Reading the hand

Hand shapes: earth, air, fire and water hands

Before a single line, a reader looks at the outline of the hand. Two measurements sort it into one of four types, and you can take both with a ruler in a minute.

Two measurements

The modern system asks only two things. First, is the palm square or oblong? Measure from the top crease of the wrist to the base of the middle finger, then across the palm at the knuckles. If the two are about equal, the palm is square. If the length clearly wins, it is oblong.

Second, are the fingers short or long? Compare the middle finger with the length of the palm. Fingers that come close to the palm in length are long; fingers that fall well short of it are short. Most hands are not borderline on both counts, and when one is, readers lean on the other.

The four types

• Earth hand: square palm, short fingers. Often firm, with few but deep lines. Read for steadiness, practicality and a preference for what can be touched and built.
• Air hand: square palm, long fingers. Read for curiosity and talk: a mind that wants to understand things and explain them to someone.
• Fire hand: oblong palm, short fingers. Usually a busy palm with many lines. Read for energy, enthusiasm and acting first, thinking second.
• Water hand: oblong palm, long fingers. Often slender, with a fine web of lines. Read for sensitivity, imagination and a strong response to atmosphere and people.

These are descriptions, not ranks. No type is luckier, cleverer or kinder than another, and a reader who tells you otherwise is selling something.

Where the system came from

The elements are younger than most people assume. The first serious hand typology was Casimir d'Arpentigny's in 1839, with seven types such as "spatulate", "conic" and "philosophic", sorted by fingertip shape and knuckles. The four-element version, mapping hand shapes onto earth, air, fire and water, belongs to the twentieth century and is most often credited to Fred Gettings' The Book of the Hand (1965). It stuck because it is simple: two questions, four answers. For the people who shaped the older tradition, see Cheiro and Benham.

How shape changes the reading of the lines

The type is the frame the lines are read inside. A deeply cut, simple set of lines is what the tradition expects on an earth hand, so it is unremarkable there; the same pattern on a water hand stands out. A long, sloping head line means one thing on an air hand built for ideas and something different on a fire hand that rarely sits still. That is why a careful reading names the hand type first.

What a photograph can show

Hand shape is the most camera-proof thing in palmistry. Fine creases vanish in flat light; the outline of a palm does not. Get the whole hand in frame, fingers together and straight, with the wrist crease visible, so the palm can be measured against itself. How to photograph your palm has the rest.

None of this predicts anything. Hand types are a vocabulary for describing temperament, and our readings say which feature each claim came from, so you can judge the working yourself.