'The Hand Reveals'
by Dylan Warren-Davis
(Element Books 1993)

This is a curious book. The author was once a member of the Cheirological Society and originally learnt the art of hand analysis within the Society circa 1979 and does, at least, accredit the Society teachers with being the original source of his interest in the hand. However, since leaving the Society in 1987 he seems to have gone hs own way and formulated a rather idiosyncratic and syncretic approach to the study of the hand which speciously presents itself as being the continuation of an authentic Western tradition of cheiromancy deriving from the teachings of such C16th/C17th writers as Robert Fludd, Paracelsus and Johannes Rothmann. All is not what it seems with this book.

Dylan is an accomplished herbalist and astrologer and much of what he attempts within this book is to link together the wisdom within these arts with the practice of handreading. That in itself is not necessarily a bad idea - and if there is any man who could successfully link the two arts of astrology and cheirology it would be Dylan. However, what he tries to say here is that what he is presenting is a direct continuation of the work of the earlier seventeenth century chiromancers. But, as anyone who knows anything of the writings of these earlier authors, this quite simply just is not the case. There is nothing within the writings of Fludd, Paracelsus and Rothmann et al which is anything remotely like that which Dylan has presented here. For instance, Paracelsus didn't even write a book on chiromancy - as much as he knew about handreading is shown by the fact that he thought that there could be a chiromancy of rivers and plants as well as of hands!! To anyone who knows anything about the history of European cheirology, the errors in Dylan's presentation are obvious. Whilst he begins with an interesting exposition on hermetic symbolism, simple errors start within the chapter on the elements where he evidently confuses the principles of the elements Air and Ether. Interestingly, more 'keywords' are given for the Air element than any other - and quite a number of the keywords listed as principles of the Ether element are in fact Air element principles! Why he should confuse these basic things is an interesting question to ask, but becomes clear, perhaps, when one remembers that Dylan himself has an Air shaped hand and a predominance of the Air element within other features of his hands! I'm sure he thinks the ideas presented within this book are very esoteric and very spiritual!!

The chapters explaining astrological, planetary and humoral symbolism is one of the more interesting sections of the book. However, this is followed by the usual tedious section on the mounts of the hand and their astrological rulers. Later, he applies astrological symbolism to the handshapes too - in a manner akin to that of the reknowned seventeenth century esoteric master, William Benham! (Benham was a scientific hand analyst living at the turn of the twentieth century). Needless to say, none of the sixteenth and seventeenth century chiromancers classified handshpes in astrological (nor any other) terms. The assessment and classification into handshape types did not enter the history of cheirology until the nineteenth century with the writings of D'Arpentigny. The early writers such as Fludd, Saunders, Belot and Rothmann were only really interested in the lineation of the hand.

As if trying to give the appearance that the ancient hermetic tradition worked in this way, Dylan then proceeds to delineate his theories on the astrological rulerships of the lines of the hand. For instance, he gives Jupiter over to the Major Water line and describes this line in terms of emotional expression - yet also states that Jupiter rules the Sanguine humour which is itself ruled by the Air element!! Air + Water = confusion! Again, needless to say what he presents here does not accord with the way the earlier authors viewed the lines at all. Although they made astrological correlations to the mounts of the hand, most of them made no explicit and thorough correlation between the planets and the lines whatsoever! Those that did, do not agree with Dylan at all. Although Rothmann does have the via Solis for the Minor Fire line, the Line of Saturn for the Minor Earth line, he has the Cinculum Veneris (Venus) for what Dylan has as the Neptune line. The rest of the lines Rothmann gives no astrological rulership for at all. Interestingly, Rothmann reads the Major Earth line from the wrists up the hand, whereas Dylan reads it in the usual manner. Much of what Robert Fludd has to say about the lines of the hands is consistent with the many other post-Renaissance authors and suggests that he really did no more than copy the other authors of his time. And what is true of Fludd is also true of Dylan, for many of the things he says about the significances of the lines owes nothing to the writings of Rothmann and Fludd but more to the teachings of either the Cheirological Society or contemporary palmistry. Where he differs from these, it is only because of his fixed adherance to a particular view of the astrological rulership of a particular line. This is clear in his treatment of the Major Earth line, which he says is ruled by Venus and therefore shows the maternal bond and degree of emotional security experienced in childhood. If he was following the older tradition, he would have given it the rulership of the Sun, since the majority of them (including Rothmann himself) called this line the cardiaca, the heart line, and the Sun is the astrological ruler of the heart. For anyone with any practical experience of reading hands, his errors in lineal interpretation are totally obvious. He obviously is not aware of the actual incidence of Simian lines; he is unclear about the meanings of markings in the Major Water line; totally misunderstands the Minor Fire line; and he does not know the meanings of the different beginnings to the Major Air line. Moreover, he even quotes the bogus study done by PG Newrick et al in 1990 which claimed to have found a correlation between the length of the Major Earth line and the age at which a person died! Quite apart from the question of the curiosity of appealing to modern science in a work so explicitly dedicated to an antiscientific approach to knowledge, if only he had kept up his membership of the Cheirological Society or read later editions of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, then he would have read all about what was wrong with this so-called piece of 'research'. (See Cheirological Society Journal v341/3 Summer 1990).

He goes on to consider the fingers and the phalanges in an astrological vein as well, ascribing each of the signs of the zodiac to each of the finger phalanges and innovates a complex system for phalangeal shape assessment. Not surprisingly, the giving of astrological rulerships to each of the phalanges had been attempted previously by Jean Belot in his 'Ouevres' of 1647, though Belot is not cited or quoted in the book at all despite the fact that he was the inspiration for all of Richard Saunders' writings. Perhaps this is because Dylan innovates a system of astrological rulership of the phalanges that bears no resemblance to that used by seventeenth century hermeticists; or perhaps it is because he has not ever read any of these particular writings. He gives no particular reason why he choses to differ from the older tradition - though it seems obvious that the reason the particular signs have been ascribed to those particular phalanges is because of the elemental rulerships he has also given to the fingers. It should be remembered that the seventeenth century chiromancers ascribed planetary rulers to the fingers and did not use the four (or five) elements at all in their writings. The use of the elemental symbolism comes directly from the teachings of the Cheirological Society, who claim no association to the mediaeval chiromantic tradition whatsoever. Dylan makes no mention of the Cheirological Society within his book at all.

The book also considers a number of other aspects of the hand and begins to enumerate various other classifications and interpretations of hand features according to the Chinese Buddhist traditions of cheirology. He first presents handshape assessment in terms of the four elements, just as he was taught within the Cheirological Society - even copying a diagram from 'No-nonsense Handreading'! He classifies skin texture and line qualities and explains their meanings exactly as in cheirology, and he even has a chapter on the palmar quadrants! However, here he decides to differ from the teachings of the Society and innovates an entirely erroneous method of drawing the quadrants up and then outlines the meaning of the quadrant order positions by putting them in the order of Earth, Water, Air and Fire!! Its just as well he does not cite 'Chinese Hand Analysis' in his bibliography otherwise all his students will see where he got all his ideas from, which ones he has got wrong and, moreover, see which have nothing to do with the European traditions of cheiromancy at all!

There are a number of other errors which one would have thought he would not have made, such as calling the middle finger the medicus when in fact in post-Renaissance chiromancy it was called the medius, the term medicus being reserved for the ring finger because of its use in medical treatment with leeches. He also shows he does not understand the meaning and significance of a short, low-set Air finger and even gives an illustration of one that is neither short nor low-set! As with many other palmistry writers, he demonstrates a paucity of understanding of the skeletal anatomy of the thumb and asserts untruths about the incidence of clubbed thumbs in Down's Syndrome and claims that this, along with Simian lines, is a pathognomic indication of this condition, which it is not. Clearly he has not done very much research into this area of cheirology. However, that is perhaps unsurprising since he includes no chapter on fingerprints, a grave ommission. If he had studied more of dermatoglyphics then he would certainly know more about Down's Syndrome and Simian lines.

In one of the last chapters of the book, Dylan gives a presentation of one of Rothmann's interpretations from his 'Cheiromantia Theorica Practica' of 1595 wherein he gives various expositions on the correlations between drawings of hands and their lines and that person's astrological chart. The problem here is that Dylan takes Rothmann's interpretations seriously when, as anyone who had made a study of Rothmann's work would know, it is impossible to be sure of the validity of anything that Rothmann presents there. Since he only draws the lines of the hands (on standardised hand outlines) and obviously misses out many lines and line markings, these are only crude representations of what the alleged person's hands look like for we could never know what he has not included in his drawings that would not fit in with his interpretations. But a more problematic issue is the fact that Rothmann gives an exact time of birth (eg 4.20pm) for these charts in a time when most people were illiterate and innumerate and watches were not the order of the day! With these facts in mind, we have to very sceptical about the validity of Rothmann's correlations for we have no way of knowing for sure that he has not just made it all up because it fits very nicely with all his preconceived theories.

And, in the end, this is what we have to say about Dylan's book as well. Its all too much trying to fit everything together in one unified grand theory of everything. If you want to learn something about hermeticism or astrological symbolism, then by all means get this book. However, if its hand reading that you are after, then there are many other books which do that much better.