Your palm and your birth chart: why read them together

Palmistry and astrology grew up side by side. In both Indian and European traditions, the raised pads on your palm are named after the same planets that appear in your birth chart. That shared language makes it possible to read one against the other.

The mounts and their planets

• Jupiter, under the index finger: ambition, leadership and confidence.
• Saturn, under the middle finger: discipline, patience and responsibility.
• Sun or Apollo, under the ring finger: creativity, recognition and joy.
• Mercury, under the little finger: communication, business sense and wit.
• Venus, the pad at the base of the thumb: warmth, love and enjoyment of life.
• Moon, the lower outer edge of the palm: imagination, intuition and travel.
• Mars, two areas in the middle of the palm: courage and self-control.

A full, firm mount is read as that planet’s qualities showing up strongly in your life. A flat mount is read as a quieter influence.

Agreement and difference

Here is where reading both is useful. Say your birth chart has a strong, well placed Jupiter and your Jupiter mount is also full and prominent. Two separate traditions are pointing at the same quality, so the reading can speak about it with more confidence.

Now say your chart has Venus in a strong position but the Venus mount on your hand is flat. That is not a contradiction to hide. It is a prompt. Maybe a natural warmth has been held back, or maybe it shows up in a different way from what you expect. Some of the most thoughtful readings come from these differences.

Hand shape and the elements

Palmistry also groups hands by shape into four elements. A square palm with short fingers is an earth hand. A square palm with long fingers is an air hand. A long palm with short fingers is fire, and a long palm with long fingers is water. Your birth chart has its own balance of the same four elements, counted from where the planets sit. When the shape of your hand matches the strongest element in your chart, the two are telling a similar story.

How Palmastra does it

Palmastra calculates your birth chart with astronomy code, not guesswork, and reads your palm from photos you take in the app. The combined reading puts each mount next to its planet and marks whether they agree, partly agree or differ, so you can see the evidence behind every line of the reading. Your palm photos are deleted after analysis unless you choose to keep them.