Palmistry

Palmistry, also called chiromancy or chirosophy, is the practice of reading a person's character, and claiming to foretell their future, by interpreting the lines and contours of the palm of the hand. It is one of many forms of divination, which Britannica defines broadly as the effort to gain practical information by means understood to go beyond the ordinary.

Description

Key terms

• Chiromancy and chirosophy are older names for palmistry.
• Divination is the practice of seeking the hidden meaning or cause of events, and sometimes of foretelling the future. It deals with practical, everyday questions, and a diviner is usually consulted by someone who wants guidance for a decision.

How it works

The palmist studies the lines and contours of the palm, and from them describes the person's character and foretells their future.

What the evidence says

There is no scientific support for the idea that the features of the hand read in palmistry carry psychic or occult meaning that can predict the future. Britannica points out, though, that the hand does show real signs of a person's health, cleanliness, work and nervous habits, such as calluses or bitten nails. This is why doctors routinely examine hands, and it is also why a palmist can pick up clues from them. The distinction matters for anyone learning palmistry: what a reader notices about a hand is ordinary observation, not insight from beyond.

Writing in the journal of the Louisiana State Medical Society about his experience with palm and tarot readers in New Orleans, one author suggested that these practices work as a form of "archaic psychotherapy", using supportive treatment and placebo to give clients hope. This was his own interpretation, not the finding of a controlled study.

Scope

What it includes

• Reading character traits from the hand
• Foretelling the future from the lines and contours of the palm

What it is not

• Palmistry is not a scientific or medical assessment. Its predictive claims have no scientific support, and the health signs a hand can show are a matter for a doctor.
• Palmistry is not mediumship. Spiritualist bodies describe mediumship as giving evidence that life continues after death, not foretelling events (see Within Spiritualism below).

Traditions and lineage

No one knows for certain where palmistry began. Britannica suggests it may have started in ancient India and spread outwards, and that the traditional fortune-telling of the Roma may share that Indian origin. The practice was known in China, Tibet, Persia, Mesopotamia and Egypt, and ancient Greece did much to develop it.

In medieval Europe, witch-hunters used palmistry, reading pigment spots on the skin as signs of a pact with the Devil. After a period of disrepute, palmistry flourished again in the Renaissance, and in the 17th century some writers tried to give its principles an empirical and rational basis. It fell from favour again during the Enlightenment, then enjoyed a popular revival in the 19th century through the work of Casimir d'Arpentigny, Louis Hamon (known as Cheiro) and William Benham. In the 20th century, followers of Carl Jung were among those who gave it fresh attention and interpretation.

Context

Within Spiritualism

Palmistry and Spiritualism are sometimes lumped together in the public mind, but they rest on different ideas. The religious historian J. Gordon Melton writes that what sets Spiritualism apart from other psychic groups is its emphasis on survival after death and on mediumship. He places palmistry, with astrology, numerology and the reading of tarot cards and tea leaves, among the arts of divination that belong to the wider occult field.

Spiritualist bodies draw the same line from the inside. The National Spiritualist Association of Churches in the United States says its mediums are not fortune-tellers and that predicting the future matters very little, and the Spiritualists' National Union in Britain says mediumship exists to give evidence that life continues after death, not to foretell events.

The line also has a history. In 19th-century America, local Spiritualist associations licensed their mediums, ministers and lecturers partly to protect them from local laws against fortune-telling.

In Australian Spiritualism

Spiritfold has found palmistry discussed only in Paul Gillen's 1981 study of Spiritualists in Sydney, and no Australian Spiritualist church source that offers it. Gillen observed that Spiritualists tended to be drawn to popular kinds of divination, palmistry among them, although flower reading was the main one at the church he studied. He also noted that psychics who give readings are not necessarily Spiritualists, and that most of them identify more closely with other movements, such as witchcraft, astrology or palmistry. In the same study he noted that Spiritualists were sensitive to being accused of "fortune telling" because of its link with legal persecution.

A Spiritualist perspective

Palmistry belongs to the family of divinatory arts described above, and a Spiritualist would see it as its own practice rather than as part of the religion. Spiritualism's central work is mediumship, offered as evidence that life continues after death. Reading character or the future from a hand is a different undertaking, and a thoughtful Spiritualist would keep the two apart and never present one as the other. Keeping that line clear is not snobbery: it protects the sitter, who has a right to know what they are being given, and it protects mediumship from being mistaken for fortune-telling.

There is no harm in a Spiritualist enjoying palmistry, or in a palmist being welcome at a church fair, provided it is offered honestly. A caring reader treats the person in front of them with respect. That means no alarming predictions about health, death or disaster, no pressure on people who are vulnerable, and a clear word, where needed, that anyone worried about their health should see a doctor. The person's life is still theirs to shape.

Palmistry in Australia

In Western Australia, the state's Consumer Protection agency notes that many clairvoyants run their businesses with little controversy, but it has warned about scammers offering "psychic" readings. Its advice to anyone paying for a psychic or clairvoyant service is to find out the total cost and exactly what they will receive, to ask about conditions and any ongoing or hidden costs, and not to be pressured into further readings, ceremonies or payments.

Safety and good practice

Western Australia's Consumer Protection agency advises people to be very wary of any psychic or clairvoyant who tells them they are in danger, unlucky or cursed, because the solution on offer is likely to be a scam. People who have lost money this way can contact WA ScamNet.

Related modalities

• Astrology
• Tarot
• Numerology
• Psychic reading

Further reading

• Chopping, Lanie. "Commissioner's blog: Beware the misfortune tellers". Consumer Protection, Government of Western Australia, 2020, updated 2024.
• Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Palmistry". Encyclopaedia Britannica.
• Gilbert, Robert Andrew. "Divination". Encyclopaedia Britannica.
• Pejic, N.G. "Palmistry, tarot cards, and psychotherapy". Journal of the Louisiana State Medical Society, 2008.