CHIROMANCY (from the Greek χείρ = hand and μαντεία = divination [Fr. chiromancie, Sp. quiromancia, Eng. palmistry, Ger. Chiromantie]). - Chiromancy is the doctrine and art that sets out to investigate and discover, by means of examining the form and the signs (lines, protuberances, etc.) of the hand, everything concerning an individual, in the past, the present and the future. The etymological definition is narrower, and considers only the prediction of the future: in fact, properly and historically, divination is the power of knowing future things, communicated by God to men.
The doctrinal foundation of chiromancy must be sought in the idea the ancients had of man. The earth is the center of the universe. On the earth, the center and summit of physical and psychic and natural virtues is man. Man is therefore the center and, in a certain way, the synthesis of the world, so that in human vicissitudes the universal harmony is summed up and concluded. These are the conceptions that inspired astrology, according to which the motions and vicissitudes of the universe would have a counterpart and a repercussion in man and on the course of his life. Thus, from the study of the motion and the vicissitudes of the stars, it is believed and hoped that one can foresee the course of future human vicissitudes. But in man the hand is the wonderful and principal instrument of his acting: therefore the hand is like the synthesis of activity, that is, of the life of man, because to live means precisely to act, to work. Then, in the hand, that is, in its form and in its accidental features (lines, protuberances or mounts, etc.) there must already be traced the sum of human life. This is why many chiromantic signs (for example, the palmar protuberances) are still today designated by astrological names (mount of Jupiter, of Saturn, etc.).
The method of investigation is very simple. Having first assigned a lexicon of the principal forms and signs of the hand, and fixed the meaning corresponding to each of these signs and forms, everything is reduced, in the first instance, to verifying which of the elements of the lexicon are found in the hand of the subject under examination. Generally the left hand is examined, because it is less deteriorated by use. This, however, is not enough, since the forms and the signs must moreover be interpreted according to their greater or lesser development, and according to their mutual relations. The interpretation is simple and is based on popular criteria: for example, if the line of life is long and unbroken, longevity is certain; if the line of the mind is short, one has intellectual poverty.
EVALUATION
Modern c., although it has been freed, through the efforts of its practitioners, from astrological superstitions, and set forth in a language with a scientific tinge, always remains a doctrine without foundation. Indeed, it is without foundation a priori, because the meanings of the chiromantic signs and forms are established a priori. But these meanings are false also a posteriori, because no statistics exist that justify them through a sufficient number of scientifically controlled observations; on the contrary, the few statistics that have been compiled demonstrate the assumption. At this point, however, c. must be distinguished from chiro logy, which, apart from some very dubious inferences about the relations between the forms of the hand and the psychology of the subject, is used for the identification of criminals, principally through the study of fingerprints (dactyloscopy) and palm prints, and in the investigation of paternity.
Since c., therefore, wishes to obtain knowledge out of all proportion, indeed without any connection to the elements that ought to provide it, it is a vulgar form of superstition (v.), and must be grouped with the so-called occult sciences. It admits an absurd determinism, contrary to science and to Revelation, claiming to wish to specify what depends on the freedom of God (the line of life) or of man (career, marriage, etc.). For these reasons c. is included in the list of divinatory arts, enumerated and condemned by Sixtus V with the bull Coeli et terra of 5 Jan. 1585. The reading of publications that deal with c. is regulated according to the norms established in the CIC, can. 1399, n. 7. Nevertheless chirology, of which mention was made above, is permitted in the sense explained by Vermeersch: « per se patet nullam illicitam exerceri divinationem ab iis qui ex vultu, membrorum dispositionem, lineis et partibus manus, scripturae notis, temperiem corporis, immo etiam animi propensiones et affectus probabiliter coniciunt » (Theologia moralis, II, Rome 1928, n. 244).
HISTORICAL NOTE
Chiromancy has been known since antiquity, and it may be said to have been practiced in all ages and among all the most important ethnic groups, such as the Chinese, Indians, Greeks, Egyptians, Chaldeans, Assyrians, Hebrews and Romans. For example, in antiquity Aristotle dealt with chiromancy (he describes the lines of the hand in relation to the duration of life), as did Pliny (Nat. Hist., XI, 273), who refers to Aristotle, Juvenal (VI, 581), and others. Chiromancy flourished especially in the Renaissance through the work of many authors, among whom are noteworthy Paracelsus, Cardano, Batt. Cocles (Physiognomia et chir., Bologna 1504), Aless. Achillini (Opera omnia, Venice 1545), Giovanni della Porta (Della chirofisonomia, translation from the Latin by P. Sarnelli, Naples 1677), etc. Then, having almost disappeared from the beginning of the 1600s, chiromancy was brought back into favor in France and throughout the world in the 19th century through the work of D'Arpentigny and Desbarolles.
Bibliography12 works
Alighiero Tondi