Palm reading - read lifelines?

Hand-reading (chirology) is an esoteric method of recognizing the characteristics and fate of a human being by the shape of the hand, such as the length of the fingers, the fingers and fingernails. Of particular importance are the hand lines in the palm of your hand. Palm reading is only a part of the physiognomy, ie the idea of ​​determining one's fate and its traits on the basis of the external characteristics of a human being. Among other things, the length and shape of the nose, the width of the forehead and the size of the ears are used.

contents

• Chirology - The most important facts
• What does chirology recognize??
• An old story
• A pseudoscience of the Enlightenment
• Physiognomy and genocide
• Chirology today
• Why do people believe in palm readers??
• The forer effect
• Some statements are always correct
• The feature-positve effect
• The confirmation bias

Chirology - The most important facts

• Palmistry is an esoteric method that draws conclusions about the character and characteristics of a human being from hand lines, finger shape and so on.
• Chirology has existed since antiquity and is one of the magical-prescientific practices with which our ancestors explained the world.
• Chirology belongs to the physiognomy, which is supposed to recognize the character of a person by external characteristics.
• Physiognomics played a disastrous role in the "racial science" of the 19th and 20th centuries and was an essential ideology in the genocide of the National Socialists.
• Scientists reject hand-reading today. In contrast, among esoterics it is often still considered "secret science".

In hand-reading (chirology) the setting, ie the environment, plays a not unimportant role in order to be credible. (Image: DedMityay / fotolia.com)

What does chirology recognize??

Palmistry, on the one hand, indicates qualities such as warm-heartedness, ambition, self-esteem, on the other hand interests and a "life force". The shape of the hand and fingers should indicate the susceptibility to diseases as well as the general health.
For example, only the shape of the fingers should express various aspects:

• Long fingers stand for intelligence, but people with short fingers are not the brightest.
• Large phalanges distinguish someone who thinks slowly but works diligently.
• Spatula-shaped fingers, however, have energetic people
• Square fingers indicate a cautious character.
• People with thick and short fingers only think of themselves.
• Individuals with long slender fingers have a special sense of beauty, but are also introverted.
• "Wurstfinger" stand for someone who also likes to eat sausages, that is prone to eating and other pleasures.

Particularly important should be the hand lines, because they allegedly show the life of a person. That's how it is

• the stomach line,
• the lifeline,
• the heart line,
• the sun line,
• the partnership lines,
• the Neptune line,
• the Uranus line,
• the fate line
• or the head line.

A straight and long life line therefore stands for a long life without crises. If this line is broken, it is supposed to indicate life crises. In the love lines, a pronounced dimple should indicate a marriage.

An old story

Chirology dates back to early antiquity and is handed down from India as well as from Egypt, Babylon and Assyria. In these early civilizations, the hand-reading was among the sciences and was among the methods of doctors. It was closely related to astrology, the belief that it was able to say something about a human being from the state of the stars. To "read" from the hands was - besides the interpretation of the face - the most important "reading" of physiognomy. Since the hands are one of the most complex parts of the visible human body (next to the face) and countless muscles and nerves are involved in their functioning, it is not surprising that it was already clear to our ancestors that they were "mysterious". interact with our thoughts and feelings.

In fact, movements of the hands, for example, to ward off a blow or grab something unconsciously. If a conscious thought were necessary, for example in a fall, to trigger a nervous reaction, humans would not have survived long in evolution. Without a knowledge of unconscious processes in the body, it was natural to assume in your hands a divine, astrological or somehow magical predetermination.

Aristotle, Pythagoras, Hippocrates, Pliny, Seneca, and Galen trusted physiognomy and the rediscovery of antiquity led to a boom in "body reading" in the Renaissance, which became an important branch of the occult arts. It was in a similar relationship to modern psychology as alchemy to chemistry.

Palm reading has a long history dating back to antiquity. (Image: Mannaggia / fotolia.com)

A pseudoscience of the Enlightenment

The Enlightenment took over the physiognomy and meant to liberate it from the supernatural, so it considered it a rational science. However, in the Age of Enlightenment physiognomy was more rampant in popular literature than among scientists.

In fact, scientific insights into it: Georges Cuvier, the founder of paleontology and comparative anatomy had found that the exact anatomy of an animal's life can be determined and decoded true from a single bone find the entire skeleton of an animal - as, for example, today's dinosaur researchers do.
This comparative anatomy, combined with a Vorfreudschen protopsychology brought the facial and palm reading a hype: If a dog could behave with the physique of a dog not otherwise behave like a dog, then this could be transferred with a little imagination on the character of a human.
If a person with long thin fingers, the "pianist's hands," found it easier to manipulate the keys of a piano, it was easy to associate that the fingers were "just made" by anyone. If a glutton who shoveled food excessively had short and thick fingers, it was easy to conclude that the short and fat fingers marked him as an addict.

Such associative thinking and the consequent conclusions make up a large part of our assessments: we connect what we see with judgments and put both into causality. Whether this cause-effect applies is indifferent to our synapses. In most cases, this unconscious association as a coordinate system in our environment is completely sufficient. Conscious reflection and analysis of real causes and effects, on the other hand, require conscious and slow thinking - for this the brain needs more energy. We therefore only use it when the association reaches its limits and brings us into problematic situations, for example.

Physiognomy and genocide

In the Renaissance, we could dismiss the revival of palmistry as a semi-scientific, semi-religious whimsy, but it was not really dangerous. But even here caution is needed: the early modern era was the epoch of systematic witch hunt. Tens of thousands of innocent people were burned at stake in Europe - for "acts" that could not have happened, such as sexual intercourse with the devil. Physiognomics played an important role. So the pursuers searched for the devil's mark, a conspicuous birthmark or liver spot; In some places, someone with the same length of index and middle finger was suspected of being a human being who turns into a wolf.

Worse, however, were the 19th and 20th centuries. "Racialists" explained the religious-esoteric reading of characteristics from physical traits to "science", thus justifying racism and eugenics. The shape of the skull should explain the differences between "higher" and "lower" human races. Criminology also said that it was possible to recognize criminals in the body, skull and hands.

Physiognomics is not only considered unscientific in science, it is also completely outlawed because of its evil role in racism, discrimination and the genocide of the Nazis. By contrast, "psycho-physiognomics" is often considered "secret knowledge" among esoterics, as is chirology. They also refer to sources of folk thinkers and racists who practiced body reading.

In palm reading, the hand lines are assigned different charter characteristics and life cycles. (Image: Werner Giessing / fotolia.com)

Chirology today

So today still read esoterics, astrologers and even some naturopaths in the hands. Scientifically, there is nothing in the connection of the hand form and the career or the characteristics of a person. Although it can be seen from the calluses of one hand, whether someone is working hard physically, or dirt under his fingernails, that he cares little about body hygiene - but that is by no means the cause of his hands.

That hand lines have something to signify is a classic fallacy. Every human being is an individual, both in appearance and in his abilities and qualities. His hand lines are as individual as his fingerprint and character. But that does not mean, in reverse, that this character could be derived from the fingerprint and the hand lines.

Why do people believe in palm readers??

Palm reading works much like daily horoscopes as a mixture of Bamum statements and Cold Reading. Bamum statements refer to ascriptions that are so spongy that those affected can almost always agree with them. Cold Reading is applied psychology. In doing so, the "palm reader" does not draw his conclusions from the lines of the hand but from conscious and even more unconscious signals of his counterpart.

The forer effect

The effect of chirology, astrology and other pseudoscientific methods can be explained very well with the Forer effect. The name derives from a test that the psychologist Bertram Forer gave to his students in 1948. He had written statements from arbitrary daily horoscopes together.

The text read: "You need the affection and admiration of others, with a tendency to self-criticism. Although your personality has some weaknesses, you can generally offset them. They have considerable abilities that are lying fallow. Outwardly disciplined and controlled, you feel anxious and insecure. Sometimes you doubt the correctness of your decisions. You prefer a certain amount of change and you are dissatisfied when restricted by prohibitions and restrictions. You are proud of your independent thinking and do not take other people's testimony unproven. They consider it unwise to open themselves to others too frankly. Sometimes you behave extroverted, affable and open-minded, sometimes introverted, skeptical and reserved. Your wishes may seem rather unrealistic. And? Do you recognize yourself? On a scale from zero (false) to five (perfect): How well did I rate you? "

Forer now claimed to each individual student that he had described this description extra for him. Overall, the subjects rated the approval with 4.3. The arbitrary text, which had nothing to do with the individual human beings, led to the fact that the individuals recognized themselves to 86 percent of them. As a result, several similarly constructed tests were repeated and the result was almost the same every time.

The calluses on the hands of a human say more about a person's life than the lines of the hand. (Image: ARochau / fotolia.com)

Some statements are always correct

So it is with the palmistry. The "art" is to make each statement so unclear that the customer can agree. He says, for example, based on Forer's text: "Externally disciplined and controlled, you feel anxious and uncertain, that shows the length of your middle finger," most would agree. For a person who does not act completely uncontrollably will always try to discipline himself externally when he feels anxious. The success rate of palm readers could be even greater than in Forer's text, because he can tune his "predictions" to the person sitting opposite him. But this has nothing to do with a supposed meaning of "heart or lifelines", but is a knowledge of human nature, which requires a good seller as a trickster.

The feature-positve effect

Forer's test not only works through universal statements, but also by being implicitly flattering. This is called Feature-Positive-Effect. "Sometimes you behave extroverted, affable and open-minded, sometimes even introverted, skeptical and reserved." This not only covers a whole spectrum, but also suggests to the other person a behavior appropriate to the situation. People prefer to agree with that when someone says "they behave like the last idiot". Whether it applies or not does not matter very much.

The confirmation bias

A typical error of reason, which facilitates palmistry for hand readers, is the confirmation bias or acknowledgment error. It means that we like to accept what corresponds to our self-image and filter out what does not correspond to this self-image. So we outline an idea of ​​ourselves that is consistent for us. A palm reader gathering a crowd of customers now has the human understanding to tell their listeners what they want to hear. When someone goes to the palm reader and believes in this esoteric technique, he also filters out everything that de facto does not correspond to reality. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)