“The Lips of Wisdom are Closed, except to the Ears of Understanding”

I’m practicing social distancing. It’s a challenging experience for me as I have a basic need to touch, feel, and spend intimate quality time with people. It feels unreal to not be holding a client’s hands, looking into their eyes, and having a meaningful dialogue about their current and major life issues, challenges, responsibilities, and rewards. In the past, I’ve refused to give remote readings, except for long term clients. I never envisioned using Skype and choosing PayPal to communicate with clients. Now I’ve been forced to rethink my choices and decisions.

I discovered palmistry well over forty years ago while I was designing and building custom furniture in a loft in NYC. My client’s wife was a serious professional palmist. She looked at my hands and began to tell me about myself. I was totally mind-blown! My perfect teacher had appeared at the perfect time. I soon became her best student. She taught me that hands are topographical maps of a person’s character in past, present, and future. Anyone can learn to navigate their map and chart their destiny with the right information, instruction, and guidance.

As I was learning to read hands, I also began taking astrology and tarot classes and workshops. I felt inspired by several amazing teachers, and by how easily accessible the information was and how precise interpretations of esoteric sciences and arts can be. Differences between the metaphysical languages quickly became evident. While astrology shows a person’s potentials, hands reveal what a person has actually done, is doing, and is likely to do with their potentials. Valuable information and precious insights are in plain sight at the ends of our arms. There’s no need for accurate birth info, complex calculations, or infinite combinations, permutations, and probabilities.

Astrology is a symbolic language that I use primarily for identifying behavioral patterns, examining life cycles, and understanding timing. Hands are much better for revealing basic character. Tarot is best for getting at hidden issues, like learning about other people, what’s actually happening in a particular situation, and examining what can’t be seen in hands or horoscopes. A seasoned reader can readily see a person’s issues and know how to guide them to change their thinking and behavior. The rest is counseling and doing the work.

Astrology was obscure for thousands of years. In 1968, with no e- social networking to make astrology go ‘viral’, Linda Goodman published “Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs” and popularized astrology. Everyone was suddenly asking, “What’s your sun sign?” Magazines and newspapers everywhere began publishing horoscope columns.

Palmistry is older and more accessible than astrology. As I learned to read hands, I was mind boggled that everyone wasn’t asking, “May I see your hands”? I decided my mission was to popularize palmistry. I’d write a book. I called Linda Goodman’s literary agent to secure an endorsement from him. He told me he wanted nothing to do with anyone or anything esoteric. He didn’t need the money or the hassle. He’d become wealthy by stealthily acquiring e-rights for all the best selling authors and their works before the big paperback publishers realized they had never addressed e-rights in their original publishing contracts.

I self-published HAND BOOK, a paperback, which took a lot of work and time and ended up awakening me to the fact that I was unable to generate public interest in palmistry. I printed books because low-tech esoteric folk asked to see, smell, and feel a ‘real book’. My e-book version is called REAL PALMISTRY. It’s much better than the paperback because it’s less expensive, better quality, full color, and has links to corresponding information. I poured my time, energy, and resources into promoting books and sold less than 5,000 copies.

I remember how my family used to joke about kids from Pittsburgh who left home to find their Guru or better yet, to become a Guru, and then flaunt it. Yet here I was, a serious palmist, trying to share a language with many, that few will ever know or understand, and hoping that people would somehow get it. As a young person, I would not have imagined being on ‘The View’, ‘Martha Stewart Living’, CBS News, Fox’s Good Day NY, cable, and satellite TV. I was surprised at how many people were impressed and excited about my being on TV, but not curious about their own hands. I was interviewed by major magazines and newspapers everywhere and featured in dozens of articles about reading hands to no avail. Perhaps palmistry is destined to remain a gypsy fortunetelling scam in most people’s minds.

Palmistry has been good to me. I’m not complaining. I love my clients and they love me. We can have intimacy and clear boundaries. There are no ‘me too’ complaints. As a five-minute hand reader at special events, I get to go right to the gusto and directly address a person’s current and major life issues and challenges. My goal is to be constructive, helpful, and leave my clients feeling hopeful. I’ve read many of the richest and poorest people in the world. All hands are equal. I still dream of palmistry becoming “viral”, but that idea has been relegated to a back burner while survival has become my priority.

If hindsight truly is 2020, now is the time to clearly see everything as it is and not how we want it to be. Hopefully, social distancing and mass consciousness will help us be more introspective, curious, and concerned for ourselves, others, and our planet. Learning to read our own and each other’s hands would certainly help.

If you’re curious about palmistry, check out my refurbished website, read some content, click on some images that link to short videos, and share your thoughts, ideas, opinions, advice, suggestions, and epiphanies. All communication is welcome, appreciated, and valued! www.markseltman.com