Do you have normal finger length? [locked]

Lynn wrote:

Patti wrote:

Patti wrote:

Patti wrote:My left middle finger 7.7
Palm width 7.8
Palm length 9.7

right middle finger 7.9
Palm width 7.9
Palm length 9.6

REVISED:
(from a photo copy)

Left:
Middle finger: 7.5
Palm Width: 8
Palm Length: 9.6

Right:
Middle finger: 7.6
Palm Width: 8
Palm Length: 9.6

Lynn,
These were/are the updated accurate measurements. The earlier ones were not measured correctly. I just realized that Martijn used the old ones. Which is interesting in that he agreed with my percentages

The avatar is my hand but not perfectly outlined. My wrist line is high and not under the actual palm but on it. I've looked through a lot of scanned hands in my files and I've noticed that is common. My hands look so obviously square and I always thought they were too small to be earth. Earth tends to be more in the category with elementary type hands. I think fire more fitting than earth if I don't get to be air, but fire I thought was recognizable by the rectangular palms.

re "My hands look so obviously square and I always thought they were too small to be earth" Air hands are bigger than earth hands.

From your revised measurements, given that standard fire shape in CS system is
7.5 (f) x 8 (w) x 10 (l) , your hand is not far off standard fire - palm being a few mm shorter than standard fire. Finger length vs palm length being 78-79% is just short of medium fingers. Also finger length is less than palm breadth, so again it would be fire hand. (or maybe just tending to be fire/earth). In a face-to-face reading (without measuring) I think I would say fire.
You obviously get a sense of relating to air features but I would guess that is elsewhere in your hands.

Hi Lynn,

First of all, your comments reminded me of your earlier question:

"If my fingers are slightly long in relation to length of palm, how can this imply that my palm length is short?"

(The answer is quite obvious for me, because it is a direct implication of the aspect in the C.S. approach which says that finger length is only assessed in the perspective of palm length; by the way, I gave my more detailed answer here: https://www.modernhandreadingforum.com/t1975p135-about-finger-length-do-you-have-normal-finger-length#21237 )


Sorry Lynn, your suggestion that Patti's '7.5 x 8 x 9.6' is sort of comparable with the standard fire hand shape ('7.5 x 8 x 10')... simply doesn't make sense to me, because you have not shared any PERSPECTIVE to make such a comparison (by the way, I also addressed this issue in my detailed answer above). Solely the fire hand shape ratios are not enough to make a comparison... because the typical proportions for the other 3 hand shapes are unknown in the C.S. perspective. ( Maybe, how about asking Christopher if he has ever thought about the typical proportional ratio for the other 3 hand shapes?)

Because, so far, it appears to me that you might consider '7.5 x 8 x 9' then also comparable with the standard fire hand shape... and then why not '7.5 x 8 x 8' as well???

( Sorry Lynn, I know that by fact you haven't mentioned that you only looked at the first 2 numbers, however, my problem here is that you still haven't picked up my hint that it is probably required here to think more precisely regarding how to compare proportions... also in the perspective that your formula is not based on 'metacarpal proporitons' - because otherwise we could end up in a swamp of mis-communications how to interpret words)


If we look at the numbers specific, then we can see that the finger length vs. palm length ratio is at 75% in a typical fire hand shape according your C.S. guideline.

However, if we look at Patti's hands... the ratios are: 7.5/9.6 = 78.1% and 7.6/9.6 = 79.2%, which is for both hands 3% to 4% higher. Now, my more detailed approach shows that a percentage difference of 3% to 4% can easily make the difference whether fingers are 'short', 'medium' of 'long'.

And a likewise significant effect is visible for the palm shape: according the C.S. guideline the pb/pl ratio in a fire hand shape is 80%, but these are for Patti's hands: 83.3% (in both hands).


Now Lynn, I am wondering... since the C.S. describes no standard for a 'medium hand shape' (nor the other hand shapes)... how can you decide whether a hand is within the range of a fire hand shape by just looking at the proportions?

Because a proportional formula for 'medium hand shape' is missing... and I haven't even considered the implications of that the typical fire hand shape proportions is based on a method where palm width is typically measured slightly larger than via the metacarpal approach... which could implicate that the 7.5 x 8.0 x 10 should probably be corrected into 7.5 x 7.8 x 10 (based on my earlier estimate that the difference between both approaches should usually be about 2 mm)... and then it becomes even more notable that Patti's proportions are at a considerable distance from the typical fire hand shape proportions.


So Lynn, maybe we can agree here that it would probably be better if you had translated your '7.5 x 8 x 10' fire hand shape formula into '7.5 x 7.8 x 10'... in order to make any further comparisons with my results?

(PS. Again, I hope you will carefully read my answer to your earlier question (which I mentioned at the start of this post), because I see quite a few inconsistencies in how you apply the C.S. guidelines)

Martijn (admin) wrote:
Hi Patti,

Thanks for correcting that.

Yes, by mistake I had displayed the old values for your right hand - I have corrected this now in the post where I present an overview of the participants (old and new values are presented - the tendency for you having a hand shape closest to earth (+fire) is clearly visible now).

PS. Interesting to see you talking about your hands, sounds like a confirmation regarding the earth (+fire) assessment.

Lynn wrote:Martijn,
Maybe you have hit on something brilliant here, I don't know! I know you have put a lot of work into it. I haven't had time to study it in depth but I have looked at the chart and at the measurements people presented, and at the calculations done in order to ascertain their hand shape.... and it seems very complicated!!

as an example, Mooky's hand:

Mooky's hands:

Right: Finger length = 8.0, palm breadth = 8.5, palm length = 11.5 (fl/pb = 0.941, fl/pl = 0.696, pb/pl = 0.739)
Hand shape code: + | ++ | - - => FIRE hand shape

Left: Finger length = 8.0, palm breadth = 8.8, palm length = 11.7 (fl/pb = 0.909, fl/pl = 0.683, pb/pl = 0.752)
Hand shape code: ++ | ++ | - => FIRE hand shape

It seems unnecessary to do all those calculations! First glance at the palm width & palm length measurements instantly tell us (without working out %) that the palm is much longer than it is wide ie it is a rectangular palm. ...

Sorry Lynn,

Indirectly you are now suggesting that doing 'calculations' is only a a part of my 'hand shape profile'-approach - but I would like to point out here that in time you and Johnny became aware that working with (proportional) percentages for finger length vs. palm length is a requirement in order to make an assessment.

And regarding your conclusion about Mooky's proportions:

"... the palm is much longer than it is wide ie it is a rectangular palm"

these words leave me wonder what the words 'much longer' here exactly implicates(?)


Lynn, according my view we are confronted here with a key-problem in the C.S. appoach: because these do not present any specific guidelines for discriminating what is called a 'square palm' from a 'rectangle palm'.

For, regarding your choice of words, I could even argue here that when I take your words literally... those words could even apply for far most 'earth hands' - simply because for the human hand it is perfectly normal to have palm length exceeding palm width!

(I think in more than 99% of all hands the palm length is much longer than it's width", which includes a large majority 'earth hand shape' cases as well...!


This leaves me wondering... how do the advanced C.S. rules exactly define the difference between a 'square palm' and a 'rectangle palm'? ( )

So far I have the impression that the difference never was defined exactly: not in Dukes' book, not in Fincham's book... and I can also not find a specific clue in your guidelines. Maybe I should have started discussing this key-issue at a much earlier stage in this discussion () .

(Though it is obvious for me that my approach does solve this problem!)

Patti wrote:I think the 'eyeballing' approach works for fitting essence to hands and matching the right element to hand shape.

Do you find any air hands in the above collection? None of them are my hands.

btw, I don't think my hands have changed much over time, if any in regards to shape.

Lynn wrote:

Martijn (admin) wrote:Hello Chakraborty,

Thank you for your question.

In general, any 'pure' hand shape profile is the only profile which exactly matches with the typical proportions for a specific hand shape - while the other variants represent hands that show small variations from the 'pure' hand shape.

(The 'pure' hand shapes are now also highlighted in the picture at the top of the list)




PS. I have described the 'pure' hand shapes now also with a few more details in my article:
http://www.handresearch.com/diagnostics/finger-length-proportions-elemental-hand-shapes.htm

Martijn, I am still trying to understand all this and haven't studied all the details yet. (1) What did you base your 'pure' hand shape proportions on? In your article you mention that you based your study on 16 hand pictures presented by 4 authors. ie 4 hands of each elemental type. (2) is this enough for an accurate study?

These are excellent questions Lynn!

1) The 'pure' hand shape proportions come from the average proportions for each hand shape.

2) Well, regarding the word 'accurate': it is hard to understand exactly what the word 'accurate' here means. However, during the process of sorting things out I have found various clues that the average proportions are not far away from the expected average proportions according this model... basically this is because each of the 4 axes is very close to the 'central axis' in the 4 zones. So, if I would add more examples, I would expect each of the 4 axes to move toward the central axis in the colored zones.

This implicates that AFTER adding more examples, I would probably be able to make the model even more accurate... however I have reasons to expect that the numbers in the 'hand shape profile' picture would hardly change at all (because in most cases the proportional differences would probably chance only a few hundreds of a percent - and since I have presented the numbers 'rounded' to tenths of a percentage, therefore some of the numbers would probably not change at all).

Lynn wrote:Martijn,
Maybe you have hit on something brilliant here, I don't know! I know you have put a lot of work into it. I haven't had time to study it in depth but I have looked at the chart and at the measurements people presented, and at the calculations done in order to ascertain their hand shape.... and it seems very complicated!!

as an example, Mooky's hand:

Mooky's hands:

Right: Finger length = 8.0, palm breadth = 8.5, palm length = 11.5 (fl/pb = 0.941, fl/pl = 0.696, pb/pl = 0.739)
Hand shape code: + | ++ | - - => FIRE hand shape

Left: Finger length = 8.0, palm breadth = 8.8, palm length = 11.7 (fl/pb = 0.909, fl/pl = 0.683, pb/pl = 0.752)
Hand shape code: ++ | ++ | - => FIRE hand shape

It seems unnecessary to do all those calculations! First glance at the palm width & palm length measurements instantly tell us (without working out %) that the palm is much longer than it is wide ie it is a rectangular palm. Finger length vs palm length - we don't even need to do the calculation to see it is shorter than 75%. ie short fingers, oblong palm = fire hand.
(actually when we do the calculations, your fingers seem very short Mooky at 68-69% of the palm length - is there a picture of your hands anywhere on this forum?)

I am still not convinced that fl/pb calculation is neccessary unless they have combination hand shape.

Patti's hand isn't as straightforward as Mooky's, because of almost medium finger length (and because you are measuring across metacarpals I can't really compare it to 5-element system). As the palm is usually wider across the centre, I would agree with fire/earth handshape, tho fingers are slightly longer than standard fire/earth.

* Patti's hands:

Right: Finger length = 7.7, palm breadth = 7.8, palm length = 9.7 (fl/pb = 0.987, fl/pl = 0.794, pb/pl = 0.804)
Hand shape code: + | + | + => EARTH (+FIRE) hand shape

Left: Finger length = 7.6, palm breadth = 8.0, palm length = 9.6 (fl/pb = 0.950, fl/pl = 0.791, pb/pl = 0.833)
Hand shape code: + | + | + => EARTH (+FIRE) hand shape

Patti re

In the CS system, I think they would be aiir with slightly short fingers but not short enough to be earth. I have air skin texture and air depth/width of lines. Very square looking palms, too square to be fire. I'd more identify with earth/air.

In CS system, your palms are more rectangle than square, and the fingers are not long enough to be air. So basically a fire hand. For combination, actually the right hand is fire/air (finger length about same as palm width). Are you left handed? (left hand being wider than right hand)?
by the way, If your avatar was drawn around your hand, that looks like fire/air! (edit - I looked again and it looks fire!)
(basically I am a bit confused about Patti's hands, so in a reading I would probably not say much about handshape!)

By the way Lynn, your words and arguments are getting more and more confusing for me.

For example, in the above post you wrote:

"I am still not convinced that fl/pb calculation is neccessary unless they have combination hand shape."

What do these words exactly mean?

Because, I wonder: Lynn, are you saying here that according the C.S. guidelines a 'combination hand shape' is indicated when finger length and palm width are the same? (That would sound like a new C.S. principle to me, which would make wonder whether there are any other principles for recognizing a combi hand shape!)

Or were you just thinking out loud in response to my ideas?


PS. My sense for logics says that your reasoning about Patti's right hand (rectangle palm with sort of medium finger length) being possibly a 'fire/air' combination does not make sense in the perspective of the following:

Fire hand shape = rectangle palm + short fingers
Water hand shape = rectangle palm + long fingers

Then, wouldn't it make sense here that the combi fire/water can best be described as: rectangle palm + medium fingers?


... Now Lynn, I know that you have considered Patti's palm shape ratio as well. So, I sort of understand why you associate Patti's hand with 'fire/air' anyway. However, your arguments are rather weak here (and unacceptable in the perspective of my fire/water example).

And therefore... since you have no specific criterium available for recognizing a 'square' palm I think Patti's example could actually substantiate my point that measurements and ratio-calculations are actually necessary to understand your assessment!

Lynn wrote:

Martijn (admin) wrote:
Hi Lynn,

Here are the photo examples from Johnny's book.

Before we start making an assessment for those hands, I have featured each photo with a small dot representing the central location at the distal wrist crease and the crease connecting the 3th finger with the palm.

Would you first mind to check if we agree about those locations?

(Maybe it might be an idea to check the those locations as well from your copy of Johnny's book)


Then, if we agree about those locations, I would suggest that you make an assessment of the hand shape - and I will start making my assessment... and afterwards we can see what the results are, etc.)

OK finally Martijn I get to catch up enough to answer your question!
Illustration 18 of earth hand - we have a slight problem in that the hand is not aligned at the wrist which can distort the hand shape.
illustration 25 air hand - in the photo above I notice the picture seems to be taken at an angle with the fingers leaning back away from the lens. This could affect our results.
Illustration 21 water hand - the thumb is held close to the hand which also distorts the hand shape. (and again hand is not aligned to wrist)
so already we are working with 3 things that might alter the perceived shape.
Also I am aware that working with pictures from books, we can't be sure that the editors/printers didn't slightly alter the dimensions of the photo (to fit it on the page or whatever). Working with these photos on screen I am aware that my screen resolution can make a difference (but I have the book so I can see the original pictures there).

Now I have forgotten what you asked me
oh yes, the dots .....
crease at base of 3rd finger looks Ok
earth and water hand wrist dot look slightly too far to the right, I think the other two look ok. But I don't want to argue much over the wrist dots.
I will look at the book now to make my assessments of the handshapes.

Patti wrote:...

Martijn, I think your parameters call for a perfect square and this is not really easily found in nature. Sometimes you will even find what would be called an earth shaped palm where the palm is much wider than it is long and the fingers are average to short. Yet the palm is not square. I see this often on men who are involved in jobs that involve a lot of physical labor - such as road construction.

The hands in general are similar in length to the face. So this can imply that the combination of length of palm and length of fingers combined leads to an average of some sort that fits men and women in a common fashion. Therefore, if the palm is long, typically the fingers will 'appear' shorter than average and when the palm is short, the fingers will appear long. It is only the unusual that will stand out (earth - short/wide and water - long/narrow). That is why most hands will likely fall into the mid zone of mixed elements with fire involved using your choice of measurement points.

In my opinion, for true accuracy in finding palm shape, there needs to be more points on the palm taken into consideration. For the palms, all four corners need to be considered along with widest and narrowest locations.

mooky wrote:

Lynn wrote:
(actually when we do the calculations, your fingers seem very short Mooky at 68-69% of the palm length - is there a picture of your hands anywhere on this forum?)

My hands are here. Basic photos first then down the page links to large/detailed pics.
https://www.modernhandreadingforum.com/t690-basic-reading-request#6162

My hand is interesting I think because the middle (3rd) finger's base is very high up on the palm. It is this that makes the measurements out of whack a bit I think. Makes my pinky look like it is low set. These ratios seem to show that it is the other three fingers that are high set instead. Make sense?

This is one thing I like about Martijn's process/chart. It is not subjective guesswork as to the palm and finger sizes. It is fine for you Lynn since you have looked at thousands of hands. I still have no idea what a well developed mount looks like to be quite frank. Maybe Martijn can develop a system for that as well.

Lynn wrote:Martijn, thanks for your replies to my many posts! I will go through them, as I see there are some things I need to clarify / maybe didn't express well. Sorry, there are just not enough hours in a day at the moment to get everything done.

Patti wrote:Hi Martijn,
I've taken the time to try your system out on a few obviously unusual hands, water and earth and the system does nicely place them into the categories you've arranged. In that regards it is an excellent system for helping people figure out for themselves their hand shape.

Next it would be good to find where the boundaries are in definition or associated behaviors as I think some standards have been moved relative to the CS system with this one.

Thanks Patti, sounds excellent!

Maybe you can specify the issue regarding the boundaries? (I would prefer to focus first on the definition, associated behavior might later become another interesting perspective for further discussion).

Patti wrote:In the sense of definition, in particular fire and air dimensions, there is a lot of discrepancy and gray areas in what or where one shape ends and another begins. Most hands will likely fall into this central zone with a slight lean to one section or another of the four areas in the chart.

Martijn (admin) wrote:
Thanks Lynn!

Interesting to notice that the title is 'Palm Width and Earth Finger Length', which suggest that these two represent a significant combination in the C.S. system - especially in the perspective of making an assessment for 'secondary' (mixed) hand shapes.

PS. I see no specific requirement that in earth hand shape the finger length can be no more than 75%. Instead the descriptions suggest that a percentage close to 75% would be just fine (and additionally there is only the requirement which says that finger length is shorter than palm width). So, at first sight I see no major contradictions regarding the results of my model.

Martijn (admin) wrote:

Lynn wrote:tap I'm glad you are understanding it! I haven't replied to it yet because I am still trying to get my head around it. It seems SUCH a complicated way to assess handshape!
If you came to me as a client and said you'd had your handshape assessed and it is
"left hand borderline FIRE (+AIR)/WATER (+FIRE) hand shape" that would seem like nonsense to me! I haven't had time to translate that via the chart & your measurements to understand what on earth that combination could be! (oops no pun intended, but I may as well throw 'earth' in as that's the element you haven't got
...

Lynn, it is really that complicated for you? After all, you described yourself that you are very familiar with doing measurements... and since you have developed yourself a few criteria regarding the percentages, I don't think that my method is complicated at all.

(Confirmed by a few members have already been able to apply the guidelines in the 'hand shape profile' picture)


Regarding Tap's 'hand shape profile', while you speak of 'nonsense'... I would interpret the code showing that Tap's left hand is very hard to classify - specificly because it concerns a borderline 'mixed hand shape' with fire involved (and earth is missing) ... and because it is close to medium hand shape - which I would describe (based on the metacarpal approach) as: 8 x 8 x 10.

And... I think that knowing Tap's 'hand shape profile' could actually be very useful info in the perspective of finding out which 'hand type' is dominant in her as a person (which would require an analysis of other hand aspects as well).

Though I would agree if you would have added that 'mixed' code combinations itself are not suitable to be translated into specific personality characteristics, etc.

Martijn (admin) wrote:Hi Lynn,

First of all, your comments reminded me of your earlier question:

"If my fingers are slightly long in relation to length of palm, how can this imply that my palm length is short?"

(The answer is quite obvious for me, because it is a direct implication of the aspect in the C.S. approach which says that finger length is only assessed in the perspective of palm length; by the way, I gave my more detailed answer here: https://www.modernhandreadingforum.com/t1975p135-about-finger-length-do-you-have-normal-finger-length#21237 )

Sorry Lynn, your suggestion that Patti's '7.5 x 8 x 9.6' is sort of comparable with the standard fire hand shape ('7.5 x 8 x 10')... simply doesn't make sense to me, because you have not shared any PERSPECTIVE to make such a comparison (by the way, I also addressed this issue in my detailed answer above). Solely the fire hand shape ratios are not enough to make a comparison... because the typical proportions for the other 3 hand shapes are unknown in the C.S. perspective. ( Maybe, how about asking Christopher if he has ever thought about the typical proportional ratio for the other 3 hand shapes?)

( Sorry Lynn, I know that by fact you haven't mentioned that you only looked at the first 2 numbers, however, my problem here is that you still haven't picked up my hint that it is probably required here to think more precisely regarding how to compare proportions... also in the perspective that your formula is not based on 'metacarpal proporitons' - because otherwise we could end up in a swamp of mis-communications how to interpret words)

Because, so far, it appears to me that you might consider '7.5 x 8 x 9' then also comparable with the standard fire hand shape... and then why not '7.5 x 8 x 8' as well???

If we look at the numbers specific, then we can see that the finger length vs. palm length ratio is at 75% in a typical fire hand shape according your C.S. guideline.

However, if we look at Patti's hands... the ratios are: 7.5/9.6 = 78.1% and 7.6/9.6 = 79.2%, which is for both hands 3% to 4% higher. Now, my more detailed approach shows that a percentage difference of 3% to 4% can easily make the difference whether fingers are 'short', 'medium' of 'long'.
And a likewise significant effect is visible for the palm shape: according the C.S. guideline the pb/pl ratio in a fire hand shape is 80%, but these are for Patti's hands: 83.3% (in both hands).

Now Lynn, I am wondering... since the C.S. describes no standard for a 'medium hand shape' (nor the other hand shapes)... how can you decide whether a hand is within the range of a fire hand shape by just looking at the proportions?

Because a proportional formula for 'medium hand shape' is missing... and I haven't even considered the implications of that the typical fire hand shape proportions is based on a method where palm width is typically measured slightly larger than via the metacarpal approach... which could implicate that the 7.5 x 8.0 x 10 should probably be corrected into 7.5 x 7.8 x 10 (based on my earlier estimate that the difference between both approaches should usually be about 2 mm)... and then it becomes even more notable that Patti's proportions are at a considerable distance from the typical fire hand shape proportions.

So Lynn, maybe we can agree here that it would probably be better if you had translated your '7.5 x 8 x 10' fire hand shape formula into '7.5 x 7.8 x 10'... in order to make any further comparisons with my results?

(PS. Again, I hope you will carefully read my answer to your earlier question (which I mentioned at the start of this post), because I see quite a few inconsistencies in how you apply the C.S. guidelines)

Patti wrote:I took a screen shot of the thumbnails images of some of the scanned hands I have on file from 1999 and 2000 - pre digital camera days. It is interesting to see the variety of shapes. I would guess that 28/29 are air.



p.s.:
"Eyeballing" I'd say that 24 is earth, 27 fire and 28/29 air. Mine are closest to 28/29 in appearance (to my eyes) with a little shorter fingers, but not as short as 24 or 27.