Palmistry

Also called chiromancy or chirosophy, palmistry, or palm reading, is a form of divination by which a person’s fortune and character supposedly are discerned by looking at the naturally occurring lines, marks, rises, and indentations in the palm of the hand. Palm readers rely on a wide variety of books that explain the significance of these features. These references give various features in the palm names depending on their purpose. For example, the “life line” is believed to tell how long a person will live, the “head line” reflects on a person’s intellect, and the “heart line” relates to a person’s emotions and love life. Scholars disagree on where palmistry originated, but most think that it began in ancient India and then spread, also during ancient times, to China, Tibet, Persia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Greece. Much later, palm reading came to be used for more than just divination. In Europe during the Middle Ages, some people used palmistry to identify witches, believing that an individual’s evil activities could be “read” in the hand, and any dark spots in the hand indicated its owner had a pact with the devil. Indeed, it was around this same time that palmistry and other forms of divination began to be associated with witchcraft and the devil. Today, some people continue to associate palmistry with witchcraft, but adherents to New Age beliefs consider it to be a valid and helpful form of divination. Skeptics and scientists do not think it has any value in this regard, though scientists do think that palmistry might have some merit in regard to how modern palm readers often remark on human health. For example, a palm reader might tell someone that, based on the color and shape of his or her hand, the person is eating too many carbohydrates and will suffer from an illness if this habit is not curtailed—and physicians have indeed found that by looking at someone’s hands, much can be learned about that person’s physical health.

SEE ALSO:

• Divination
• New Age
• Witchcraft

SOURCE:

The Greenhaven Encyclopedia of Paranormal Phenomena – written by Patricia D. Netzley © 2006 Gale, a part of Cengage Learning