Culture and Hands

Palmistry  wiki
The Fortune Teller, by Caravaggio (1594–95; canvas; Louvre), depicting a palm reading
  • aka  chiromancy,
    • practice of predicting a person’s future
    • by reading their palms
    • still widely-practiced
    • ? historical origins but likely from the  East.
    • A fortune-teller conducting a palm reading, with lines and mounts marked out on the person’s left palm
      Psychic 2Tarot wiki

      Found in a store in Salem
      Photography Ashley Davidoff
      TheCommonVein.net
The psychonomy of the hand : or, The hand an index of mental development according to Mm. d’Arpentigny and Desbarrolles by Beamish, Richard, 1798–1873
wiki
Courtesy Wellcome Images
  • Aristotle, was Alexander’the Great’s tutor in the 4th century BC,
      • showed him a book on pseudoscience
      • dedicated to Hermes
      • Apparrently it contained palmistry and
      • Alexander would examinr the palms of his officers
      • to determine if they would bring him good fortune
Chironomia wiki
  •  art of using  hand gestures
  • in traditional rhetoric or oratory.
  • developed and systematized by the Greeks and the Romans. Various gestures had conventionalized meanings which were commonly understood, either within certain class or professional groups, or broadly among dramatic and oratorical audiences.
Hand gestures images. Austin, Gilbert. Chironomia, or a Treatise on Rhetorical Delivery. London: 1806. Ed. Mary Margaret Robb and Lester Thonssen. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 1966. Clasped, crossed, and folded hand positions. (Chironomia Plate 8, Figures 75, 76, 78)
Wiki
Chirologia, 1644
.wikimedia.

 

See also