Chirognomy

Chirognomy is the study of the overall shape of the hands: the length of the fingers, the width of the palm, the texture of the skin, the shape of the nails. Codified in the 19th century by Casimir d’Arpentigny and later taken up by Cheiro, it distinguishes broad hand types (square, conic, spatulate, pointed) tied to temperaments. It complements palmistry, which focuses on the lines and mounts of the palm.

The great families of hands

The French officer Casimir d’Arpentigny, in the 19th century, sorted hands into broad families that Cheiro later popularized: the square hand, methodical and reliable; the spatulate, energetic and enterprising; the conic, alive to beauty; the pointed, intuitive and dreamy; and the mixed, which blends the registers.

Before the lines, the shape

Before looking at a single line, observe your whole hand: the width of your palm, the length of your fingers, the firmness of the flesh. Chirognomy gives you the underlying temperament, the terrain; the lines then come to shade that portrait. Start wide, then refine, the way you read a landscape before a path.

Sources

Cheiro, Cheiro’s Language of the Hand (1894)