Girdle of Venus

Cheiro 1897 describes the girdle of Venus as a broken or unbroken semicircle that rises between the first and second fingers and ends between the third and fourth. Benham 1900 draws it across the mounts of Saturn and Apollo to the gap between the Apollo and Mercury fingers, and treats it as partly a companion to the heart line.

The books split on what it means. Heron-Allen 1885 calls it a bad sign in any hand, tied to loose conduct. St Hill 1893 reports that earlier palmists and Desbarrolles gave it a bad meaning and that English readers largely copied them, then rejects that meaning from her own years of examining hands. Cheiro says he never found it to show the sensuality so often ascribed to it, except on a broad, thick hand. Benham puts the old reading down to an era that made affection and loose living one thing, and says many practitioners dropped it after errors.

Cheiro's own reading is a sensitive, intellectual temperament with moods that change easily. He adds that where the girdle runs over the side to meet a marriage line, the peculiarities of temperament can mar a marriage. Benham reads a measure of nervous strain and a measure of warmth in every case, and looks to the build of the hand for the amount of each.