Author: Edwin

There are many—often conflicting—interpretations of various lines and palmar features across various schools of palmistry. These contradictions between different interpretations, as well as the lack of empirical support for palmistry’s predictions, contribute to palmistry’s perception as a pseudoscience among academics. Chiromancy consists of the practice of evaluating a person’s character or future life by “reading” the palm of that person’s hand. Various “lines” (“heart line”, “life line”, etc.) and “mounts” (or bumps) (chirognomy) purportedly suggest interpretations by their relative sizes, qualities, and intersections. In some traditions, readers also examine characteristics of the fingers, fingernails, fingerprints, and palmar skin patterns (dermatoglyphics), skin texture and color, shape of the palm, and flexibility of the hand. A reader usually begins by reading the person’s dominant hand (the hand he or she writes with or uses the most, which is sometimes considered to represent the conscious mind, whereas the other hand is subconscious). Depending on the type of palmistry practiced, and the type of reading being performed, palmists may look at various qualities of the hand, including the shapes and lines of the palm and fingers; the color and texture of the skin and fingernails; the relative sizes of the palm and fingers; the prominence of the knuckles; and numerous other attributes of the hands. In most schools of palmistry, hand shapes are divided into four or eleven major types, sometimes corresponding to...