the length of the fingers.
• The water: are notable for the length of the palm, sometimes oval, with long, flexible and conical fingers. The length of the palm from the wrist to the bottom of the fingers is generally less than the width in the wider part of the palm, and usually equal to the length of the fingers.
• The fire: are characterized by square or rectangular palms, redness or pink skin and shorter fingers. The length of the palm from the wrist to the bottom of the fingers is generally greater than the length of the fingers.

The number and quality of the lines can also be included in the analysis of the shape of the hand; in some palmistry traditions, Earth and Water hands tend to have fewer deep lines, while Air and Fire hands are more likely to show less defined lines.

Criticism

Palmistry is not considered a science by the scientific community as it does not meet the basic requirements of the scientific method. That is, it has not passed the necessary tests to be considered scientifically acceptable. There is little research that accepts verification of the accuracy of palmistry as a system of analysis, and much of it has been carried out by palmists themselves. On the other hand, the magician and skeptic James Randi offers a prize of one million dollars to anyone who manages to conclusively demonstrate the existence of a phenomenon or paranormal powers -including the type of events such as those that palmistry deals with- but the prize is desert since it was offered.