The Elementary hand: thick, broad palm with coarse skin and short, stiff fingers. Victorian palmistry associated it with basic drives, physical strength, and limited intellectual range. The interpretation was explicitly hierarchical in its era — this has not aged well. The hand type itself (broad, thick, strong) is real; the Victorian characterisation of its owner is not.
The Square hand: rectangular palm with roughly equal finger length, blunt fingertips, clear straight lines. Reliability, practicality, punctuality, and a deep comfort with rules and routine. The backbone of Victorian society, in the view of its palmists.
The Spatulate hand: distinctive spatulate (spade-shaped) fingertips that flare wider at the tip. Inventors, engineers, explorers — people for whom the world is a problem to be solved. Action-oriented, restless, original.
The Philosophic hand: long, knotted fingers (prominent knuckle joints), narrow palm, thoughtful lines. The philosophical mind: analytical, systematic, drawn to abstraction, occasionally impractical. Victorian palmistry saw this hand in academics and theologians.
The Artistic hand: smooth, tapered fingers, soft palm, elegant overall form. Creative sensitivity, aesthetic awareness, emotional depth, and a certain impracticality about daily life.
The Psychic hand: the most extreme form of the artistic type — very narrow, very long fingers, almost impossibly delicate. The rarest type and, in Victorian palmistry, the most spiritually gifted and the least practically equipped.
The Mixed hand: the most common type, showing features from two or more categories. Read by identifying the dominant combination.
