The lines of your hand

Remember the college party scene with one popular guy sitting on his throne, with all his adoring female friends willingly offering their hands for palmistry readings? The guy patted their palms, studied the shape of their hands, twisted their fingers around, and then wormed out some of their most personal secrets!

There was a famous doctor in my family who always surreptitiously examined the palms of his patients as he treated them. His wife told me that after reading his own hand, he had bought two insurance policies on his own life, for his wife and minor son. This precaution saved them from financial ruin and indeed left them very comfortably off, when the doctor died very unexpectedly at an early age, as he has seen indicated on his hand.

Origins
Palmistry not only is a source of amusement and entertainment to some people but also a serious divinatory act to others. Allied to intuition, it has been practiced from ancient times by the Hindus, Egyptians, Mesopotamians and the Greeks. In the Middle Ages, it went via the Italians and the Arabs to Europe and England. Curiosity about the fate of man has existed through the times.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, medical palmistry came into its own as doctors examined the hands of dead and ill patients, findings similarities in the lines of their palms, their nails and the shapes of their hands. What separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom is our hands and the sense of touch. Besides our eyes, it is our hands which attract or repel others towards or away from us, as they reveal our inner most souls! What divides us from our cousins (the simians) is our brains, closely connected by our nervous systems to our hands. The thumb placed in a human hand is very different from that in a monkey's which is placed close to its fingers. The lines in a human hand are divided into the basic Head Line, the Heart Line, The Life Line, the Fate and Sun Lines etc. and also many minor lines. The monkey has usually one line straight across his palm.

Palmistry can be divided into:

1. The size, shape and colour of the hands in general up to the wrist.
2. The length and shape, the fingers and the phalanges as against the length of the palm.
3. The thumb, its phalanges where it is placed, its length, the shape and size.
4. The nails and their colour, feel and shape.
5. The lines - 14 main ones on the palm of the hand.
6. The mounds or elevations of the hand.