7. PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER: DETAILED PALM READING
融会贯通：手相深度解读
As you read palms, you are connecting with ancient traditions.
Prehistoric hand prints with magical significance have been found on cave walls in places as far apart as France and Africa and Aboriginal Australia, the latter extending back to 40,000 BCE or earlier.
Palmistry as a divinatory art is believed by many scholars to have originated in India more than 4,500 years ago and traveled from India into China via trade routes and thence westward to Egypt and Ancient Greece.
A book titled Physiognomy & Palmistry was written by Pythagoras, the Ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician, between about 582 BCE and 497 BCE.
It is recorded that Aristotle as well as the Roman emperors Augustus and Julius Caesar were skilled in palmistry.
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
Once you feel ready, start reading palms for friends, family, and acquaintances.
How formal and detailed your palmistry readings are is entirely up to you and may vary according to the needs of the subject.
Sometimes this will be a fun, five- or ten-minute assessment of one or both hands, a quick appraisal of the Active hand to answer a specific question with brief comparison of untapped potential in the other hand, or for an hour and a half if you are making formal profiles for each hand if there are major life-path changes and then putting your conclusions together (simply add Overall Conclusions and Recommendations to the end of the Active hand printout).
INTUITIVE PALM READING
In practice, many palm readings will answer specific questions, rather than a full-scale life path, and do not need recording.
But have lots of preprinted blank palms/profile sheets, just in case.
Before doing a reading if you don’t feel very confident, return to the diagram at the start of the chapter and mark in red the main lines and mounts, plus maybe travel, children, and marriage relationship lines if relevant.
Now go back to chapters 1, 2, 3, and 5, and for each major area of the hand scribble a few words on a Reminder Sheet for the meanings of the main lines and mounts.
If in doubt, apply common sense as to meanings.
Remember, a wavy or pale line is clearly not as dynamic as a strong deep one.
Re-read your checklist and diagram until you are familiar with positions and basic meanings.
The hand of Potential is simply the other way around.
You will soon acquire an instant feel for what is relevant to consider in a reading.
With practice, you will be adding all you have learned —fingers, thumbs, and markings, and the subtler lines and rings—although you will not necessarily need to consider them all except in a life review.
Begin a reading with intuitive sensing of energies, even when you are confident of all the hand meanings.
Keep talking.
Dialog is the key.
• Move your fingers or pendulum slowly and gently on or very close to the lines and mounts of the Active hand, starting with Heart, Head, Life, and Destiny; then move to any other lines/mounts that you consider relevant. To recap, the positive swing of a pendulum indicates energy and activity, stillness a blockage, a rushing sensation through your fingers or powerful alternate clockwise and counterclockwise swinging for excess energies, and a counterclockwise swing for negative energies.
• Concentrate on the energies you are feeling, whether a gentle warm tingling, a blockage, or dead areas in a line or area of the palm where you feel nothing, and assess the intensity on a 1-to-10 scale.
• If the palm is criss-crossed by the gently flowing tingling of electricity, all the aspects are in harmony.
• Blockages can indicate a temporary obstacle, which can sometimes be self-imposed or can indicate a period of necessary waiting. Your instinct will tell you which. A blockage is a potential source of energy for change.
• If areas feel dead or more positively temporarily asleep, ask yourself and the subject why. It can indicate that a particular avenue, for example in career or love, has ended in the heart or mind, if not in actuality; or that a bad experience has led to a lack of trust or confidence and so talents and feelings have atrophied. This is not a once-and-for-all state and can, given encouragement, revive.
• Put down the pendulum and study visually through your magnifying glass the relative strength, length, and continuity of the lines.
• Is the person’s current emphasis in the area of Head or Heart, and does the life line offer a store of energy or indicate exhaustion and anxiety? You can check what you feel as well as see anywhere on the Active hand, on the corresponding Potential hand to see what resources are available to be manifested in the Active hand. Alert the subject.
• Which mounts are prominent and/or undeveloped? Why? Is this different on the Potential hand?
• Are there many marks and/or distinctive lines for travel or family? Are these interconnected?
• What is absent in the Active hand that was present in the Potential hand that could potentially aid the subject? Have forks in the Potential not yet been pursued? Has a potentially strong or developed mount of the Moon with its intuitive strengths on the Inactive hand or a powerful Head line been neglected in the real world so that these potential strengths are not being utilized?
• What suggestions for future action can be made from the combination of potential and actuality?
• Keep a copy of the palm drawings, and in three or six months take new images. You will be surprised at the changes.
RELATIONSHIP READING FOR COUPLES
Ask each person separately what they most want to know.
Each may have a totally different perspective on their lives and future.
Initially, separate readings for couples may be easier unless they are young and totally in love, but you can follow with a shorter joint session in which you can show each the compatibilities and differences in their respective hands and use this as a basis for making joint resolutions, perhaps using a blue pen to mark over the complementary lines on the diagrams, and red or black for differences.
Couples don’t need total compatibility, but be aware if one person has very dominant features and the other gentler.
This may suit them, as even twin souls should not mirror, but complement.
A strong Head line in one partner may go well with a strong Heart line in the other, whereas two strong Head or Fate lines can bring issues with dominance, or one being very pale and wavy and the other deep and grooved can indicate a bullying partner.
If one of the parties is newly divorced, there may be lots of grilles and chains remaining on the Heart line where an ex-partner is still exerting a pull, even if the original relationship is broken.
Problematic in-laws can be similarly featured, especially if they preferred an ex-partner to the present one.
Braided islands indicate family tensions that can adversely affect a love relationship.
Relationship/Marriage lines, the fine lines that extend slightly diagonally across the side of the palm between the start of the Heart line and the Mercury finger, should also be compared, as these will hold crucial information.
The longest line is the current relationship and should be clear and well-marked, coming from the side of the hand and on to the surface of the palm.
If the line is absent, short, or broken, have a look at the Heart line of the person with the fractured connection, especially for any markings that might indicate outside interference or a frozen heart.
Also check the mount of Venus on both hands if the Active one is hollow.
Note the appearance of the individual relationship lines.
For example, a troubled relationship will often be reflected as a fragmented, jagged, or wavering line.
A love line that is forked could indicate a potential parting of the ways, but this can be averted with tact and care.
In such cases, counseling will be part of the reading or should be recommended.
A deeper groove is usually a solid sign of a strong-lasting bond despite difficulties.
Look at the Children lines too if relevant, fine vertical lines immediately below the Mercury finger, sometimes overlapping the Marriage/Relationship lines.
Compare their strength or waviness if there are major custody problems or if there are plans for future joint children—or, indeed, in a childless couple if one is reluctant (very pale, absent, or not crossing or touching the marriage lines).
In a newly married couple, check the Children lines of existing children.
The Children lines may branch off a relationship line indicating that children are an issue, especially if from a previous relationship, and watch out for a grille or island on the line of the birth parent.
Existing children will have stronger longer lines than potential ones.
If you are doing a reading for both people at the same time, go from Active hand to Active hand for each feature, and if seemingly insurmountable problems become apparent, look to the early parts of the Heart line and Venus mount on the hand of Potential for the very factors that may have attracted them in the first place.
The younger the couple, the more significant the hand of Potential.
READING FOR TEENAGERS OR AT A PARTY
This is a fun activity whether at a teenage sleepover or the office party.
Everyone present photographs and prints out digital-camera images of their own Active hand, picks a number out of a hat and writes the number on the back of the sheet, mixes them up, and each person takes one to interpret, without knowing the identities.
Buy small magnifying glasses for each person.
Have a big printout or individual diagram/s of the basic hand, marking the following key lines in red pen.
Create also a large check sheet, for Heart, Head, Life, Fate, or Destiny, Apollo Sun line for Fame and Fortune, Money line, mount of Venus for Love and Moon for Psychic powers, with a few words of meaning for each (or you can print these out separately, one for each person), plus Children, Relationship, and Travel lines.
The reader scribbles the findings on the printout.
Afterwards, each person identifies their number as the results are read out one by one.
You can also ask people to bring a printout of their boyfriend/girlfriend’s Active hand, and everyone passes them around in turn, adding to the group interpretation.
If an office party, you can add the Jupiter and Saturn mounts for career.
A CASE STUDY
Susanne, a single parent from London, has been laid off from her job as a graphic designer; and because she has little help with her young daughter, she is very limited as to the work she can take on and debts are mounting.
What options, if any, are open to her? I focused mainly on her Active hand, but checked also with the hand of her Potential to answer her pressing questions.
The most significant feature was the broken and deeply indented Fate line that was scattered with grilles and islands.
Her loss and fears for the future had clearly made their mark.
The island indicates her isolation by her job loss, but also ironically sanctuary from the previously exhausting pressures of struggling to travel and take care of her child while working full-time.
Already, however, her Apollo/creative fortune line is starting to branch toward her Head and Fate lines in the direction of the mounts of Saturn and Apollo, promising that her creative side will offer her a way out of her problems.
Very faintly she has, on the mount of the Moon, a triangle indicating psychic and healing powers and an even fainter Mystic Cross between the Head and Heart lines, and a reasonably well developed but not pulsating mount of the Moon, all signs of psychic gifts.
Susanne told me she had always been gifted in psychic arts but had never developed them.
I checked on her Potential hand, and there were both triangles quite clearly, waiting to be activated.
Since Susanne is qualified as a graphic designer, all this is pointing to the fact that she could combine her gifts and design New Age websites as a business and offer her own psychic services on her website—and this business she can do anywhere.
A well-developed Mercury mount on her Active hand promises that her existing versatility and ingenuity will see her through; and, with its money-making and technological associations, it would seem that Susanne can succeed in specialist web designing.
But most significant and unexpected to me were the Travel lines on both hands that were clearest on her Potential hand.
Travel lines are fine lines which can be both vertical and horizontal, starting vertically from the edge of the palm at the base and coming up toward the mount of the Moon on the little finger Mercury side of the hand.
They were clearly formed, indicating opportunities to live and work or even emigrate overseas.
But where? I asked Susanne if relocation was possible, especially as London was so expensive.
While she had considered designing websites, though not connected with the psychic till I showed her the psychic marks, Susanne had been worried about paying her mortgage while getting established as a website designer.
But as a website designer in an area where there is much demand for technological expertise in setting up psychic businesses, that was much more of a possibility.
Susanne said her parents owned a cottage in France, next to their converted farmhouse, and when her relationship broke up they had offered it rent-free.
But she had not been sure if she could make a go of website work until now that she saw her specialist niche.
What is more, if she ran her business from France she could sublet her small London apartment and so have a small nest egg for the future.
When I heard from Susanne six months later, she had moved to France with her daughter and was already getting work, not only as a web designer for New Age websites—there was a huge demand—but she was making even more money managing the websites on behalf of her clients.
Susanne was doing tarot readings and her other love (previously abandoned passion), astrology, for the numerous expatriates and online.
Her daughter was benefiting greatly from daily contact with her grandparents, who lived next door.
Often a palm reading will confirm the validity of half-formed plans dismissed as impractical by revealing strengths and possibilities not considered, sometimes resting in the hand of Potential.
BABIES AND PALMISTRY
A newborn baby has clearly defined Life, Heart, Head, and Fate or Destiny lines, plus other palm lines such as the creative Apollo line, as their basic blueprint; and an Intuition Line if the infant from the beginning smiles at angels, fairies, and deceased ancestors.
The two hands are remarkably similar in the early stages of life.
Even in the first weeks, you can see if a Head (logical thinking) line is stronger, longer, and deeper than the Heart/Emotions line and if the baby has a powerful creative line.
These early trends represent your baby’s potential; and if every six months you study how the lines are developing, you can monitor your child’s evolving Active Hand (the differences in palm lines should be clearer from two to three years old onwards).
You can discover if a bit more creative input is needed, if the little one would benefit from extra stories to bring the imagination out and/or is ready to play with counting toys.
A strong-willed proactive child will have a powerful Fate or Destiny line.
The Life line represents all the stored energy (extra-hungry babies may have very defined ones) and an active infant will continue to manifest a strong Life line throughout childhood.
Indeed, with plenty of outdoor activities over the years, the Active hand Life line will continue to flourish.
You may see competitive tendencies in a straight Fate line aiming for the Jupiter finger even from the first.
However, it may be that future generations, with the emphasis on technological stimulation, will have much stronger Head lines and Mercury mounts than in earlier times.
As your child grows, you may discover that those early trends still form the basic blueprint.
Keep the first digital-camera images of the palms in the baby’s memory box.
PALMISTRY IN YOUR LIFE
Palmistry is the easiest and most portable form not only of divination, but for life planning, and it fits excellently with counseling, mentoring, and life coaching, as well as understanding friends and family and your own hidden strengths and challenges.
So, enjoy this book, take what you will from it, and maybe return to the finer details once you are confidently interpreting palm energies intuitively.
If you are a healer, you may wish to include palm healing in more general healing processes.
We make our own Destiny.
Nothing is fixed; but with the life map of your palms, you can plan the route and avoid obstacles on your pathwayand above all, explore the wonderful treasury of potential still waiting to be unfolded.
—CASSANDRA EASON, April 2018
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cassandra Eason is an international author and broadcaster on all aspects of crystals, folklore, Celtic wisdom, Wicca, sacred sites, earth energies, divinations, and natural magic.
She has studied palmistry for over twentyfive years, and has taught people internationally to interpret and heal through palmistry.
Cassandra has published over eighty books on different aspects of healing, magick, divination, and energy work, including The Complete Crystal Handbook and A Spell a Day.