It is now known that 'Chinese Hand Analysis' is entirely made up by Terry Dukes. Much of the contents of his book are drawn from C20th English language palmistry books. To these are added certain new ideas invented by Terry Dukes. The main feature of 'Chinese Hand Analysis' is the use of the elements Earth, Water, Fire and Air to explain all aspects of handreading and to name every feature of the hands. However, the work clearly has a basis on many of the teachings and ideas familiar from Western Palmistry, just expressed through the medium of the language of the four elements.

Hundreds of books on Chinese culture exist, all of which confirm that the Chinese recognise five elements: earth, water, fire, wood and metal. When I pressed Terry with this obvious fact, he claimed that this is Taoist and that the secret Chinese Buddhist tradition uses earth, water, fire and air. But no such tradition of five elements used within Chinese handreading existed. Terry lied.

His system of elements bears no relation to any of the material actually known about Chinese palmistry. Soulier de Morant was one of the finest Sinologists Europe has ever produced and researched Chinese palmistry to an extraordinary degree. The five Chinese elements permeate every aspect of Chinese thought and cross all linguistic, ethnic, religious and cultural sections of Chinese society. It is nonsense to suggest that such ideas are 'Taoist'. Arlington also learned everything he could in his years in China. Neither of them heard a whisper of this 'secret Buddhist palmistry' tradition. When you consider that they both spent decades researching Chinese palmistry inside China, a country that Terry Dukes has never even been to, it seems very strange that they never came across these 'Buddhist' traditions. Other texts in English by Chinese palmists are also quite oblivious to the sort of material presented in Terry's book.

However, some of the sources of his book are quite obviously plagiarised - as if to give some hint of authenticity for his claims. For instance, the hand-drawn illustrations on page 1 and page 138 are taken from HA Giles' article on 'Palmistry in China'. These are not from 'ancient Chinese texts' at all but from turn of the century indigenous Chinese palmistry! The texts that Giles discusses are, in any case, clearly of Confucian orientation rather than being either Buddhist or Taoist. It is curious that Terry should reproduce such illustrations when, surely, he has originals of 'ancient esoteric Buddhist' manuscripts that he could have included illustrations from. These are, in fact, conspicuously absent from his book and instead we find many pictures of hands from the Chinese palmistry tradition which only serve to argue against his point that Chinese palmistry in China was Buddhist. Of course, Terry makes no reference to HA Giles' work in his bibliography.

The scant use of elemental symbolism within Japanese esoteric Buddhism also shows a system entirely at odds with what is presented by Terry within his book. One book concerning itself with the esoteric significance of mudras (ritual hand gestures) labels the fingers in quite a different way from the system used in 'Chinese Hand Analysis'. However, it is clear that this Buddhist text has no knowledge or interest in palmistry and its purpose in describing the fingers in this way has nothing to do with reading hands. What is especially curious is that this work derives from the same esoteric Buddhist tradition (Shingon/Chen Yen) that Terry claims is his own school. The variance in his approach to the hand as compared with this actual esoteric Buddhist tradition shows that the source of his knowledge is not what he claims it to be.

The system of elements that Terry uses is, of course, the four elements system of the Western esoteric tradition. The first palmistry book to use these elements is the work of Fred Gettings 'The Book of the Hand', published in 1965. Gettings was a student of the Western esoteric tradition and had over 50 books published on the subject. He proposed the use of the four elements to describe the four element handshape classification which he innovated. He claimed that the hands of these four types would also typically display fingerprints and lines of that type. Gettings is also the first author to suggest a system of quadranture of the hand as a means of interpreting its features.

There can be no doubt that Terry Dukes got the bases for 'his' ideas from that book. It is obvious that his ideas are much closer to those of Fred Gettings than they are to either esoteric Buddhism or Chinese palmistry. The fantastic elaboration of the theory of earth, water, fire and air as applied to the hand is Terry's own invention, coupled together with ideas he has drawn from any other books he could find that uses this elemental symbolism. However, this whole system is neither Buddhist nor Chinese; it really deserves to be called something else.

Compiled from letters and essays by Andrew Fitzherbert, 1992-99
(reproduced with permission)