1) The document introduces palmistry and discusses some of the skepticism around it, noting that some see it as predetermining fate rather than allowing for free will. 2) It explains that palmistry analyzes influences like passions and desires, which some see as lessening the spiritual nature, though palmistry only symbolizes these things rather than strengthening them. 3) Perceptions of influences depend on one's needs and stage of development, and palmistry acknowledges we are not devoid of influences at birth but that circumstances are not truly fixed.

1. The Handbook of Palmistry:

2. Sample Pages
List of Contents
1 Influences: The Nature of Palmistry p7
2 Thinking and Feeling: The Major Lines p12
3 Permanent and Variable: The Secondary Lines p16
4 Cheirotypes: Distinctive Hand Categories p20
5 Thumbsand Fingers: Character Clues p24
6 The Background of the Palm: Ancient Gods, Soul, and the Mounts p37
7 The Pendulum of Karma: Fate, Fortune, and the Rascette p44
8 Inherited Characteristics: Left Hand, Right Hand p50
9 The Heart Line: Directing the Emotions p56
10 The Rising of the Feelings: Pride, Ambition and Greed p60
11 Inner Feelings: The Girdles of Venus p67
12 Emotional Instability: Chains, Islands and Breaks in the Heart Line p72
13 The Marriage Lines: Affection and Child Lines p79
14 The Head Line: Directing the Thoughts p84
15 The Sensitive Mind: Business Brains, Dreamers and Social Skills p88
16 Attitudesand Obsessions: Head and Heart Line Links p98
17 Common Sense and Uncommon Sense: Branch Lines and the Supernal Zone p104
18 Mental Instability: Islands, Chains and Breaks in the Head Line p110
19 The Life Line: Energy, Time, Travel and Health p113
20 The Line of Fate: Timescale of Fate p126

3. 21 The Upsand Downsof Fate: Dominance, Islands, Chains and Breaks p133
22 The Line of Fortune: Timescale and the Seven-year Cycle p137
23 Charactersand Predictions: Simple and Complicated Patterns p144
24 Romance: Stars of Venus and Lines of Influence p147
25 Jealousy: Negative Relationships p154
26 Infidelity and Separation: Elongated Islands and the Line of Dominance p157
27 Money: The Gambler's Cross p161
28 Ambition: Stars and the Strengthening of Passion p164
29 Success: Eminence and Security p167
30 Vigour: The Competitive Athlete p171
31 Stress: Nervous Exhaustion and Guilty Secrets p173
32 Sociability: Mixers, Loners, and Timidity p176
33 Assertiveness: Domineering and Submissive Types p180
34 Physical Problems: Hypochondria, Illness, Excess and Solomon's Seal p183
35 Creativity: Sideways Thinking p192
36 Sensitivity: Intuition, Concern, the Occult and the Spiritual p195
37 Compassion: Caring, Sympathy and the Mark of Mercy p199
38 The Grand Cycle: The Basis of Ancient Psychology p203
39 Giving a Reading: Basic Principles; Permanent Impressions p216
40 Practical Analysis: Outward and Inward Events p222
41 Quick Character Sketches: Distinctive Types p23
Summary A: Signs on Mounts and Lines p246
Summary B: Detailed Features p253
Summary C: The Principle Lines p264

4. Chapter One
Influences: The Nature of Palmistry Sa
DOUBTERS will always doubt. Healthy scepticism is a useful asset, and it is only
sensible to value personal experience above dogma and hearsay. It is best to keep an
open mind until you are in possession of evidence. However, many people reject the
whole notion of palmistry, even when offered firm evidence. Some of these are born
disbelievers who accept nothing but concrete material facts. But not a few are
religious people – religious both in the normally accepted sense of the word and in its
more abstract sense, taken to include those who are 'spiritually orientated’.
It is not that such people see palmistry as sheer nonsense. On the contrary, they tend
to take this negative attitude of rejection for two very specific reasons. First, a set of
'signs' to them implies that our fate is fixed and preordained, which thus seems to rule
out the possibility of free choice – the choice to do right or wrong, the desire to
improve, to do good, to atone. Second, they take exception to palmistry because it
refers mainly to the base 'passions'. These coarse influences of life, these 'devices
and desires', seem in devout eyes to overcloud the human soul and lessen or even
preclude the possibility of spiritual expansion, of escape from everyday life.
In a way they are right. The passions certainly have this effect, so when they accuse
palmistry (and, by implication, palmists too) of committing the offence of analysing
such things, we have to agree with them. In its defence, though, I would point out that
palmistry doesn't produce passions and desires or strengthen them, it
merely symbolizes these things. Everybody is constantly surrounded by influences,
whether good, neutral or evil, and plainly if they feel a certain influence to be bad, then
for them at that moment it probably is bad. They may not realize it, but their attitude is
the result of at least two influences: the 'bad' influence itself and the counter-influence
that they are accepting. Certainly, it would be neither the right time nor the right place
for them to take an intelligent interest – or even a healthily sceptical interest – in the
art of reading the hand.
Ultimately, the nature of our lives surely depends on our personal needs and karmic
contents. Life is, after all, a continuing cycle of events. As palmistry acknowledges, we
are not spiritually devoid of contents, even at the moment of birth. Situations or
characteristics are not really fixed, but they often seem that way because when people
are static in themselves it looks as though nothing changes for them.
Static people will probably regard some object, some principle, in exactly the same
light next year as they did last year – as they did twenty years ago. As far as they are
concerned, if a thing is bad, then bad it is for all time. For them, if something makes its
appearance on a certain level, then that is its level for evermore. Many, indeed, think
this is a virtue. Politicians, for instance, are always asserting that their viewpoint is
constant, even when they keep chopping and changing. They insist they 'have always
said' such and such, as though to change your mind is a sign of weakness or

5. inefficiency. Perhaps they don't like to admit that they are capable of being wrong.
It is no use arguing with a fixed point of view. But when people are developing,
growing, learning, imbibing, expelling, they must inevitably go through a process of
change, and their perceptions have constantly to be changing too. Of course,
circumstances seem to change. As a wise man wrote in the Book of Ecclesiastes over
2,000 years ago:
For everything its season, and for every activity under heaven its time: a time to be
born and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to uproot; a time to kill and a time to
heal; a time to pull down and a time to build up; a time to weep and a time to laugh; a
time for mourning and a time for dancing...
To change your perception does not necessarily mean that you were wrong before, or
are wrong now. What seemed abhorrent a few years back may seem highly desirable
today. Who knows, tomorrow it may seem abhorrent again. In short, it is not objects or
principles that have innate levels so much as people who have levels of perception, of
differing needs and differing understanding.
Hand readers too have their differing levels of understanding and perception, of
course. I am not for one moment implying that all palmists should be taken seriously.
The fact is, palmists and astrologers and fortune-tellers, like priests, doctors and
psychologists, can have a powerful influence on people who consult them, and they
should never forget the responsibility that this entails. People are vulnerable, people
are suggestible – and 'people' means not just 'them' but you and me too.
A hand reader can interpret the signs in your hand only according to his or her own
level of understanding. This is common sense, I suppose. But understanding runs
very deep, and becoming proficient in this subject is not merely a case of learning a
new set of signs and symbols. Ideally, all people should be known to one another,
simply by becoming aware. It is my belief that all people are akin deep down and,
ultimately, all things are known and knowable. The palm of the hand serves only as a
token in a transaction.
Fashions change, and so do scientific perceptions. For instance, in my old pre-war set
of encyclopaedias the subject of 'Palmistry' is given a very bad press – a dismissive
paragraph describing it as the pursuit of simple minds, with no basis for rational
discussion. But in the very same volume the entry on 'Phrenology', now an utterly
discredited subject, runs to several thousand words, ending with an impressive
bibliography.

7. Palmistry has had a hard time, ever since the Age of Reason
dawned in the eighteenth century, when simple religious minds
were persuaded to become simple atheistic minds instead.
Unscrupulous fortune-tellers have not helped, of course. Palmistry
should be a pleasure, not a pain.
Whether your mind is particularly simple or not, if 'fortune' means
a lot to you, it is probably better to read your own hand if you can,
rather than rely on someone else to do it. You might merely be
curious to discover what is written there or you might be eager to
explore your own possibilities, to further your urge to 'know thyself'
(and this is the best possible motive for studying the subject);
alternatively, you might actually want to don a headscarf and sit in
a fortune-teller's booth for the sake of 'filthy lucre'. Either way,
there can be no better time or place to learn this ancient art than
here and now.

8. Actually, palmistry has never really been in the same boat as fortune-telling. Sensitive,
psychic seers of the human soul can use the hand as a useful aid to their inspiration, but
you certainly don't have to be a medium, or a gypsy, or a witch, or even a wizard, to read
hands. The rules are fairly simple and easy to learn.
The hand by itself cannot reveal the future, any more than a computer can; but it can show
you tendencies and probabilities. It can tell you about a person's character. Even without
the extra dimension of psychic sensitivity, which many claim to have but few actually
possess, people's hands can tell you fairly accurately how they habitually behave when
everything is going right, and how they are liable to react when things start going wrong.
I believe you can be fairly certain about whether someone is likely to fly into a temper at the
drop of a hat or remain calm under incredible stress, to step forwards boldly in an
emergency or stay quietly in the background, hoping that the emergency will go away, and
so on.
Further, you can tell if someone is a romantic dreamer or a more down-to-earth, scientific
type, and you can get a pretty shrewd idea about whether they are clever or stupid, kind or
cruel, healthy or sickly, lucky or unlucky ... Most people belong to neither one extreme nor

9. the other; the majority fit in somewhere along a sliding scale.
I caution you not to tell anyone that they seem to you to be ill-favoured, unintelligent or
unfeeling. Above all other considerations, palmists should be aware of the law of karma the
great and holy law which decrees that wrong you do to others will eventually be heaped on
your own head: a fate to be avoided! If those 'others' are seeking to discover deep truths
about themselves, and you claim to be able to reveal those truths, karma is waiting and
listening, so:
DON'T tell anyone anything hurtful.
DON'T tell anyone they are going to suffer a disaster.
DON'T tell anyone when you think they are going to die.
The hand cannot be sure of anything like that. And even if it could, to break these rules is to
put oneself automatically on the side of the evildoers, the spreaders of fear and
despondency! It makes more sense to stay on the side of the good, and always be the
bringer of good tidings. How much better we all feel when someone says something nice
about us! It can be very upsetting when some idiot hurts our feelings, and it can be
positively dangerous to cloud another's mind with worries and fears, whether we feel
justified in so doing or not.
Those happy, healthy and wealthy people who are blessed with good fortune are usually
ready to deny indignantly that there is any such thing as luck. 'What nonsense,' they say. 'I
worked damned hard to get where I am today...' Of course they did! You can give it any
name you like 'talent', 'innate ability', 'sheer hard work' but it all amounts to exactly the
same thing. If these qualities belong to people's individual physical, mental and emotional
make-up their inheritance the results of their ability to make the right efforts will show in
their own history...in their own good fortune...in their own hand.
If you happen to be gifted with a particularly good brain, you cannot really, in all honesty,
take personal credit for it. No more can you reasonably take credit for owning a magnificent
body. You may work eight hours a day building it up, but why? Because it is in your
character. Equally, you cannot be blamed for failing to make the grade. We are all children
of fate, even those special people who really do seem to have a divine destiny.
All who study the law of karma come to the same conclusion, that sooner or later we all get
exactly what we deserve, so it behoves us to do the best we can, while we can. If we
expect to reap as we sow, we are doing ourselves a favour if we try to do right by others.
Even from a selfish viewpoint, long-term, it is safer trying to improve another's lot, rather
than trying to drag them down. Certainly, this is what palmists believe. Everything points in
the same direction. At the very least, to 'do as you would be done by' is a sensible
precaution to take, and it certainly makes the world a pleasanter place to live in.