Elementary hand

Cheiro 1897 describes the elementary hand in one short passage. It has a large, thick, heavy palm with short fingers and short nails, and he calls the look of it coarse and clumsy. His Plate I draws it, and it opens his list of seven types.

D'Arpentigny, in the 1886 translation by Heron-Allen, puts the same shape first under the name of the Large-palmed hand. The two lists therefore agree on where the sequence begins. Cheiro also ties the seven types to peoples and ranks minds against each other in his chapters. Those claims are outdated, and this page leaves them out.

Cheiro adds that each of the seven types has seven varieties, made by blending one type with the finger shapes of another. He says the elementary hand is seldom found in a pure form, so his chapters on varieties start with the square hand. Benham 1900 stopped sorting whole hands into shapes, so he has no reading of this one to offer.