I hadn’t planned to write about fingerprints. I’m not a fingerprint expert. I observe fingerprints when I’m examining a person’s character. I look for where a person is most unconventional, original, and rebellious, by looking for whorl prints. Arch prints symbolize a person’s more conventional and practical side. Loops are the most social and adaptable of all fingerprints. Whichever fingers these glyphs adorn determine which qualities dominate corresponding aspects of personality.
Many other professional palmists rely on fingerprints much more than I do. They interpret additional information and value from the same glyphs. The following is a brief explanation from Jennifer Hirsch of the fingerprint method she uses. Jennifer is a palmist and author in Capetown, South Africa. Her contact info is at the end.
Five Element Chirology
~ interpreting your fingerprint glyph patterns ~
Part science, part art, the craft of five-element chirology is a dialogue therapy,
comprising a blend of counselling, coaching, eastern and western palmistry, therapeutic touch, and intuition. While the readers’ intuitive senses are profoundly engaged when analyzing hands, and are inextricable from the process of a chirology consultation, five-element chirology is not a predictive or divinatory craft. As a counselling therapy, five element chirology draws on “the language of the elements” to decode and interpret the hands’ features. Chirologers (from Gr: kheri –hand and logos –knowledge) identify and codify the hands’ shapes, textures and markings to determine people’s temperament, traits, persona, emotional climate, needs, sensitivities, coping strategies, and vocational aptitudes.
Our elements earth, water, fire, air and chi embody certain principles, each with their individual signature qualities. An element is ascribed to every hand feature, so as to specifically evolve an understanding of the physical, emotional, vocational, intellectual and spiritual aspects of our lives.
Our fingerprint (and palmar) glyphs are pre-ordained, fixed and unchangeable cosmic imprints, which receive and emit their own unique resonance. They are energy portals, thresholds through which we can better understand and express our authentic responses. This article presents some interpretations of our six primary glyphs.
Arch (governed by earth) The simple arch flows across the fingertip from one side to the other, and has no *triradius*. Arches look like simple hills. Earth is solid, dependable and slow. If you have many arches you are supportive, reliable, dependable, serious mindedness and home loving.
Loop (governed by water) The loop glyph flows in and out of the same side of the fingertip. One triradius supports the loop. Loops look like a droplet of water. Water is sensitive, fluid and cohesive. If you have many loops you are adaptable, emotional, imaginative and responsive. You need to belong and to merge with a group. Loops are the most common glyph.
Tented Arch (governed by fire) The arch drapes over a centrally positioned triradius. It looks like a pole supporting a tent, or a mountain with a volcano within. Fire is energetic and restless. If you have more than one tented arch, you are enthusiastic, restless and intense. You’ll often need quiet retreats to nature.
Whorl (governed by air) Whorls look like spirals or bull’s eyes. Two triradii support each whorl. Principles of air are distance, detachment and communication. If you have many whorls, you are “the tree that stands in the desert”, independent, original and an individualist. You observe, analyse, and work best alone.
Double Loop (governed by water) Like the yin/yang, two loops intertwine, supported by a triradius on either side. If you have double loops, you may experience a lot of emotional turmoil, vacillation and inner conflict. You are a judicial thinker, and a diplomat, who dislikes bias and prejudice. You are highly sensitive and intuitive.
Peacock’s Eye (governed by water and air) A loop contains a whorl in a teardrop shaped pocket, supported by one triradius. This exquisite glyph is traditionally said to bestow good fortune on its bearer. Owners also have a discerning eye, design flair, a high degree of power of observation, and a developed sense of self-preservation.
The individual finger on which the marking manifests also has its own element rulership, which further refines the analysis, as do other forms and markings in the over-all hand.
In my book, ‘God Given Glyphs – Decoding Fingerprints – Chirology – The How-to of Hand Reading’ I have explained more about how it is that our glyphs show our psychological ‘backdrop’. Glyphs also show the environments in which we feel in harmony, which is why understanding your glyphs can be so helpful with career choice, as well as with relationship compatibility.
God Given Glyphs is available via easy online purchase from http://godgivenglyphs.com/shop/products-page/
A triradius is a skin ridge formation, composed of three directions of skin ridges that converge, to look like three pronged propellers. Triradii share a place on all other known fingerprints.
Jennifer Hirsch
Chirology South Africa
jen@cheiro.co.za
www.godgivenglyphs.com
This comment was sent to me by Richard Unger who authored LIFEPRINTS.
I would like to reply to Jennifer Hirsch’s entry about fingerprints:
Ms. Hirsch, with all due respect, I would like to take issue with your report on fingerprints. I admit out front that your system is the prevalent system offered in print regarding fingerprint interpretation. I wonder if you and other hand readers familiar with this approach are aware of its origins?
Legendary hand reader Noel Jacquin originated the system you write about in the 1920’s. Jacquin is a giant in the world of hand reading and besides his compelling personal history and multitude of published works, he appears to be the first Western professional hand reader to offer a comprehensive system of fingerprint interpretation. As noted, he equates arches with earthy personality characteristics, whorls with individualism (fire), etc. He is lukewarm in his characterization of loops (flexibility – what does he actually mean here?), but since 69% of the fingerprints on the planet are loops anything more definitive would have been shot down long ago. And, better not have any composite whorls or you are, to Noel, difficult.
Every Western hand reader who has written about fingerprints has used this exact approach, most not realizing they are merely re-wording Jacquin. From Hurlimann to Fairchild, break down any fingerprint system, no matter how apparently different in approach, and you wind up with arches = earthy, etc.
Had Jacquin been aware of his contemporary researcher Dr. Cummins, I am sure his conclusions would have been different. Dr. Cummins is the father of dermatoglyphic research (the scientific world’s name for palmistry) and wrote extensively from the 1920’s forward on the subject. He, Penrose, Mulvihill and Smith and others proved that fingerprints leave behind a topographic map of the developing fetal hand.
As you no doubt agree, comparative topography is at the heart of hand analysis. Big thumbed peopled are thumb-ier than small thumbed people, etc. Without going into further detail here (more is available on the IIHA website: http://www.handanalysis.net) had Jacquin known this I am sure he would have altered his system of interpretation accordingly.
I would like to list then my disagreements with the Jacquin system (acknowledging my debt of gratitude for his being first in this area and his many other important contributions to hand analysis):
1. No one fingerprint means anything by itself – all ten are necessary to create a fingerprint map. This is no different from other hand markings: the hands are holistically encoded and all markers must be understood in relation to the hand it is on (A fire heart line on an air shaped hand would express differently than the same heart line on a water hand.)
2. Fingerprints are an unalterable topographic map from prior to birth and can be read as a map to a person’s highest potential Meaning in Life (and it is not a list of personality characteristics – those are shown in lines and hand shape which are changeable).
3. No marker is particularly easier or more difficult, better or worse than any other. Hand readers of Jacquin’s era often spoke this way and Jacquin does this less than his contemporaries – but he still refers to markers this way.
Thank you for the opportunity to present my critique and thank you Jennie and Mark and all you hand readers of the world for the excellent work you do helping people better understand themselves.
4. Despite repeated attempts, I have found no correlation between Jacquin’s personality characteristics and the hand shape or lines of the owner. For instance, I have seen numerous air hands with long upper sections of the fingers (plus a long head line) with multiple arches and earthy hands with short, flat heart lines with all whorls. Those super-mental clients did not report a secret physical-based hobby nor did the super-earthy clients report extra individualism. Sir Francis Galton, the originator of fingerprint use in the Western world and a compulsive statistician, also could not find a direct correlation between print type and personality style / occupation. The key, I believe, is that all ten fingerprints must be counted in tandem and the map revealed is not one’s personality style but one’s deepest meaning point.
Richard Unger
Richard hello
As I explained in the little article, the five element system is that of ‘the language of the elements’. Five element chirology is a broad spectrum dialogue therapy, i.e. not with a primary focus on ‘meaning in life’, or ‘life purpose’/’life lesson’, but rather on specified component parts of the ‘five realms’ of human experience. ‘An element is ascribed to every hand feature, so as to specifically evolve an understanding of the physical, emotional, vocational, intellectual and spiritual aspects of our lives.’
In truth, there really isn’t much ‘offered in print’ about the profoundly user friendly five element system of hand reading, ‘the language of the elements’, at all. For the record, you, Cummins/Midlo and Jaquin are accredited in the bibliography of my book ‘God Given Glyphs’.
Hi Richard, Jennifer and Mark!
This post was brought up at the Modern Handreading forum recently which is how I came to notice it.
Just wanted to add my two cents worth here. I think there is room for both methods to work side by side. The individuality of the fingerprints on each finger and each hand can be combined in a variety of ways/groups for assessment value.
Mark said:
“Whichever fingers these glyphs adorn determine which qualities dominate corresponding aspects of personality.”
Richard said:
“Ms. Hirsch, with all due respect, I would like to take issue with your report on fingerprints. I admit out front that your system is the prevalent system offered in print regarding fingerprint interpretation. I wonder if you and other hand readers familiar with this approach are aware of its origins?”
“The key, I believe, is that all ten fingerprints must be counted in tandem and the map revealed is not one’s personality style but one’s deepest meaning point.”
I feel a little sorry for Jennifer taking the blunt of condemnation at palmists who for decades followed the research and suggestions made by Jacquin. Yet, these characteristics Jacquin assigned have not been abandoned – especially to anyone who uses a method such as elements or life paths to categorize and neatly box them.
What I think it all boils down to regardless of your system, what we are giving ‘personification/personality’ to are frequency patterns. Patterns of the nervous system’s signalling. In this sense each individual pattern is relaying its own waveform, its own frequency.
Perhaps combining the total numbers of these patterns as a group gives a general idea of a group of people with a similar feeling of direction in life, or ‘life purpose’. But, also within these groups are people with different combinations of those prints on different digits, illustrating that even on a particular but general path, frequency, or vibratory level – there are variations – and individuality.
For just these reasons, I think, it’s important to consider and work with the idea of tandems for classifying general categories, but the individuality and various combinations found within and without this tandem approach is perhaps even more important. Unless we are herding humans.
Richard, you make several points which I’d like to respond to:
1) I agree it’s important to read the hands in their entirety. But, I disagree that a fingerprint alone has no ‘meaning’. Although I agree with Christopher Jone’s past statements that ‘nothing means anything’ (as we are assigning our understanding and meaning for communication and pondering), I also recognize the indication/substance/essence that we are combining comes from singular aspects. You have to identify with pigments red and blue to understand how purple is made for instance.
2) Here I think “meaning in life” is being extrapolated from meaning being given to fingerprint types.
3) Agree that earlier writers such as Jacquin and Gettings (and more recently Holtzman) write almost from a position superior to the human condition and project a lot of subjective, personal judgement on the average person.
4) I appreciate very much your saying “Despite repeated attempts, I have found no correlation between Jacquin’s personality characteristics and the hand shape or lines of the owner. For instance, I have seen numerous air hands with long upper sections of the fingers (plus a long head line) with multiple arches and earthy hands with short, flat heart lines with all whorls.”
It’s interesting that when one uses the elements for describing the hands, humans have more loops in general – water – and hand shape is more commonly – fire. I think in the personality type profilers, there is usually a type that is most common and a type or two that is rarely found. My appreciation for your results is that I also think the fingerprints represent far more than personality.
my best regards to all,
Patti
Am just learning from our masters of palmistry. Lovely article with illustration. I am just happy to learn from the many interpretations.
Hiii Mark,
I have a double loop on my middle finger and a peacocks eye on ring finger.
What does it mean?
Kindly let me know.
Thanks,
Bhalchandra
my intuition says that this person has an unconventional career that involves aesthetic considerations, however, my logic says it depends on everything else going on in the hands. Isolated details can have many interpretations depending on what else is happening. Check out Richard Unger or Jennifer Hirsch if you want to learn much more about finger prints.
i have a moon loop on my right palm and a moon whorl on a left palm what does it means???
Too hard to know without seeing the whole picture. Depending on how they’re placed, you probably have a sixth sense – like you know things, but don’t know how you know them. Maybe you know who is calling, even though you weren’t expecting their call, or you think of someone and then they pop up shortly after…
On my right hand(as it’s my dominant hand) I hv peacock’s eye on my index and on little finger( and a tented arch too on the little finger), loop and tented arch on the middle finger, whorl on ring finger and thumb. As for the left hand I have double loop on the thumb, whorl on the index finger, tented arch and a loop on middle finger, ring finger and on the pinky finger(ring finger and pinky finger hv tented arch too) plz I wanna know about my personality I’m totally confused so plz plz tell
I don’t read personality from fingerprints. If you want to learn more about fingerprints and life pupose, you should read Richard Unger’s book LIFEPRINTS.
I have only arches on all ten of my fingers. It has always worried me. What do you think about it? Pray tell
No need to worry. You should consult Richard Unger’s book Lifeprints He’s the expert in the field.
I have ten peacock’s eye and what does that mean
very unique! Never seen it. Contact Richard Unger or Jennifer Hirsch and see what they have to say about it.