Chirognomy

From the Lesson

D'Arpentigny's insight in 1839 was that the lines are the last thing to look at. The hand's architecture — its proportions, its mounts, its fingers, the set and strength of the thumb — states the temperament, and the lines only describe how that temperament has fared.

The Four Elemental Hands

Modern practice compresses d'Arpentigny's seven types into four elemental ones, judged by the ratio of palm to fingers and the character of the skin.

Earth Hand — square palm, short sturdy fingers, few and deep lines, firm coarse skin. Practical, grounded, physically capable, resistant to abstraction, loyal, slow to change and hard to move once moving.

Air Hand — square palm, long fingers, many fine clear lines, dry skin. Mental, verbal, curious, sociable, needing explanation before commitment, prone to living at one remove from the body.

Water Hand — long palm, long flexible fingers, many fine and often chained lines, soft moist skin. Emotional, receptive, imaginative, permeable to atmosphere and to other people, requiring solitude to recover.

Fire Hand — long palm, short fingers, strong clear lines, warm pink skin. Energetic, impulsive, enthusiastic, leading from instinct, quick to begin and needing structure to finish.

The Mounts and Their Planets

The mounts are the fleshy pads at the base of the fingers and around the palm, and they carry the planetary inheritance from the Indian and Renaissance systems. Judge each for development, position, and whether it is displaced toward a neighbour.

Jupiter (beneath the index) — ambition, leadership, faith, appetite for scale. Overdeveloped: pride and excess. Saturn (beneath the middle) — discipline, solitude, patience, gravity. Overdeveloped: melancholy and rigidity. Apollo or Sun (beneath the ring) — art, display, warmth, desire for recognition. Overdeveloped: vanity. Mercury (beneath the little finger) — speech, commerce, wit, dexterity, healing. Overdeveloped: cunning. Venus (the ball of the thumb) — vitality, sensuality, affection, music, physical warmth. Flat and thin: a cool and abstemious nature. Luna (the outer palm below Mercury) — imagination, dream life, receptivity, restlessness, affinity with water and travel. Mars — held in two zones, the active inner Mars above the thumb (physical courage) and the passive outer Mars on the percussion (endurance and resistance).

The tradition then reads the highest mount as the dominant note of the character and the displacement of a mount toward its neighbour as a blending of the two.

The Fingers

Each finger is read for its length against the palm, its straightness, the relative length of its three phalanges, and its set on the hand. Long fingers indicate attention to detail and process; short fingers, grasp of the whole and impatience with process. The upper phalange governs the mental and spiritual, the middle the practical, the lower the material and appetitive; the longest phalange states where the person's energy actually lives. Knotted joints indicate an analytical temperament; smooth conic fingers, an intuitive one. A low-set little finger is the classical mark of early difficulty in being heard.

The Thumb

The thumb is the most information-dense part of the hand and the most often neglected. Its lower section is Venus and vitality; its middle phalange is logic and reason; its tip is will. A long, firm, well-formed thumb indicates governance of the self; a short or weak thumb, a life driven by temperament rather than decision. A thumb held tightly against the hand indicates guardedness and thrift; one that opens wide, generosity and risk tolerance. A thumb that bends backward at the joint — the "supple" thumb — indicates adaptability and extravagance; a stiff, straight thumb, stubbornness and reliability.

Skin, Nails, Temperature, and Flexibility

The living qualities of the hand register the present state rather than the lifelong pattern, which makes them the timing layer of the art, exactly as complexion is in Chinese face reading. Fine skin indicates refinement and sensitivity; coarse skin, robustness. A hot moist hand indicates an active metabolism and often anxiety; a cold hand, low circulation and a withdrawn present state. A hand that is flexible indicates a mind that adapts; one that resists opening, a mind that has set. Nails are read for shape, ridging, colour, and the moons, and here the honest practitioner speaks of constitution and defers to physicians.