Presidential Palms Part I
By Margaret Ruth
The political pundits have run out of things to say so why not turn to Palmistry Punditry in trying to sooth our collective Election Day jitters. A person’s hand reveals a tremendous of private and not-so-private information. If politicians knew how much information we can get from their hands, they would cease the ubiquitous politician waving and be forever henceforth seen with their hands in their pockets during rallies.
I teach Palmistry, and other metaphysical courses at the University of Utah and have had tons of fun collecting political palm prints. Here are palm diagrams of the two presidential candidates and my brief observations of their hands reveal to us.
Note: I am having trouble uploading the images (I am using Flickr) but a commenter below has these urls for the images in the meantime...
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/...
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/...
Can you guess whose is whose? Yes, McCain’s is shaded in red and Obama’s is in blue; it was a giveaway. However, most of you could immediately discern their owner from the outlined shapes.
McCain’s Hand
McCain’s hand is very earthy, hands-on, padded. It is a solid hand and indicates a person more comfortable with doing something, with "his hands on" it, than thinking. It is a bold hand and indicates a will to live every part of life to the fullest. There is some knotting and minor clenching, which can indicate a desire to hold back on a part of himself. In other words, this is a person who does not let it all hang out nor go with the flow.
Note too how dominant his middle finger is – I think this makes sense for this man. It shows a person of strong principles and certainly explains his predilection to metaphorically show aforesaid strong finger to those who do not agree with those firm principles.
Obama’s Hand
Obama’s is slim, airy and thoughtful. It is the hand of a philosopher and a thinker. It is a very open palm and there are no clenched areas. However, look under the fingers where the Senator has calluses. One read of this says the Obama has yet to unleash his full potential. We have not seen all of his communication, leadership and spiritual talents. He’s holding back and could even be more traditional, more outgoing and more communicative than seen this time.
Senator Obama’s fingers and hand shape indicate a thinker and logician. It is an unusually long and slim set of fingers and so is a bit airy in feel. This extraordinary ability to think, mull and use logic is a duel edged sword for the Senator. His critics exclaim that he has not "done" enough or that he is all ideas with no concrete terms or actions in his history to back them up. His hand really does accentuate this perception.
Thumbs
I find myself very interested in the candidates’ thumbs. In Palmistry, thumbs are considered one of the most revealing features of hand as it stands for the individual and his way dealing with his life.
The average thumb usually shows a life approach that is balanced between thinking, which is called Logic in thumb analysis, and emotion, which is considered as Will. Neither candidate has an average thumb and that makes sense. It does seem to take a very different sort of person to run for President of the United States. However the two thumbs being compared here are almost completely opposite. Take a moment and look at the shape and size of the thumbs above and below the thumb’s little bendy middle joint. McCain’s thumb reveals that his personal Will (the top half of his thumb digit) dominates his Logic (the bottom half of the thumb). In Obama’s, Logic dominates his personal Will.
You will also often see McCain doing the thumbs-up gesture. He is unconsciously revealing that he wants the viewer to put him and his ideas in a very important place. I almost never see Obama do a thumbs up gesture which makes him a bit of an academic; he doesn’t want to press his wants and ideas onto the viewer. He is more often seen using an index finger point gesture, or an emphatic level full hand point, than McCain, which amplifies the academic impression as this expresses a certainty of being correct.
Stay Tuned for Part II
You can see that I have also highlighted some of the major markings on the palm, which were gathered from looking at numerous press photos of -- waving. Observations on those lines and marks and what the presidential candidates’ hands reveal to us are in Part II of this article Coming Soon to a Blog Near You.