Which hand is read

Hand-readers have never agreed on which hand to read. The books used for this site give six views, and no two of them match. Each is set out here as the book states it, with no ruling on which is right.

First, Cheiro 1897 examines both hands but relies more on the right. He quotes the saying above and explains it: the left shows natural character and the right the training and surroundings. Second, Cheiro 1916 narrows this: a mark found on the left hand alone, he says, will never come to any result, because the right is the hand that shows the developed brain. Third, Benham 1900 always uses both. He calls the left the passive hand and the right the active, reverses the roles for left-handed people, and treats the working hand as the one that holds the present.

Fourth, St Hill 1893 treats the left hand as the plan laid down for a life and the right as the use made of that plan. Fifth, an older rule, given in Saunders 1663, picks the hand by time of birth: the left for people born at night and the right for those born by day. Heron-Allen 1885 reports the same pairing as an old saying that lines show clearer in the left hand of night-born people and the right hand of day-born ones. Sixth, Desbarrolles 1862 treats a left hand alone as incomplete, writing of a cast of Hugo's hand where the right-hand cast was missing to check, modify or confirm the left.

One further idea appears only to be turned down. Cheiro and Benham both dismiss the idea of reading the left hand because it lies nearer the heart, and Cheiro calls it a medieval superstition. A modern rule says the dominant hand shows the present and the other hand the past. No book used here says that. Benham comes closest on the present, and in the books the other hand is natural endowment and not the past.