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4 -- t h u m b ..&.. f i n g e r s
An Indian Acquisition In mid 2005 I made my first trip to Mumbai/Bombay, and I relished the opportunity to pick up many of the obscure books -- written about even more obscure topics -- which can be found on the Indian subcontinent.
As it turned out the pickings weren't as prodigious as I had imagined, but I did find a book published by the Shrijee's Book International Company called The Study of Palmistry. The book includes such a lengthy and valuable discourse on the interpretation of fingers and thumbs, that I felt it deserved lengthy discussion and quotation here. While not classic Indian Palmistry in itself (the book was supposedly written by French palmist Comte C. De Saint-Germain with an introduction by Adolphe Desbarrolles), The Study of Palmistry reflects mainstream Indian belief systems regarding the hand. And the way it is written in such beautifully obtuse Indian-English, it just makes me suspect that Comte C. De Saint-Germain was actually an Indian after all! An even funnier thing was that when I went back to my hotel in Mumbai and showed the staff what I had bought on my expedition to the book market, they all displayed their own palms and told me their own interpretations of what was written there. It seems that in India, everyone believes in palmistry, even the hotel porters and laundrymen -- in India palmistry is for the masses, and is not just a fringe pursuit for the Middle Class quacks that it is in the West. In short, that is what makes India so cool -- it is spiritual to the very core, even though it may be poor!
Wisdom of the Ages Modern science has caught up with the wisdom of Indian philosophy and religion. Numerous studies have shown that finger length is linked to conditions like heart disease, osteoarthritis, depression and motor neurone disease, as Britain's Daily Mail newspaper reported. Men with short ring fingers are thought to have lower levels of testosterone, a hormone that is known to help prostate tumours grow. (For more on this "insight" and how it relates to traditional Indian palmistry, click here.)
What Your Thumbs and Fingers Mean All right, this is the low down from The Study of Palmistry, which it turns out is considered a classic Indian book on palmistry. According to the alleged author Comte C. De Saint-Germain: "As I stated several times already, in the appellation of Fingers, Palmistry does not include the Thumb, which is honoured with a separate and distinct treatment as playing a considerable part in the economy of the hand. There are therefore only four fingers to Palmistic hands; they are designated as follows, the first name being the one I use exclusively through this work: The First Finger or Index Finger, the Finger of Jupiter. The Second Finger or Middle Finger (Medius), or Finger of Saturn. The Third Finger or Ring Finger (Annularius), or Ring of Apollo. The Fourth Finger or Little Finger (Auricularius), or Finger of Mercury."
How About the Thumb ---- That is all well and fine, but what does the honourable Comte C. De Saint-Germain have to say about the thumb? In The Study of Palmistry it is written:
"All modern Palmists attach such importance to the symptoms revealed by the Position and Shape of the Thumb that it seems to me essential to inform the student why, physiologically speaking, the Thumb ranks so high among the constituting elements of Palmistry. For that purpose I shall ask permission, in this chapter and the following, to quote freely from Captain d'Arpentigny's standard work, La Science de la Main:
"The superior animal is signalized by his possession of a hand. The Man is signalized by his possession of a thumb.
"The thumb of the monkey, which is barely flexible, and for this reason barely able to be opposed (be made to act in conjunction with any of the other fingers), is looked upon by many naturalists as nothing more than a moveable nail. Whereas, on the contrary, the human thumb is so situated and organized as to be able always to act in an opposite direction to the other fingers, and it is by this power that it symbolizes the inner or moral sense which we oppose to our will, and through it to the temptations of our instincts and our senses.
Towards a Deeper Exploration ---- There you have it: you can tell a lot about a person's character by the type of fingers and thumbs they have. Want to learn more? Futhermore -- do you want to discover what the wearing of rings signifies, and how you can wear particular kinds of rings on particular fingers to enhance your own powers, or soften your faults? Welcome to Rob Sullivan's Indian Palmistry Finger and Thumbs Divination Lab, with some input from the illustrious Comte C. De Saint-Germain. Let's start the journey here! Click on one of the links below, to find out exactly what each finger -- and two thumbs! -- mean for you and your life.
Clairvoyance | Hindu Gods | Hindu Saints | Hindu Thought | Indian Palmistry | Indian Medicine | Yoga | Mantras | Yantras | Subcontinental Travel Guide
Contact the author Rob Sullivan at coderot@gmail.com. Anticopyright October 2012/July 2004.
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