Palm reading
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The term palmistry or palmistry describes attempts to draw conclusions about the health, character or fate of a person from the “ physiognomy of the hands” ( chirognomy ), ie from the shape of the hands and especially from the hand lines . Chiromancy (seldom also chiromantic ; old Greek χεῖρ cheír "hand" and μαντεία manteía "prophecy") refers to palmistry as the art of divination . At times palmistry was understood as a science and also referred to as chirology . Palmistry, however, was largely pushed back to fairs in the Age of Enlightenment .
Antiquity and the Middle Ages
The endeavor to read man's dispositions and fate by hand goes back to the early advanced civilizations of India, Egypt, Babylonia and Assyria. In ancient times, palmistry was considered a respected occult science. A special suitability of the hands for drawing conclusions about disposition, character traits or future personal events was derived from the fact that these represent the most individually developed part of the body in addition to the face.
In the Middle Ages, numerous texts on chiromancy were written, in Latin and in the national languages. The oldest Latin text on chiromancy is found, curiously, in a psalter , the so-called Eadwine Psalter, which was written by Eadwine and other monks in Canterbury around 1160 . The short text on chiromancy, together with a text on onomancy, stands in the middle of theological commentaries. He explains the meaning of the palm lines and some other features of the palm. Two of the explanations predict professional success in the Church, for example: "If a C-shaped mark appears at the bottom of the first natural line [...], he will be a bishop."
Modern times
Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486–1535) and Robert Fludd (1574–1637) interpreted the hand as an image of the cosmos. Between about 1550 and 1700 books on palmistry appeared in Germany, England and France. These include the publications by Johann Abraham Jacob Höping ( Institutiones Chiromanticae , 1673) and by Johann Ingeber ( Chiromantia , 1692). During this time, colleges on palm reading were held at several universities.
Between 1924 and 1935, the Berlin chiromancer Marianne Raschig took 2,500 handprints from well-known people, including Hans Albers , Gerhart Hauptmann , Albert Einstein , Thomas Mann , Wilhelm Furtwängler , Theodor Heuss , Bertolt Brecht and Alfred Döblin . As a chiromancer she saw the lines and shapes of the hands as a mirror of mental and physical qualities. In 1985, the Raschig heirs sold the collection for 200,000 marks to an antiquarian who later had handprints of Igor Stravinsky , Alban Berg and Richard Strauss auctioned off at Sotheby’s at a profit .
One of the most important chirologists of the 20th century is Charlotte Wolff . At the beginning of the 1930s she came to psychochirology in Berlin through Julius Spier , with which she initially made a living after fleeing to France and England. In exile, she carried out extensive hand examinations, which earned her honorary membership in the British Psychological Society .
See also
Web links
- Chiromancy. In: Johann Heinrich Zedler : Large complete universal lexicon of all sciences and arts . Volume 5, Leipzig 1733, column 2151 f.
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Hans Biedermann: Lexicon of the magical arts . VMA-Verlag, Wiesbaden, ISBN 3-928127-59-4
- ^ Charles Burnett: The Prognostications of the Eadwine Psalter , in: Margaret T. Gibson, TA Heslop, Richard William Pfaff (eds.), The Eadwine Psalter: Text, Image, and Monastic Culture in Twelfth-Century Canterbury . 1992, Penn State University Press, pp. 165 f.
- ^ ersch-Gruber's Encyclopedia , Volume 16.
- ↑ Johann Abraham Jacob Höping: Institutiones Chiromanticae, or Kurtze instruction on how to thoroughly judicium out of the lines, mountains, and nails of the hands, and then look for the proportion of the face with the hands, and even exactly the year, month, See weeks and days in which something happy or unhappy lies ahead; Sampt of a detailed Harmonia, or agreement of all lines […] Jena 1673 ( digitized ). Several subsequent editions.
- ↑ Johann Ingeber: Chiromantia, metoposcopia & physiognomia curioso-practica, or brief instructions on how to presumably judge or judge from the four main lines in the hand as well as from the veins on the hand of the human being, health and illness, happiness and unhappiness can judge: sambt e. completely new, u. before of any dimension that has never been printed d. Line honoris, as well as the veins on the hands, from which one health a. Illness u. something like this can be seen / prepared with diligence by Johann Ingebern . Frankfurt 1692. See entry of a reprint in the catalog of the German National Library.
- ↑ Treasure for Chiromancers . In: Der Spiegel . No. 32 , 1985, pp. 131 ( online ).