All about palmistry and planets

In the Western world, if you tell people you’re an astrologer, they’ll say, “Can you guess my Sun sign?” In India, they’ll more likely offer their palms for comment. So what’s going on between these two cultures and why are their perspectives so different?

Contrasting perspectives

The West likes to separate things and categorise them, while the East likes to embrace things and find relationships. For a Westerner, astrology is astronomy applied to the affairs of man. An astrological chart is a snapshot of where all the planets were — above and below the horizon — at the minute and place of your birth. The sign in which the sun is located within that snapshot is just one of many other factors in the birth chart.

For residents of the Indian subcontinent and its largely Hindu culture, astrology is a pre-eminent tool in the hands of a seer whose considerable toolkit also includes palmistry, facial diagnosis, body markings, Ayurveda, omens, sounds, numerology and myth.

If you tell an Indian you’re an astrologer, it’s the equivalent of saying you’re a seer. They expect you to have received from your guru a well-rounded education in all the ways and means by which a seer could “read” an individual. To say you can’t read palms would be like a western doctor admitting he didn’t know how to provide a basic physical examination.

Western astrology

Astrologers in the West don’t have a strong palmistry tradition, but many of them do practise tarot and I Ching (both forms of omenology), as well as numerology. This is a good thing, even if only because it helps the consultant to become more than just a “one-trick pony” and thus allows a second perspective that can inform the consultant’s counsel or prediction.

Palmistry has long been associated with Gypsies and it’s generally accepted by historians that they carried it from India to Europe. Because of the deep and intertwined roots of both astrology and palmistry in the Vedas — the sacred scriptures of Indian Vedic culture — palmistry is intimately infused with astrological concepts, the knowledge of which can provide the trained consultant in recognising patterns in the karma the overall sheath of cause and effect that envelops the life.

Vedic astrology

Jyotish, or Vedic astrology, is a vedanga, one of the six ancillary limbs of the Vedas. Jyotish means “science of light”. It simultaneously implies both the light of the planets as seen against the starry background of the sky and the inner light demanded of the seer to make sense of the patterns seen in those planets and stars, to interpret them in light of human affairs.

Jyotish is in turn divided into several aspects: observational astronomy, celestial geometry, natal (birth) astrology, horary (Q&A) astrology, elective (planning) astrology, and omens, or nimitta.

Nimitta itself is further divided into another eight types, one of which is anga, or the analysis of limbs, of which the hands are the most unique and individual. Palmistry itself is called hasta samudrika shastra, which can be loosely interpreted as the knowledge of “the ocean of signs and symbols found in the hand”.

Physical features of the hand

A palmist approaches his or her subject in stages, moving from the gross to the subtle. With palmistry, one begins to analyse hands from across the room via the shape of palm and length of fingers. As we come closer and touch the hand, we note skin texture, temperature, moisture, colour and flexibility. We can then examine the palm itself for the length and shape of major and minor lines and look closer still to study the nails and fingerprints.

The major elements of the hand are associated with astrology’s main players — the planets that move across the zodiac in a unique passion play reflecting the life of man. In classical astrology, these are the Sun and Moon, the so-called luminaries, as well as the five visible planets — Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Although telescopes of one kind or another have progressively revealed the presence of outer planets — Uranus, Neptune and Pluto — not to mention thousands of asteroids in our solar system, these do not play a role in classical astrology or palmistry.

A quick glance at the hand schematic shown here reveals how the major elements of the hand, that are in turn associated with the seven visible celestial bodies, are mapped out.

Mount of Venus

My first encounter with palmistry occurred around age 15 when I read Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale. In one scene, James Bond examines the hand of a woman he’d met, palpating her Mount of Venus to assess her sexual vigour. From that point, I was definitely intrigued and it was thereafter an open question as to whether I’d become a spy or a palmist. Luckily for the world of international espionage, I chose the path I did, but I’m still as interested as ever in checking out the Mount of Venus. Indeed, basic palmistry protocol suggests you should start with the thumb, indisputably the most important digit on the hand.

Sir Isaac Newton was reputed to have remarked, “In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God’s existence”. The function of the thumb, as opposing digit to the four others, gives it a unique and remarkable role in the hands of all primates, allowing the use of tools, without which mankind could never have evolved to such a degree.

The Mount of Venus is located in the large muscle within the palm at the base of the thumb. Its limits are defined by the Lifeline, which curves around that quadrant of the palm. As James Bond understood, it is indeed a measure of vitality, both in the literal sense of bodily vigour, but equally so in the sense of a vital personality, or a life of vitality.

In astrology, Venus rules the signs of Taurus and Libra, which are associated respectively with the physical comforts of life such as money, food, clothing and all ornamentation, but also the less tangible comforts of life in the form of family, personal and social relationships. In Sanskrit, Venus is called Shukra, which sounds remarkably like sucre — French for “sugar”. Just as a sweetener in food delights the tastebuds, the gifts of Venus similarly reward an ordinary existence with pleasure, whether aesthetic or visceral.

Thus, the Mount of Venus is a rough-and-ready measure of the individual’s capacity to implement the principle of carpe diem — to seize the day and, by implication, the things that make us happy. A strong and fleshy Mount implies primal and psychological energy and the drive or passion to put it to work. Further along the thumb, the middle phalange represents logic, organisation and planning, while the uppermost phalange of the thumb indicates the willpower to execute those plans.