Where Astrology and Palmistry Collide

Rumors are, 18,000 attended this year’s FloydFestX. I started out at Global Village, where I enjoyed great relations with my neighbors, and shared electricity from the common generator and a common pot of coffee. The couple next door watched my newly released DVD, Using Palmistry to Change Your Life ($25; femspec@aol.com). I just read for my neighbor to the left, who needs to prepare for a major change in her life.

The young woman to my right, a recent graduate from Southern Virginia University, wears dreads. I know how much work that hairstyle can be, since my daughter spent a couple of years trying to manufacture them. The neighbor also sells her art, and leather bound notebooks. She wants to know more about the connection between astronomy and palmistry. Her interest was provoked after watching the 22-minute DVD, in which I made some reference to the 17th century European palmists who were more in the know.

So here goes.

According to Jean Beloit’s Oeuvres, published in 1647, about which I have written before in this column, each of the phalanges on each finger serves as a focus of a particular zodiacal significance. Each augments the specific aspect of the individual finger.

For example, the pointer, or Jupiter finger, starts in the first phalange as the Ram (Aries), giving that first third of the ambition finger persistent leadership energy, but also one that can flip this way or that. The second phalange of the Jupiter finger, Taurus, is the Bull, usually reliable and hospitable, also possessive and fixed, opinionated by nature. Gemini, in the pointer lower third, is active and expansive, of wide and interchangeable interests.

You can massage or palpitate each phalange in order to get a feel for which segment is dominant, more marked, or held back, getting a sense of which gives more of an influence and which is more formative to someone’s ambition when reading a hand.

Similarly, you can look at what is protruding on a hand and seek out the astrological influence of what might be indicated. For example, the base phalange of the discipline, or the Saturn finger, is determined by Pisces. Pisces (February 18 through March 20), this year (2011), must learn to trust themselves now and move in to the role of guides for others as Uranus departed their sign on March 4. Neptune entered and left, offering divine spirit food in meditation, daydreams, sacred service, and arts including music and dance, turning Pisces into others as well as to themselves. Fears of their own resistance to intimate contact might come to a head, leading to separateness or death of relationship: how this relates to the base of self discipline, which is where this phalange is located, is that the person might prefer to shape-shift, in 2011, rather than stay in old relationships—especially if that phalange is fleshy and bounces back when touched, more than the two phalanges on top.

Continuing the relation of astrology to palmistry, the top phalange in the Apollo finger is in Cancer. If that is the fleshiest—more buoyant than the three phalanges—on the talent finger, the person’s relation to their talent is strong and vast. The person needs to nest and feel safe in order to do art; to feed others; to water; to plant; to live with deep feelings, composting early mother/home issues into empathetic insight.

But if the bottom phalange is fleshier and more markedly indented in any way, then the person’s creativity is instead dominated by Virgo. This creative person becomes impatient, generating to-do lists of what needs to be fixed, becoming irritated with less critical people and anxious to weed, edit, critique… They are often not gentle with others, and are anxious and precise or perfectionist.

And as a last example of the relation between astrology and palmistry, for now (and still connected to the mid-1600s), I’ll discuss the phalanges of the Mercury finger, or the little finger. It’s concerned with commerce and often communication as well; the middle or second phalange is determined by Scorpio, and the third or bottom by Sagittarius.

If Scorpio is dominant, the person will lose continuity and obsessive focus in moneymaking schemes: digging deeply and investigating with intensity and curiosity are good qualities to use in making a living.

If dominated by Sagittarius, try something to earn a living that requires cheerful impatience and refreshing honesty, restlessness and open-mindedness, exploring, hiking… connecting to natural worlds. Try being a standup comic; a tour guide! Accept the wild in yourself and follow this aspect to new careers, wherever she goes!