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What is palmistry, and where did it come from?
Palmistry is the practice of reading character and divining the future from the lines and shape of the palm, also called chiromancy. Its origins are uncertain; it may have begun in ancient India, and it was later taken up in Greece, medieval Europe, and nineteenth-century France and America.
Facts checked on against 14 sources, 12 of them museum, university, archive, library, government or primary texts.
Key facts
Every line comes from a source listed at the bottom of the page. The small numbers point to it.
| Ancient period | Accounts place palmistry in ancient India and later in China, Tibet, Persia, Mesopotamia and Egypt, with significant development in ancient Greece.1 |
|---|---|
| Classical Greece | Greek figures such as Anaxagoras are named in accounts of the practice, and Aristotle is said to have found a treatise on palmistry on an altar to Hermes.23 |
| 1475 | Hartlieb's Die Kunst Ciromantia is printed at Augsburg, and is described as one of the earliest printed books on the subject.24 |
| 1651 | An English edition of a work attributed to Johannes ab Indagine, a translation of his Latin treatise Chiromantia, is printed in London.5 |
| 1685 | William Salmon's Polygraphice includes a palmistry chart plate of the right hand, engraved by Frederick Hendrick van Hove.6 |
| 1843 | Captain C. d'Arpentigny's first book on chirognomy appears, and his findings are later published under the title La Science de la Main.47 |
| 1895 | Henry Frith's Practical Palmistry describes the practice under the name chirosophy.8 |
What the practice is
Palmistry is the practice of reading character traits and divining the future by interpreting the lines and undulations on the palm of the hand. Its two main parts are chirognomy, the reading of character from the shape of the hand, and chiromancy, the foretelling of fortunes from the appearance of the hand.19
Writers also used other names for the same practice, including cheiromancy, chirosophy and hand reading, and the Greek roots of the word for hand and foretelling are cited in several accounts.2104
Claimed roots in India and Greece
Coleman's Mythology of the Hindoos is cited by one nineteenth-century author as describing a chakravarti wheel mark on the Buddha's foot and sages practising cheiromancy at the Buddha's birth, which the author takes to show the art was known earlier among Indians.10
Medieval and early modern development
Medieval physiologists linked palmistry with astrology and magical arts, assigned parts of the hand to planets, and held that the softness or dryness of the palm showed which of the four humors predominated. Medieval palmistry was also pressed into service by witch-hunters, who read pigmentation spots as signs of a pact with the Devil.91
Manuals of chiromancy circulated in manuscript from the fourteenth century and were printed in increasing numbers through the seventeenth century. After around 1600, following a papal bull denouncing chiromancy, some authors sought to explain it as wholly natural. Robert Fludd developed its astrological components, and Caspar Schott explained it in natural terms while rejecting astrological associations.11
By the end of the seventeenth century chiromancy had been discredited as an intellectual system. Scholars then stopped writing systematic expositions, and diviners continued to specialise in palmistry as a form of fortune-telling.11
Nineteenth-century revival
In the United States palmistry grew popular alongside séances, mediumship and the occult. Writers of the period tied it to racialised claims of white superiority, and advertisements for chiromancers promised, among other things, healing and reuniting lovers.12
What the tradition holds
How practitioners describe it, in their terms. Described, not endorsed.
Practitioners associate the lines and mounts of the palm with planets and deities. Palmists count seven muscular projections, known as mounts, each linked to a planet, and assign hand lines and mounts to Jupiter, Saturn, Apollo, Mercury, Venus, Mars and the Moon.9104
Classical palmistry, the most widely taught tradition, relates each area of the palm and fingers to a god or goddess, and the names of the principal lines are kept from the older tradition. Frith cites the Roman spectators' verdict at gladiatorial shows as an example of thumb symbolism, and says the palm may be divided into male and female portions.348
What the evidence shows
What historians, scientists and controlled tests have found.
The 1883 book Chiromancy, or The science of palmistry, by H. Frith and E.H. Allen, was published by George Routledge & Sons; a copy from the library of Oxford University is held by the Internet Archive.13
Early writers disagreed on the practice's standing. Dr. Saunders, writing in 1671, held that chiromancy could not subsist without astrology, while Baughan notes that many modern writers deny its link to astrology.1411
Desbarrolles' system held that the vital fluid enters the body through the fingers and marks the palm, and Desbarrolles labeled this physiological explanation as the basis of the practice, as set out in "The Practice of Palmistry for Professional Purposes".7
Worked out from the evidence
Not stated outright by any one source. It is worked out from the sources cited.
- Palmistry's claimed origins in India and Greece rest on a small number of later accounts, and the link between Romani people and fortune-telling is best understood as a belief or stereotype recorded by later writers rather than a documented fact of origin.194
- Palmistry's history shows a shift from a learned astrological and natural-philosophical system in the early modern period to a fortune-telling practice in later centuries, a change that later writers describe in different ways.11
Not yet confirmed
- Where and when did palm reading first take shape, and did the Indian and Greek accounts describe the same system?
- How did the medieval Christian treatment of palmistry, including the papal bull, shape its later separation from learned astrology?
- What links, if any, existed between early chiromancy manuals and the nineteenth-century fortune-telling practice?
Sources
Museums, universities, archives and primary texts first. Every fact is paraphrased and nothing is copied; Wikipedia is never cited.
- Encyclopaedia Britannica: Palmistry. Read on · Reference
- gutenberg.org: The Project Gutenberg eBook of Palmistry for all, by Cheiro.. Read on · Primary text
- crystalinks.com: Palmistry - Chiromancy - Crystalinks. Read on · Reference
- archive.org: Full text of "Practical palmistry; or, Hand reading simplified". Read on · Primary text
- archive.org: The book of palmestry and physiognomy. Read on · Primary text
- Science History Institute: Palmistry chart of the right hand. Read on · Museum
- archive.org: Full text of "The Practice of Palmistry for Professional Purposes". Read on · Primary text
- archive.org: Full text of "Practical palmistry : a treatise on chirosophy based upon actual experiences". Read on · Primary text
- gutenberg.org: What You Should Know About Palmistry | Project Gutenberg. Read on · Primary text
- gutenberg.org: Indian Palmistry by Mrs. J. B. Dale | Project Gutenberg. Read on · Primary text
- National Library of Medicine: The Palmistry Entertainment of Praetorius, 1661. Read on · University
- JSTOR Daily: In the palm of your hand. Read on · University
- Internet Archive: Chiromancy, or The science of palmistry. Read on · Primary text
- gutenberg.org: The influence of the stars : a book of old world lore by Rosa Baughan | Project Gutenberg. Read on · Primary text