The mannerisms of the hands, while an individual is speaking or sitting, are choreographs of emotion. It is possible to learn a great deal about people by simply watching hand shapes and their motions in everyday situations. You can do this at the checkout counter at the grocery story or just watching people communicate on television. The shapes of the hands are illustrative of an individual’s approach to life.

Are the fingertips and the hands themselves squared off? This is the builder, the craftsman. Builders hands are usually most active when in the act of working and constructing and generally more quiet at other times. Are the tips pointed, and the fingers themselves thin? This is the intuitive individual whose hands may be restlessly in flight as they communicate with speech or even when they are merely thinking.

The mounts on the hands reflect the energy of the individual. Both the degree and nature of individual energy is reflected quite plainly on the mounts, even though they are usually hidden from view. The back of the hand, as the exterior self, may be compared to the cover of a book. It reflects quite directly the general character of an individual by its shape. But the mounts, as well as the lines in the palm, are written within these books of the hands.

The lines are the most mutable of the indications in the hands and they illustrate an individual’s awareness of their own nature and progress in life. Balance in the hands, with no one characteristic predominating, is one of the keys illustrating happiness in life. Happiness will be most easily discovered by individuals who have balanced hands with lines clearly marked and medium in quantity. No single mount will be out of proportion to the others and the fingers will be evenly set and straight. The hands themselves will be neither too flexible, nor too stiff.

Most of us have hands that illustrate the need for greater balance. There is usually at least one negative character trait to be found in every hand. The artistic temperament is quite often found in a very unbalanced hand. What kind of hand would a terrifically unbalanced individual have?

There would be twisted fingers of uneven size irregularly placed. Lines would be scrambled with many islands and breaks. Mounts would be erratic, with one or more mounts missing or hollowed out. Hand coloring would be vivid yellow, chalk white or extremely red. The hand would be wilted and open or extremely tight and closed.

Usually the keys to balance, the necessary traits to achieve stability, are also indicated in the hands. The positive traits one needs to cultivate to achieve personal balance are always plainly shown. Quite often one can compare the natal and passive left hand and the dominant and public right hand to gauge an individual’s steps to self-mastery over negative traits. Just as we use the right and left hands to physically balance ourselves in life, our two hands provide a report card of our progress towards balance in living.

Much of the information related here has come from the book “The New Fortune in Your Hand” by Elizabeth Daniels Squire (Fleet Press: 1960).