WHo is this person Christopher Jones

Hello Lynn, Patti

Only after comming to this forum i have heard from both of you about this person called as Christopher Jones. Exactly who is this person, all i have heard in palmistry is cheiro, benham, comte germain. But this person is very new to me. i tried searching about him not much information is available about him, his works ect.. Can you give some light about this person.

Thanks
Anand

Christopher Jones was the secretary and tutor of the Cheirological Society in UK. He taught 5-element hand analysis to me, Johnny Fincham, Jennifer Hirsch and many others. He spent years researching hands, and researching the history of hand analysis. Christopher wrote several books, but they were only available to Cheirological Society members. The UK Cheirological Society disbanded about 12 years ago.

Hello Lynn

Thanks for the information, so his books are not published books but only to members of the society. There is no way the books and work can be published. Or do you need to become member of the society where his books will be given.

Thanks
Anand

Hi Anand,
how can I help you?
Christopher

Hi Lynn,

thanks for the brief summary :-) Actually, I wrote 15 books in all, in addition to the ten years of quarterly journals that I published. Whilst not all the material in the CS journals was written by me, a fair bit of it was.

Those texts were all privately published as I did not see much virtue in trying to get a book publisher to print them up, they were too complicated for general consumption! In fact, most of the texts were too complicated for most CS students at that time too and some of them I hardly sold any copies of at all. I sold a lot of the 'Beginner's Guide to the Hand' which was basically the beginners course I taught that you and Jenni Hirsch did back in 1993/1994 ish. I would probably revise a lot of that material now - but I guess the best place for people to see that would be in Johnny Fincham's book , 'The Spellbinding Power of Palmistry' which really covers all of the old CS Foundation Diploma material in Johnny's own inimitable way. Johnny had a much better way of presenting that material in a more digestible manner than myself and I think he has done a much better job than I ever could of writing an introductory manual!

As well as being one of my students, Johnny was also part of the extraordinary research group that flourished in London over five years between 1989-1994. Our quarterly conferences and seminars were an incredible forum which exploded the practice of handreading in many directions simultaneously. I think you came along towards the end of that and people like you and Jenni were really the beneficients of all the new ideas and insights that we created at that time. I am not sure if Anand has heard of Johnny (though I should hope so!) but he almost certainly would not have heard of Chris Swain, Johan Hjelmborg or Laura Thornton, three other key figures in that group. They are all extraordinary people - and those were extraordinary times......

Whilst I only privately published most of my works, the one I have publicly published is the History of Handreading, which can be found at my website www.cheirology.net and also on Johnny Fincham's. I uploaded it to Johnny's site when he published his first book, to lend an air of gravitas to his new work. The reason for publishing this particular work is that I am absolutely certain that no publishing house would ever publish this book ! I recall talking with Andrew Fitzherbert about 5yrs after his excellent 'Palmist's Companion' came out (his own history of handreading) and he was very disappointed to have only sold 100 copies of his book. I said to him that I thought that was a lot !!!! The second reason for publishing the History is that so many times you hear the same generalised rubbish coming out, either in books or on websites, that is completely wrong. With that work wwwidely available, there is now no excuse for anyone to believe the rubbish that some palmists print in their books about the history of handreading/palmistry - and equally there is no excuse for any palmist to say or write nonsense like 'palmistry was studied by Aristotle' or that it all comes from the gypsies etc

All of my books were written in that same five years I mentioned above; it was an extraordinarily productive and creative time. Maybe one day I will get round to putting some more of my books online.... Johnny has never given up asking me!

Hy Christopher,

nice to hear from you and I hope, you are well.

Regards
Manfred

Hi Christopher,

Great to see you sharing your valuable experience & your time!

Hello Christopher Jones

Thanks for the information you have provided. It is a great pleasure interacting with you through this forum. To be honest iam a novice when it comes to palmistry and dermatoglyphics and when iam interacting with knowledgable persons like Patti, Lynn, and Martijn i feel i have gained more insights into the subject of palmistry. Regarding Johny Fincham books i have looked through few pages of it and it gives a good insight into the subject.

Iam trying to understand the concepts of active and passive hand and how dermatoglyphics would be added. Should dermatoglyphics be analysed in totality rather than allocating it for passive and active side is where iam confused a bit. The confusion arises parlty due to evolution of the subject which in the modern times have been dealt in terms on various biological terminalogies. The other side is that most of these features have been inherited and hence forth the chances of it changing over time is minimal. This kind of its nature does not create a dynamic side quite often when compared to lines, which leaves it a grey area because most of the analysis on knowing passive and active side comes from understanding the lines its type and number of lines in the areas of hand. This kind of thingh confused me more how can or should we use dermatoglyphics for passive and active concept.

Looking at your website and from the insights given by your students, i thought probably i can buy the material or book you would have written which encompasses this subject. My guess your book Begginers Guide to Hand may be useful.

I would appreciate you valuable insights.


Thanks
Anand

Hello Christopher!! It's very nice to see you here!

welcome to the forum Christopher. re

Maybe one day I will get round to putting some more of my books online.... Johnny has never given up asking me!

I hope you do, there is so much valuable info in them.
Maybe you could turn them into e-books. (yes I know,,,, to put that one simple sentence into action would probably involve a few years of work!)

Hello Christopher,

Nice to see you here, your recommendation and experience would be beneficial for this forum.

Hi Christopher,

I found Johnny's books very inspiring. It was the first palmistry book I've read where the interpretation of every feature made sense. Salutations on the excellent work. Would love to have access to your books!

Boaz

Hi Anand,

the best 'Beginners Guide to the Hand' is Johnny Fincham's 'Spellbinding Power of Palmistry'. Basically, the structure and format of that book is taken directly from the Foundation Diploma course that I taught.

Having a strong Saturn, creating structures and putting things in order is one of my strengths. Johnny has a very weak Saturn and so he used the structures that I created for him to create order for his own presentations. His strength is the ability to translate ideas and present them in a manner that others find easy to understand; moreover, he was always an extremely prolific handreader and would come up with some very interesting handprints and some sense of what certain features would mean - but then would come along to our seminars and it would be Laura and myself who would thrash these ideas out and give them clarity, definition and theoretical structures.

A very good case in point is the 'Pervy line', what he calls in his book the Passion Line (p115). In Elemental Cheirological terms, it became known as the 'Angular Descending Upper Minor Water line' and was classified as a Fire type of Air/Water line. The elemental ascription gave symbolic expression of the evident manifestations of this line in people's lives. This is a line feature that we can certainly say is a unique discovery of Johnny Fincham- no-one else had ever previously described the significance of this line.

I agree with you that Johnny's book is full of very accurate interpretations - its one of the reasons why I recommend it! His work is the distillation of all the ideas that we generated in that Research Group, idea that we fleshed out, tested against one another's experience, theorised about, argued over and then went out and tried them on people's hands and came back three months later and argued about them again! The study group was such a powerful forum - there was Johan Hjelmborg with 20+yrs as a professional handreader and astrologer, Laura Thornton with 15+years as a full-time professional handreader (she had her own office and employed a receptionist !), Johnny, who had been involved with handreading about 5yrs by that time and was always looking at hands and taking prints, Chris Swain, who had been involved with handreading for about 8yrs at that point, did not read so many hands but had a deep elemental appreciation and always brought us back down to earth; and myself - handreading since 1983 and full time at it from 1989, having read every book written on hands in the English language since 1450 !

Together, therefore, we were able to assess all sorts of different ideas, compare notes on what worked/did not work, share handprints to illustrate new ideas and theories and basically refine each others understanding of hands to the point where we had got rid of the dross and were left with a very pure theoretical model (the elements) supported by a very extensive clinical experience.

Johnny is an exceptional handreader - and far better at it than myself, definitely now and arguably even back then also. But he knows that he would not be where he is today if it were not for the Research group that I organised back in 1991-1994. As he says in the Acknowledgements at the front of his book:

"For illuminatng the darkness beyond the known chirological world, I would like to thank the obsessive and inspirational Chris(topher) Jones, ex-secretary of the chirological society. Thanks also to members of the palmistry research group: Laura Thornton, Lynn Seal, Swami Swain (Chris Swain), Yohann (Johan Hjelmborg) et al"

Hi Christopher Jones,
Its very nice to see you on this group and have your comments and points being shared here.

At this point, I would like to quote this incident: Couple of weeks ago, to one of my queries on finger prints, you had answered. And I questioned - "whether are you sure of this!?" Now, I realize how stupid of me it was
When googled I got the American actor Christopher Jones info!
So, for quite sometime, I thought, some fan of this actor is here on the group - until quite recently, I heard your name and got to know about you!

Thank you,
Warm regards,
Kiran

Hello Christopher

Thanks for the detailed response, i will look into the book in more detail. It should be able to clarify my doubts on palm reading. i also did look at johny website and it does provide with lot of information. Iam also trying to understand about fingerprints, palmarprints as this subject seems to be new from the palmistry perspective. i do know johny website had mentioned about fingerprints and accordingly the behavior type and it has been mentioned about your name. i would like to know how far should this interpreration be taken as what is mentioned in http://www.johnnyfincham.com/dermatoglyphics.php .

Thanks
Anand

Anand - since that article you link to on Johnny Fincham's website was written by me, I think you can be safely assured that I think it is highly reliable !!

Much of the contemporary usage and understanding of the interpretation of fingerprints derives from the seminal work I did in the subject in 1989-1991. Up until that point, fingerprints & palmar patterns were given very scant regard in the Cheirological Society; and if you read books by Jaquin, Hutchinson and Fitzherbert, whilst there is some greater or lesser discussion of their significance, there is nothing approaching the kind of comprehensive assessment of the fingerprints such as was developed later. I summarised it all in my book 'The Interpretation of Dermatoglyphics' (1992).

Johnny had this to say about it:

"I must say, every time I read it, I'm struck by how rich and scholarly a peice of work it is and how damn good it is. Have you tried getting is published commercially? Like me, you'd have to use the dreaded palmistry word somewhere in the title, as no-one would print it otherwise, and you 'd need to re-do the images. But there's simply nothing to touch it in print anywhere and the range and depth of it is never going to be covered in a simple palmistry book.... This is such an important book and there's nothing around to touch it - it needs to be more widely available."

The webpages on Johnny's site that you link to is Chapter 5 of that book.

Hello Christopher

Thanks for the information. I appreciate your help. Do you have a copy of the book "'The Interpretation of Dermatoglyphics' so that i can buy it. it gives a new dimension to palmistry. There is one more question i have should dermatoglyphics be looked from active and passive side perspective or should be looked in totality.

Thanks
Anand

Sorry Anand, there are no copies of this book left. You could try getting a copy of Jenni Hirsch's book on fingerprints, that book is available.

Dermatoglyphics need to be looked in totality and in comparison of active & passive hands!

Christopher,

Regarding weak versus strong Saturn in general. I assume you mean the Saturn finger. Is it only with respect to the length of the finger, or do you consider also width, tilt, shape, possibly finger nail, proportions of the phalanges, and mount?

Thanks
Boaz

Hi Boaz,

sorry, I was talking astrologically rather than chirologically. I actually have a short middle finger and seven whorls - but Saturn is placed very strongly in my natal chart

Hi Christopher,

I guess you use the tropical zodiac? I have been exploring both tropical and sidereal systems. Recently spent 5 months studying in India (sidereal) with an astrologer. Not sure whether it was astrology, intuition or what, but I was quite impressed.

Boaz

Hi Christopher,

How would you consider Saturn strong or weak according to your system?

Thanks

?? I would use astrology, not handreading !!
All 'correlations' between the hand and astrology are tenuous at best and useful only in sofar as the symbolism may enable one to yield further insights and understanding. The association between the two systems is a product of post-renaissance chiromancy and, whlist both systems are good and each has their own merits, they are best left to their own devices, in my opinion!

Sorry, I meant to ask how you judge the strength of Saturn according to the system of astrology that you use. Just curious. Thanks

Hello Christopher

Thanks for the response, i will buy johny fincham two books and also jennifer hirsch. Zaoband posted an interesting thingh which in fact i thought would be a good question is there high correlation between the planets used in astrology and fingers.

Thanks
Anand