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Palmistry is said to have dated as far back as India, more than a thousand years BC. Palmistry was a well-accepted practice in Ancient Rome and was part of Julius Caesar’s court policy. Palmistry has held wide fascination with scholars, beginning with Aristotle, whose interests in medicine and philosophical subjects included Palmistry. However, in the middle ages, the Catholic Church considered any type of divination to be in league with the devil, so the practice of palmistry was forbidden under penalty of death.
However, by the 1800s Palmistry was adopted as part of early medical school curriculums as it was believed that illness could be diagnosed by looking at several parts of anatomy, most notably the face and the palm of the hand. This tradition is carried out today by some in the medical field known as anatomists, who strongly base their diagnosis on inspection of parts of a person’s anatomy. According to Linda Domin, in her book PalmaScope The Instant Palm Reader, it was a physician who is credited as being the modern author of palmistry. Dr. Charlotte Wolff is the modern author of palmistry, as she categorized approximately 90,000 hands during her career(3). During the 20th century palmistry experienced a revival as part of the “bohemian” movement in Europe, which spread to the United States. Now in modern times, you can hardly see a sign for a psychic that does not have a hand as a universal logo for fortune telling.
Palmistry is an art of divination based on the premise that our life experience is etched our hands, which do much of our life’s activity. As these life events are etched in skin, not stone, it is said that one’s palm changes during a lifetime, therefore a palm reading could vary over time. Palmistry is said to have the ability to diagnose how a person lives, loves and thinks according to the three most basic lines: the heart line, the head line, and the life line.
To find these lines, looking at your prominent hand (the one you write with) notice the top prominent line that is drawn upon your palm. This is known as your heart line. This tells about your capacity and style of loving. Heart lines can be solid (showing loyalty and commitment) faint (showing fear of getting involved or a tendency to flirt) or broken (showing a broken romance that deeply affected the person).
The next line from the top is your headline. This tells about your intellectual concerns and capacities. A thick, short head line means that your thoughts are heavily concerned with the physical, practical world. Conversly, a long faint line means that you enjoy high minded intellectual abstract topics and have an active imagination. A broken head line means that may have a tendency to not stick with a subject or plan and indicates a short attention span.
The next line down, which may extend all the way down to the wrist, is the lifeline. This is the line that is depicted in most fortune telling readings by Gypsies. The standard media formula is a carnival scene where the client recoils in horror after the gypsy tells him his lifeline is short and he will soon die. This is far removed from actual palmistry. In actuality a short or faint lifeline indicates that a person has not begun to live life to the fullest or that he or she is withdrawn and not fully experiencing all life has to offer. A thick line would indicate a person who fully welcomes all the good and bad experiences life has to offer with courage and vigor. A line with chains or short “sister” lines means a person has lived many different lives in one and has “started over” at least once.
Other lines on the palm cover a variety of topics, from marriage to travel. In addition to the lines, the mounds on the palm represent conditions of human existence. These can be found by looking directly below the fingers at the “pads’ right above the prominent lines. The line below the pinky is Mercury, representing speed and a quick mind, below the ring finger lines Apollo, representing power and fertility, under the middle finger lines Saturn, representing intuition and the mysterious forces, under the index finger lies Jupiter, which indicates direction and destiny. Underneath these mounds lies the plain of Mars, which stands for courage.
As there are so many types of lines and mounds and variations within each category, it is no wonder that Dr. Wolff could categorize those thousands of palms! Palmistry is still practiced today, from the traditional carnival booth to therapists who incorporate palm reading into their practice. There are also those who read palms long distance by having the client scan or copy their palm print to obtain a reading. It would appear that the art of palmistry is a long-standing tool for divination spanning a wide variety of cultures.
Work Cited
Domin, Linda. PalmaScope The Instant Palm Reader
St. Paul, MN. Llewellyn Publications, 1989
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