A short history of palm reading in the UK – and a guide to how it’s supposed to work
In August 1676, a court in Hertford heard a case of fraud against Joseph Haynes, James Domingo and Domingo’s “pretended wife” Sarah. The three had been travelling between local towns telling fortunes.
Apparently, Domingo had promised one woman that she would marry a “pretty tall merry-speaking” farmer’s son with a mole on his chin and a respectable £80 to his name. Haynes, meanwhile, boasted that his divinatory efforts had won him £5, three maidenheads and a broken shin.
The court’s decision is not recorded, but the case encapsulates the divided opinion of divination in the 17th century. Although commonly condemned by the authorities, fortune-telling was a popular and potentially profitable art.
We do not know how exactly the three miscreants practised, but most travelling fortune-tellers studied facial features (physiognomy) or read palms (palmistry or chiromancy). The idea that there was occult meaning etched in the body’s marks, lines, features and moles stretches back to antiquity.
The body’s outer form supposedly reflected the state of the soul. Also, it was believed that the body was intimately entwined with the wider cosmos.
Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.
In a popular work from the early 16th century, the German physician Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa explained that the body’s appearance and behaviour invited particular “celestial gifts”. Palmistry was the art of interpreting this “harmonical correspondency”.
However, Christian authorities were largely unimpressed. Theologians dismissed palmistry as superstitious, or argued that it was presumptuous to pry into God’s plan. The Catholic church officially condemned divinatory arts in a papal bull of 1586. The English Protestant minister William Perkins (1558–1602) wrote that palmistry was an “abomination” that was “detested of God, and ought also to be detestable in the eyes of Gods [sic] people”.
Official mistrust of palmistry was spurred by its association with “Egyptian” fortune-tellers (often shortened to “gypsies”). This label was used for travellers of diverse origins, but especially the Romani diaspora from India.
Romani travellers first reached central and western Europe in the 15th century and many claimed to have come from Egypt. Ancient Egyptians were famed for their occult wisdom and the association probably helped Romani groups to win credit as fortune-tellers. Nevertheless, they met with widespread persecution.
In England, a 1530 parliamentary act officially banished the “outlandish” people “calling themselves Egyptians” who allegedly travelled about the country, swindling people by pretending divinatory prowess.
All the same, magical practitioners at various social levels continued to offer palm-reading services. And from the 17th century, pamphlets offered guides to interpreting your own hands.
An anonymous work published in London in 1700 claimed to fully resolve all questions about human life through “the Rules of Art used by the Ancient and Famous Egyptian Magi, or Wise Men and Philosophers”.
Here I offer some guidance on how you’re supposed to read your palm based on that work. It may contradict itself hopelessly. It may promise you a grisly death. But if the stars are kind, you too could rise by your good deeds and find a spouse lauded for their virtue – or, at least, a merry man with £80 and a nice mole.
How to read a palm
Always consult the left hand.
1: Life line
Look for the semi-curved line that starts between the thumb and index finger and runs down toward the wrist.
If this line is long and clear, not broken with little cross-lines, you will be healthy and live to an old age. However, if the uppermost part of the line is forked or jagged, you will often be sick.
If there are three stars intersecting with the line, you may suffer “great losses and calamities”. If the line intertwines with the table line, you will gain “honour and riches”.
2: Table line
Look for a horizontal line on your upper palm that starts near the index or middle finger and runs to beneath the little finger.
If this line is broad and vivid in colour, you will be healthy and contented. However, if the line is forked at the end, you will gain riches by trickery and soon lose them again. If it branches towards the index or middle finger, you will rise to a prestigious position.
3: Middle line
Look for a horizontal line across the middle part of the palm.
If there are lots of small lines in between this and the table line, you will be sick when you are young but make a recovery. If there is a halfmoon in this line, you will suffer from “cold and watery diseases”, but a sun or a star promises prosperity.
4: Line of Venus
Look for an arching line that runs near the base of your middle, ring and little fingers.
If this line forks near the index finger, you may be ruined by keeping bad company. If there are crosses on this line near the index and little fingers, you are “inclined to a virtuous and modest course of life”. The author claims that wise men employ this method to choose suitable wives.
5: Liver line
Look for a vertical line that starts beneath the ring or little finger and runs to the base of the palm.
If this line is straight, you are of sound judgement. If it is crooked you are deceitful. If this line and the middle line begin near one other, it means foolishness in men and foretells injury by overwork for women.
6: Plain of Mars
Plains are flat areas of the palm that can be associated with difference parts of life. The plain of Mars is the centre of your palm.
If the lines in this plain are crooked, you will fall by your enemies. If you have lines beginning at the middle of your wrist and reaching into the plain of Mars, you will get into lots of fights. If there are large crosses in the plain, you will, if a man, rise by good deeds or, if a woman, have many husbands and children.
Martha McGill does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.