In order to secure the best results from this
investigation, it will be of material help if you have arranged your surroundings
so that the client will be comfortable when they seat themselves. One of the
matters to which you should give most careful attention is the proper arrangement
of light. No rule can ge fixed in this matter, as the sight of all palmists
is not equally strong. It is, however, indispensable that you have the clearest,
whitest light possible, and for this purpose nothing is so good as a strong
northern exposure of pure daylight. To find the apex of each mount will require
a keen eye and good light, especially if the texture of the skin be very fine.
Nothing short of daylight will suffice, and even with this help your will often
have to resort to a magnifying glass. I should advise that you be provided with
a strong, clear reading glass, about six inches in diameter, large enough to
cover the palm of the hand; this will bring out any markings which may be only
faintly indicated. If your eyes be strong, you will not have to use this glass
for the larger and more prominent details, but with a highly strung, excessively
lines hand, it is advisable to sue the glass. In this way you will often discover
faint lines just beginning for form in outline, and these will show you emotions
just starting to develop. If you intend to go deeply into your client's
life, this minute inspection is necessary. Daylight is indispensable to you
in judging the color of the hand. Many palmists absolutely refuse to read by
gaslight, and this is a sage rule to adapt, as daylight is an absolute essential
in readings covering great attempts at detail.
Now, having comfortable seats, good light, a glass,
to use if needed, the temperature at the proper point, say 21.10
C., you take the hands of your client. In all examinations you should consult
both hands, and should never attempt specific statements, unless they are based
upon a thorough knowledge of the information which can be gleaned only from
the hands considered separately, and then together. Many failures are recorded
in palm-readings when one hand only has been used, due to the fact that individuals
change as they grow older, and these changes are recorded in the right hand.
If you have read from the left hand, you have looked at the person only as they
were originally constructed, not as they have developed. To gain a knowledge
of them as they are, and thus better to tell whether they are progressing
or retrograding, you must read from both hands. This is a matter to which I
have given most careful study, and in the course of many investigations have
often read in the separate hand how weak people have grown strong, and strong
people deteriorated. The left hand is the infallible index to the natural
being, the right hand records unmistakably what has been done with
the talents. All that has been said about using the left hand because it
is nearest the heart or because it have more lines, grows from a false conception
of the matter. The heart no more controls nor feeds the left than the right
hand, and it is not for this reason that both hands are used. The left hand
is the passive hand, the right the active. There are instances in which the
subject is left-handed. In this case reverse the order and consider the right
as passive, the left as active. Invariably the hand which does the work
is the one which records the present, the hand which is passive shows the natural
endowments. Thus if you see the passive hand showing one condition, the active
hand an improved state, you know that the course has been upward, and vise
versa.
The first matter what should receive your a attention
in examining the hand itself, it the texture of the skin. We sometimes forget
that the human skin is not merely the thin cuticle that peels off when ne is
sun-burned, but is as thick as the leather from which a pair of calf-skin shoes
are made, that it is capable of much coarseness or fineness, and will be covered
either with large capillaries, or with capillaries so fine they can hardly be
seen. This coarseness or fineness is what we call texture. In considering it
you should largely confine yourself to the back of the hand. The matter of consistency
of the hand, a wholly different quality, and one which is discussed in Consistency
of Hand, which is a wholly different quality, is to be determined by an
examination of the palm; in this way you will not get the two qualities confused.
Texture is the
key to a knowledge of your client's natural refinement. If the texture be fie,
soft and delicate (16), the greatest fineness being seen in a baby's hand, you
have a refined sensitive person, who is influenced by these qualities in everything
they do. They are one to whom coarseness and commonness give actual pain, and
it will not be possible for the person with this fine texture of skin to do
things in a coarse, common, brutish way. This quality of texture will aid you
in estimating character, for it is a softening influence on all the coarser
qualities seen in any subject;
- it makes a Saturnian less morose, melancholy, moody,
and less inclined to shun society; it will make their cynicism less cutting:
- it will make a Jupiterian less of an overeater, less domineering, less tyrannical,
for it will refine them.
- It will add to an Apollonian a new an quieter love of beauty and harmony,
and will make their nature more elevated:
- it will refine a Mercurian, taking away much of the dishonest side of their
character:
- it will subdue a Martian, refining their brusqueness, their fighting qualities,
their warlike spirit, and making them less pugnacious:
- it will lead the imagination of a Lunar subject into higher channels,
- and will refine a Venusian, so that base, low passions will not dominate them.
In this as in all other matters there are different degrees of development,
and this question of degree is said to be one of the things that students cannot
easily acquire. Palmistry is frequently met by the criticism that "everything
modifies everything else": there is not the slightest need of any confusion
of difficulty on this score.
With a picture in your mind of a baby's delicate
skin- one extreme of texture- let us look for a moment at the opposite extreme.
There is the
skin which feels rough, coarse, and common, as you rub your fingers over the
back of the hand. it has big capillaries, and is hard, rough, and unsympathetic
to the touch. It is like sole- leather as compared to soft flexible kid, and
shows by the coarseness of its grain that refinement and delicacy are unknown
to its owner (17). This hand you will often find in the gas trenches, shoveling
dirt. Thee is no knowledge in the mind of its owner, that the employment in
which they are engages is not of the most elevating character. To put this hand
in the same surrounding as the hand with delicately soft texture, would make
it as miserable as to consign the delicate texture to the gas trenches. This
coarse skin you will not so often meet, but your should hunt a subject who has
it, so that you will be able to have in your mind the opposite of the baby's
hand.
The coarse texture will show the lack of refinement, delicate sensibility, or
fine quality of nature, and will modify all things in the hand coarsening them.
Coarseness will
- add the tyrannical spirit to Jupiter
- will make Saturn dirty, stingy, superstitious, and a pessimist
- it will make Apollo the vulgar blatherskite
-and Mercury only a low schemer
- it will make Mars insufferable in its aggressiveness
- and the Moon will give forth low imaginations
- Venus, instead of dealing in love, grace, and sympathy, will stand only for
the gratification of vulgar passions.
Refined texture softens everything; coarse texture animalizes it.
The
medium development will be most often met. It is the elastic skin, not showing
the capillaries of the baby's hand, nor the coarseness of the trench-digger's,
but a medium between them. The skin will feel elastic, not soft, firm, not hard
(18). It is the texture found on the hand of the active business man, the lawyer,
the doctor, or the clergyman. It is a texture which shows refinement, yet not
effeminacy in man; it shows fineness without idealism in women. It is the balance
between two extremes, and will give to all the qualities of the mounts normal
support. By examining the extremes I have given, you will have no trouble in
recognizing the medium grade.
Before
concluding your examination of skin texture, observe the inside aspect of the
first phalanges of the fingers; on many hand you will note a little pad of flesh
(19) which in some cases is quite prominent. This pad is composed of a large
number of nerve filaments and shows the great sensitiveness of the subject.
They are keenly alive to all surroundings, easily wounded by slighting treatment,
and knowing how such things jar upon themselves, they are most careful of the
feelings of other people. They would themselves suffer intensely, rather than
wound another. These sensitive pads are, in a word, indicating of an extremely
fine organism. The degree of their development will gauge the degree to which
the subject is possessed of this quality.
Texture is the
key to a knowledge of your client's natural refinement. If the texture be fie,
soft and delicate (16), the greatest fineness being seen in a baby's hand, you
have a refined sensitive person, who is influenced by these qualities in everything
they do. They are one to whom coarseness and commonness give actual pain, and
it will not be possible for the person with this fine texture of skin to do
things in a coarse, common, brutish way. This quality of texture will aid you
in estimating character, for it is a softening influence on all the coarser
qualities seen in any subject;
There is the
skin which feels rough, coarse, and common, as you rub your fingers over the
back of the hand. it has big capillaries, and is hard, rough, and unsympathetic
to the touch. It is like sole- leather as compared to soft flexible kid, and
shows by the coarseness of its grain that refinement and delicacy are unknown
to its owner (17). This hand you will often find in the gas trenches, shoveling
dirt. Thee is no knowledge in the mind of its owner, that the employment in
which they are engages is not of the most elevating character. To put this hand
in the same surrounding as the hand with delicately soft texture, would make
it as miserable as to consign the delicate texture to the gas trenches. This
coarse skin you will not so often meet, but your should hunt a subject who has
it, so that you will be able to have in your mind the opposite of the baby's
hand. 
The
medium development will be most often met. It is the elastic skin, not showing
the capillaries of the baby's hand, nor the coarseness of the trench-digger's,
but a medium between them. The skin will feel elastic, not soft, firm, not hard
(18). It is the texture found on the hand of the active business man, the lawyer,
the doctor, or the clergyman. It is a texture which shows refinement, yet not
effeminacy in man; it shows fineness without idealism in women. It is the balance
between two extremes, and will give to all the qualities of the mounts normal
support. By examining the extremes I have given, you will have no trouble in
recognizing the medium grade.
Before
concluding your examination of skin texture, observe the inside aspect of the
first phalanges of the fingers; on many hand you will note a little pad of flesh
(19) which in some cases is quite prominent. This pad is composed of a large
number of nerve filaments and shows the great sensitiveness of the subject.
They are keenly alive to all surroundings, easily wounded by slighting treatment,
and knowing how such things jar upon themselves, they are most careful of the
feelings of other people. They would themselves suffer intensely, rather than
wound another. These sensitive pads are, in a word, indicating of an extremely
fine organism. The degree of their development will gauge the degree to which
the subject is possessed of this quality.