Hands reflect the whole person: their motivation, personal needs, temperament, and spirit. Analyzing hands to better understand ourselves and others is what palmistry is all about.
In The Hand from A to Z, Judith Hipskind Collins shares the art of palmistry and explains why hand analysis works. She advises how to read and interpret every facet of the hand, including its shape, gestures, flexibility, mounts, fingers, lines, and nails. This book also includes a unique dictionary that lists more than 250 personality/character traits with their corresponding physical features (long index finger, square nails, yellow palm, etc). This is a Print-on-Demand title. Please allow an additional 2-3 days for delivery.
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Judith Hipskind has studied palmistry since 1967. She works as a professional palmist in Dallas, Texas, and conducts private research and teaches.
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1
The World of Hand Analysis
Perhaps the biggest surprise about palmistry, especially for beginners, is the amount of detail involved in decoding the hands' meaning. Contrary to the common idea that palmistry concerns only the lines in the hand, a good analysis requires much more. Lines are at their best when they are supported by all the features in the hand.
To get the whole picture, lines must be analyzed together with areas of the palm known as mounts, with the length of the palm and fingers, and the shape of the fingertips and nails. Each hand has a certain shape and thickness, as do the fingers. Each hand has its own consistency, feeling soft or hard to the touch. Each set of fingers has an overall flexibility, and every finger has its own unique degree of flexibility.
How do we add up all these features and draw a picture of a person from the hands? The complete approach to reading hands is outlined in the first half of this book. An explanation is given for all the features found in the hands.
However, some readers may want to go directly to the Dictionary of Traits to read about personality traits revealed by the hands, without learning the whole subject of palmistry. If you are one of those readers, whether you are a beginner or a pro, you will benefit from a review of all the points entailed in a complete hand analysis, as presented in the first half of this book.
But first, there are two keys to successful work with the hands. The ability to be observant is one of them. What better way to start a hand analysis than to notice a hand's size or width or length? Even though a beginner might say, "How do I know if I'm seeing a big hand or a little one, a thick hand or a thin one?" just a few minutes spent looking at a few pairs of hands will instantly reveal obvious differences such as size and shape.
The second key to successful hand analysis is an ability to compare and contrast each feature you see. Which hand is bigger? Looking at two sets of hands at once, you can compare them, but if you happen to look at the hands of one person at a time, you will need to carry a mental image in your head of what you have seen before. That's rather like being a good card player and remembering what card was just played. That very card, if you can recall it, might seal your strategy in the game. So, too, with hands. Anything you can remember of what you have seen before will increase your skill as a hand analyst.
Another valuable tool in the world of hand analysis is a system to organize all the clues you find in a hand. The order in which you deal with all the hand's features can be very important. The lengthiest analysis of hands starts with the back of the hands, if you use the system presented in this book. With a shorter analysis, such as looking up individual traits in the dictionary, the order of the clues is still important, as we will see in the Guide to the Dictionary. Before you do that, let's look at the summary of the long way to analyze hands.
Complete System of Analysis
To get the more obvious clues first from the hands, have your clients put their hands down on a flat surface in order to allow you to see the backs of their hands. This is the order of what you will notice (the page numbers in parentheses tell you where to find a diagram that illustrates that feature):
Body Language of the Hand
1.The spacing between the two hands as they rest on a table (p. 30).
2.The spaces between the fingers (p. 29).
3.The alignment of the thumbs (p. 30).
Nails
4.The length and width of the nails (p. 38).
5.The shape of the nails (p. 38).
6.The color underneath the nails (p. 34).
Texture
7.Touch the back of your client's hands to determine if the skin is smooth, medium, or coarse in texture.
Flexibility
8.Lift up your client's hands and check the flexibility of the fingers, where they join the palm, at the fingertips, and at the thumb to see if the thumb moves easily or is stiff (p. 46).
Posture
9.Have your client hold his or her hands up. Notice whether all the fingers stand straight or do some of them bend inward or outward?
Divisions of the Palm
10.To understand a larger view of the palm's areas, divide the palm in half, with a line running down the middle of the middle finger to the bottom of the palm. The thumb half of the palm represents a person's conscious energy, and the little finger half represents a person's unconscious energy. This information becomes useful when you look at the individual areas of the palm called mounts (p. 107).
These ten points give you a solid foundation for understanding the hands. With them, you have already uncovered much about the person you are analyzing. You are ready to proceed to the palm itself. Next you determine:
11.The shape of the palm (p. 68).
12.The size of the palm, its thickness or thinness (p. 68).
13.The shape of the fingertips (p. 73).
14.The overall length of the fingers (p. 91).
15.The size of the fingers, whether they are thick or thin (p. 75).
16.The length of the fingers' three sections (the phalanges) (p. 90).
17.The length of each individual finger (p. 91).
The Mounts
The mounts and their marks are powerful guides to a person's temperament, energy, and talent. If you understand the mounts, you have an expert view of a person's potential. Where that potential will lead is the question, and the answer is in the lines.
18.The mounts or individual areas of the palm (p. 107).
19.The marks on the mounts (p. 108).
The Lines
Lines play a unique role, defining character, temperament, energy, and health, as the other features do. The lines are also used to project events on a life path and the shape that path might take.
20.The marks found on the lines (p. 118).
21.The lines themselves, their appearance and their variations (p. 118).
The Major Lines
22.The Life Line. We begin with the life line because every hand has one. Warning: No life line predicts length of life. See page 122 to find out what a "short" life line means. The life line is a visual graph of much of our life path (p. 131).
23.The Head Line, an indicator of talent and how you think (p. 154-157).
24.The Heart Line, a guide to emotions and health (p. 141-145).
25.The Fate Line, a clue to your resources and what you want to accomplish
(p. 164-167).
The Minor Lines
26.The Apollo Line, a singular mark of creativity and a rewarding life (p. 174).
27.The Mercury Line, an aid to business ability and health (p. 174).
The meanings for all of the items in this outline are found in the front part of this book. If you master all of them, you will have the equivalent of a Ph.D. in palmistry!
You can choose to focus on just a few of the features in this outline and still get a remarkable portrait of the person you are reading. You can decide what you want to know: What area of life experience is of most interest to you in this person's hands? Do you want to know if the person is a good friend, if the person would be a good mate? Are you compatible with this person? Would this person make a good teacher, boss, or colleague? What is this person like? Energetic or not, determined or not, ambitious or not, loving or not? You can discover any of this in just a few steps by using only the ten points below to analyze their hands.
The Basics
Palmistry is not so mystical a subject as some might suppose. Think about this: every object in the world has a size, a shape, a length, and a color. Consistency, texture, and flexibility play their role, too. Consider the following basic points for a moment.
•Size•Texture
•Shape•Flexibility
•Length•Mounts
•Color•Lines
•Consistency •Gestures
Examples of these features in everyday use include the fact that size, shape, length, and color tell you whether you are looking at an elephant or a lion. Consistency lets you know whether dinner is undercooked or overcooked. Texture defines a rough or smooth piece of cloth, while flexibility helps you decide whether a curtain rod is strong enough to hold heavy drapes.
A hand's size reveals the lens through which you view the world-focusing on the big picture or on the gritty details. A hand's shape and length refer to various types of temperament, as does color. Color, however, goes further, and speaks about your energy, momentum, and health, and highlights the active, progressive areas of your life. The consistency of your hand also offers a commentary on your health and momentum. The texture of your skin seen on the back of the hand shows the degree of sensitivity with which you approach the world, and it also diagnoses your stamina. Flexibility in a hand acts as a straightforward indicator of that very trait in your personality. In palmistry, gestures refer to how you hold your fingers as you use your hands. Your hands in motion as you go about your everyday tasks reveal clues to your feelings and needs. A small list of gestures and their meanings is found on page 188.
When you look at the dictionary and see how these features work to produce a portrait of your personality traits, you will be amazed.
The World of Hand Analysis
Perhaps the biggest surprise about palmistry, especially for beginners, is the amount of detail involved in decoding the hands' meaning. Contrary to the common idea that palmistry concerns only the lines in the hand, a good analysis requires much more. Lines are at their best when they are supported by all the features in the hand.
To get the whole picture, lines must be analyzed together with areas of the palm known as mounts, with the length of the palm and fingers, and the shape of the fingertips and nails. Each hand has a certain shape and thickness, as do the fingers. Each hand has its own consistency, feeling soft or hard to the touch. Each set of fingers has an overall flexibility, and every finger has its own unique degree of flexibility.
How do we add up all these features and draw a picture of a person from the hands? The complete approach to reading hands is outlined in the first half of this book. An explanation is given for all the features found in the hands.
However, some readers may want to go directly to the Dictionary of Traits to read about personality traits revealed by the hands, without learning the whole subject of palmistry. If you are one of those readers, whether you are a beginner or a pro, you will benefit from a review of all the points entailed in a complete hand analysis, as presented in the first half of this book.
But first, there are two keys to successful work with the hands. The ability to be observant is one of them. What better way to start a hand analysis than to notice a hand's size or width or length? Even though a beginner might say, "How do I know if I'm seeing a big hand or a little one, a thick hand or a thin one?" just a few minutes spent looking at a few pairs of hands will instantly reveal obvious differences such as size and shape.
The second key to successful hand analysis is an ability to compare and contrast each feature you see. Which hand is bigger? Looking at two sets of hands at once, you can compare them, but if you happen to look at the hands of one person at a time, you will need to carry a mental image in your head of what you have seen before. That's rather like being a good card player and remembering what card was just played. That very card, if you can recall it, might seal your strategy in the game. So, too, with hands. Anything you can remember of what you have seen before will increase your skill as a hand analyst.
Another valuable tool in the world of hand analysis is a system to organize all the clues you find in a hand. The order in which you deal with all the hand's features can be very important. The lengthiest analysis of hands starts with the back of the hands, if you use the system presented in this book. With a shorter analysis, such as looking up individual traits in the dictionary, the order of the clues is still important, as we will see in the Guide to the Dictionary. Before you do that, let's look at the summary of the long way to analyze hands.
Complete System of Analysis
To get the more obvious clues first from the hands, have your clients put their hands down on a flat surface in order to allow you to see the backs of their hands. This is the order of what you will notice (the page numbers in parentheses tell you where to find a diagram that illustrates that feature):
Body Language of the Hand
1.The spacing between the two hands as they rest on a table (p. 30).
2.The spaces between the fingers (p. 29).
3.The alignment of the thumbs (p. 30).
Nails
4.The length and width of the nails (p. 38).
5.The shape of the nails (p. 38).
6.The color underneath the nails (p. 34).
Texture
7.Touch the back of your client's hands to determine if the skin is smooth, medium, or coarse in texture.
Flexibility
8.Lift up your client's hands and check the flexibility of the fingers, where they join the palm, at the fingertips, and at the thumb to see if the thumb moves easily or is stiff (p. 46).
Posture
9.Have your client hold his or her hands up. Notice whether all the fingers stand straight or do some of them bend inward or outward?
Divisions of the Palm
10.To understand a larger view of the palm's areas, divide the palm in half, with a line running down the middle of the middle finger to the bottom of the palm. The thumb half of the palm represents a person's conscious energy, and the little finger half represents a person's unconscious energy. This information becomes useful when you look at the individual areas of the palm called mounts (p. 107).
These ten points give you a solid foundation for understanding the hands. With them, you have already uncovered much about the person you are analyzing. You are ready to proceed to the palm itself. Next you determine:
11.The shape of the palm (p. 68).
12.The size of the palm, its thickness or thinness (p. 68).
13.The shape of the fingertips (p. 73).
14.The overall length of the fingers (p. 91).
15.The size of the fingers, whether they are thick or thin (p. 75).
16.The length of the fingers' three sections (the phalanges) (p. 90).
17.The length of each individual finger (p. 91).
The Mounts
The mounts and their marks are powerful guides to a person's temperament, energy, and talent. If you understand the mounts, you have an expert view of a person's potential. Where that potential will lead is the question, and the answer is in the lines.
18.The mounts or individual areas of the palm (p. 107).
19.The marks on the mounts (p. 108).
The Lines
Lines play a unique role, defining character, temperament, energy, and health, as the other features do. The lines are also used to project events on a life path and the shape that path might take.
20.The marks found on the lines (p. 118).
21.The lines themselves, their appearance and their variations (p. 118).
The Major Lines
22.The Life Line. We begin with the life line because every hand has one. Warning: No life line predicts length of life. See page 122 to find out what a "short" life line means. The life line is a visual graph of much of our life path (p. 131).
23.The Head Line, an indicator of talent and how you think (p. 154-157).
24.The Heart Line, a guide to emotions and health (p. 141-145).
25.The Fate Line, a clue to your resources and what you want to accomplish
(p. 164-167).
The Minor Lines
26.The Apollo Line, a singular mark of creativity and a rewarding life (p. 174).
27.The Mercury Line, an aid to business ability and health (p. 174).
The meanings for all of the items in this outline are found in the front part of this book. If you master all of them, you will have the equivalent of a Ph.D. in palmistry!
You can choose to focus on just a few of the features in this outline and still get a remarkable portrait of the person you are reading. You can decide what you want to know: What area of life experience is of most interest to you in this person's hands? Do you want to know if the person is a good friend, if the person would be a good mate? Are you compatible with this person? Would this person make a good teacher, boss, or colleague? What is this person like? Energetic or not, determined or not, ambitious or not, loving or not? You can discover any of this in just a few steps by using only the ten points below to analyze their hands.
The Basics
Palmistry is not so mystical a subject as some might suppose. Think about this: every object in the world has a size, a shape, a length, and a color. Consistency, texture, and flexibility play their role, too. Consider the following basic points for a moment.
•Size•Texture
•Shape•Flexibility
•Length•Mounts
•Color•Lines
•Consistency •Gestures
Examples of these features in everyday use include the fact that size, shape, length, and color tell you whether you are looking at an elephant or a lion. Consistency lets you know whether dinner is undercooked or overcooked. Texture defines a rough or smooth piece of cloth, while flexibility helps you decide whether a curtain rod is strong enough to hold heavy drapes.
A hand's size reveals the lens through which you view the world-focusing on the big picture or on the gritty details. A hand's shape and length refer to various types of temperament, as does color. Color, however, goes further, and speaks about your energy, momentum, and health, and highlights the active, progressive areas of your life. The consistency of your hand also offers a commentary on your health and momentum. The texture of your skin seen on the back of the hand shows the degree of sensitivity with which you approach the world, and it also diagnoses your stamina. Flexibility in a hand acts as a straightforward indicator of that very trait in your personality. In palmistry, gestures refer to how you hold your fingers as you use your hands. Your hands in motion as you go about your everyday tasks reveal clues to your feelings and needs. A small list of gestures and their meanings is found on page 188.
When you look at the dictionary and see how these features work to produce a portrait of your personality traits, you will be amazed.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
All the Essentials Clearly Laid out for the Beginner,
By Boudica (Ohio USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Hand from A-Z: The Essentials of Palmistry (Paperback)
Ms. Collins is a professional palmist in Dallas and has been studying palmistry since 1967. She is a lecturer and a teacher.
This book is a collection of her studies, and her experiences in reading palms. Ms. Collins has put together a very in depth study of palmistry with this book. Ms. Collins explains in the first chapter her system of completely analyzing the entire hand with all the lines and pieces together, not just as individual units. She gives very good details of what she is referring to and how to go about doing it. She also outlines all the interconnecting parts of the hand that you will analyze and gives you some very basic material to work with. She covers some techniques for reading palms in her second chapter. You can use The Psychic Approach which she seems to treat very lightly or The Book Approach where she goes into detail. Her section on Why Palmistry Works is an interesting look at how Ms. Collins sees the hands as an extension of the brain and how they reflect our character and personality. She also gives a chapter for self examination as to why you would be interested in being a palmist and the precautions associated with being a reader. A good section filled with some very practical advices for anyone looking to go into a field where people's lives could be shared and discussed in great detail. Finally there is the meat and potatoes of the book, the examination of the various types of hands, lines and characteristics that are involved in reading palms. Ms. Collins used a two handed approach in reading palms, using both hands for a complete picture of her client. She then examines in detail the different types of hands, lines, finger structures, mounts, colors and so much more. There are 185 illustrations to help you clearly identify what Ms. Collins is discussing, which also includes a section with actual palm prints and readings for these palms. In all there are 15 chapters covering what she considers the points to analyze when doing a palm reading. Each chapter is very well written, covering a lot of information and examples. The types of lines are discussed as well as what they mean and how to read them in association with other lines on the hand. There are variations discussed, how these are either related or interact with other features on the hand. I found this section to be very well executed and enjoyed Ms. Collins' style of writing, with an exact approach to the process. It is interesting to take a look at your own hand and use it for comparison against the illustrations as well as looking at the meanings and seeing if how your own personal life measures against the meanings given by Ms. Collins. While not everything was "right on the money" for me, I was able to pick out particular traits and characteristics on my own palms and the meanings were a very good overview of my own self. As an example, my head line touches my life line which indicates a good balance between caution and impulse. I thought that was on the mark. My head line also shows a writer's fork which I thought was interesting as well. The chapter on Interpreting the Whole Hand was a good wrap up of the entire process and the author did show a very good interconnectedness with the process. The additional information on compatibility was also interesting as you can find some points that could suggest if two people would work well together in certain situations. There is a chapter in the back of the book called Dictionary of Traits which I thought was well put together and explained. Based on the work of William G. Benham from 1966, Ms. Collins has included an overview of this in her book and is a good compliment to her own work. There is a dictionary of terms used in the book and an actual dictionary of the lines, features, terms and descriptions all relating to palmistry. The last part of the book features three sets of handprints for which Ms. Collins has provided a basic overview and analysis. Again, a very good teaching tool, allowing the reader to see how Ms. Collins extracts information regarding the palm print and allowing the reader to further explore the variations. This section offers some insights into how Ms. Collins does her own readings, if you have never had the opportunity to have her read for you. If you are curious about palm reading, this book will probably provide more than you wanted to go into. However, if you are looking for a place to get started, this book can provide some no nonsense basics and some good information. The reference material here is well documented, the illustrations are very helpful and Ms. Collins writes so that anyone can understand her method. This is a good beginner's book as well as being a good book those who already read palms and are looking for additional reference. boudica
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
Perhaps the biggest surprise about palmistry, especially for beginners, is the amount of detail involved in decoding the hands' meaning. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Line Pattern, Special Feature, Mount of Luna, Dictionary of Traits, Mount of Jupiter, Plain of Mars, Strong Saturn, More Signs, Mount of Mercury, Mount of Apollo, Mount of Mars, High Mercury, Large Luna New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Perhaps the biggest surprise about palmistry, especially for beginners, is the amount of detail involved in decoding the hands' meaning. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Line Pattern, Special Feature, Mount of Luna, Dictionary of Traits, Mount of Jupiter, Plain of Mars, Strong Saturn, More Signs, Mount of Mercury, Mount of Apollo, Mount of Mars, High Mercury, Large Luna New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 7
books:
See all 7 books this book cites
- The Laws of Scientific Hand Reading, 2- vol. set by William G. Benham on page 181, and Back Matter
- Palm Reading for Beginners: Find Your Future in the Palm of Your Hand (For Beginners (Llewellyn's)) by Richard Webster in Back Matter
- Fortune in Your Hand by Elizabeth D. Squire in Back Matter
- Instant Palm Reader: A Roadmap to Life by Linda Domin in Back Matter
- The New Fortune in Your Hand by Elizabeth Da Squire in Back Matter
See all 7 books this book cites
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