What large veins signify.

A neck taller than is fitting, exceeding nature’s limits, signifies an anxious, prudent and attentive person. Broad shoulders and back signify strength for carrying and moving things. Muscular arms signify strength and power in striking, pounding and throwing. Hard hands signify a hardworking wage labourer; soft hands, the opposite. A short body and long legs signify a good runner, easily satisfied with food and drink, but generally short-lived. Large, conspicuous veins before middle age signify a sanguine person full of moisture; after middle age, one frequently ill yet long-lived.

Nothing certain can be judged from manners.

As for manners and gestures, a person cannot be so readily known or judged from them. Experience teaches that they can change at any moment, deceiving the interpreter of signs and leading him to an erroneous judgement. This has not hitherto been observed very carefully by all astronomers. The interpreter should therefore not always look at manners and deeds, but rather at other bodily signs which are fixed and cannot be disguised or changed by art. For if red hair, movement of the forehead and eyelids, a cheerful, upright and unmoving face, frequent movement of the mouth, a strong and deliberate gait and a light spirit necessarily indicated a noble, energetic man and soldier, anyone could easily make himself such by effort, to appear better at a muster and obtain higher pay. The same must be judged of other manners which display wisdom, folly, truth, falsehood, fortune or victory.

On the Astral Signs of Chiromancy.

What chiromancy is.

Are the fingers assigned to planets?

Which fingers are assigned to which planets.

Concerning the signs of chiromancy, one must hold that they arise from the upper stars of the seven planets, and all must be known and judged through the seven planets. Chiromancy is a science which not only inspects human hands and judges from their lines, joints and wrinkles, but also considers all herbs, woods, flints, earths and rivers: anything having lines, veins or wrinkles. Yet this science too has its errors, introduced by those astronomers. They assigned the fingers of both hands to the planets and chief stars, although there are only five fingers on one hand and ten on both, while only seven planets are counted. How can these agree? If there were seven fingers on one hand, one might allow a finger to each planet. People sometimes have only seven fingers on both hands because others have been cut off accidentally, but since the stumps remain and they were not born that way, this cannot be brought into the comparison. Even if someone were born with seven fingers on one or both hands, that would be a monster produced outside nature’s order and not subject to the stars, so no comparison could be made there either. If each hand has only five fingers and there are seven planets, and these must be compared, the planets ought to put lots into an urn to determine which two should withdraw. Since that cannot happen, and the planets have neither dice nor lots in the firmament, one rightly wonders who assumed the power to draw lots in their name and assign the thumb to Venus, the index to Jupiter, the middle finger to Saturn, the ring or medical finger to the Sun and the little finger to Mercury, meanwhile excluding Mars and the Moon as though from their tribe and liberty. If that is so, who would wonder that Mars in righteous indignation incites his sons to kill that lot-drawer or maintain perpetual hostility against him? Who would wonder if the Moon weakens that player’s brain or destroys all his reason? This is the first error we said was committed in chiromancy.

The second error is this. The original natural lines of the hands are often altered by injuries or accidents, becoming larger or smaller or appearing in other places. Just as, when a well-used road is blocked by something, covered by a fallen mountainside or damaged by flooding, people make another road nearby, so with the old lines of the hands: sometimes after wounds or ulcers heal, new lines arise with the new flesh and the old ones are entirely erased. Hard labour likewise obliterates lines or enlarges the principal ones. The same happens as is known of trees: if a young tree sends out many branches all around, cutting many off makes the tree itself larger.

Chiromancy of herbs, woods and so forth was not taught by the ancients; its use.

To turn at last to the practice of this science of chiromancy and explain our view briefly, I wish you to know that, so far as hands are concerned, I change nothing there but rest content with the ancients’ observations and descriptions. In this practice of chiromancy, however, I intend to write only of matters on which the ancients offered no account, such as the chiromancy of herbs, woods, stones and the like. Observe first that all herbs of one kind have one and the same chiromancy. If their lines differ and appear larger or smaller in some, that is due to their age. We therefore expressly declare that the chiromancy of herbs serves only to know and recognise the age of each herb or root.