As the heat of summer subsides and turns into the coolness of fall, the nights become chill and the air brisk. This is the time when autumn winds scatter seeds widely across the earth.
Just as a breeze makes tree leaves dance and carries the fragrance of flowers, those most influenced by the air element live lives that in some way emphasize the art of communication. Essential to communication, air enables the movement, interchange, and transmission at the core of the exchange of information and ideas. Those with air hands like to connect things, places, and ideas and are typically good at theorizing and conceptualizing. They are thoughtful, friendly, open-minded, and supportive of others.
Palm
Air hands have square palms. But unlike the rigid square palm of the earth hand, the typical air-hand palm is more flexible and elastic. A square palm indicates solidity and rationality, and this mirrors the emotional balance typical of those with air hands.
Air-hand types value the intellect’s discriminatory capacity. They are inclined to intellectualize everything, and so tend to be especially objective and emotionally centered. As long as their emotions (manifesting as likes and dislikes) are kept in check, they are able to maintain a certain objectivity (and dispassion) in their thoughts and actions. The drawback is that air-handed people can easily live too much in their heads and appear emotionally superficial and cold.
Fingers
An air hand has long fingers, which also helps differentiate it from the square-palmed, shorter-fingered earth hand. Long fingers indicate a person with the capacity for great patience and abundant attention to detail. For an air-handed person, the details they collect about the world are organized and categorized in square-palmed fashion, and it is this precise, ordered thinking that makes them excellent communicators. They love learning, and usually enjoy talking, writing, and connecting with others through groups, computers, and social networks.
People with air hands truly enjoy finding solutions to complex situations, especially ones that challenge their minds and require them to use their accumulated knowledge. Strategy games and crossword puzzles are a great way to spend some quality time with your air-handed friends.
Skin texture
The typical air hand has a softness to it, both in its form and in the quality of the skin. Though not as smooth as that of a typical water hand, the skin of an air hand is usually smoother than that of an earth or fire hand.
The softness of the air hand reflects the softness of the air-handed person’s nature. The air-hand type is rarely contentious about their ideas (that would indicate their emotions are more powerful than their reason). They are often gentle, and attracted to a quiet but active life. They typically enjoy living in cities, where they have ready access to educational institutions, libraries, theaters, and other places that satisfy their thoughtful curiosity. The refinement of their hands makes them suited to a lifestyle where mental activity, as opposed to physical effort, is prevalent.
Lines
The lines of an air hand are typically thin and deep. They look wispy and elegant, as if they have been finely etched into the palm. These lines usually curve and blend into other lines without cutting through them.
How a person perceives their environment is reflected in the line quality of their hands. So, those with air hands have a curious nature and view the world as something to be understood. Yet not all in life is amenable to being categorized and understood, especially in the realm of human emotions and interactions, and this is one of the lifelong lessons for the air-hand type.
Fingerprints
As for a water hand, the typical fingerprint pattern for an air hand is the loop. Often the loops on air fingers travel high into the upper part of the digit, which is an added marking for intelligence. Loops indicate gregariousness and an easy-going attitude.
Air-handed folks with multiple loop fingerprints make excellent advisors because they are able to keep an open mind, look at both sides of a situation impartially, and keep their emotional reactions to a minimum.
So… What hand type are you?
The whole manifest Universe is comprised of the five elements in various permutations. All five elements exist in every person to varying degrees, and it is the task of the Hasta practitioner to determine which element prevails in a set of hands. Is it earth, water, fire, or air? Determining this is the foundation upon which rich, detailed analysis of lines and markings is built.
As covered in this almanac’s seasonal articles, the structure of the hand is the lead indicator of hand type:
A square palm with short fingers defines an earth hand.
A square palm with long fingers characterizes an air hand.
A rectangular, narrow palm with short fingers shows a fire hand.
A rectangular, narrow palm with long fingers defines a water hand.
About three times out of four, hands will conform to one of these four types. But sometimes, classifying a hand by its structure is a challenge, and so we must recruit other characteristics such as fingerprint pattern and line type to make a determination.
For example, let’s say that we have a rectangular palm with fingers that are neither short nor long. Is this a water hand or a fire hand? To find the answer, we can look to the fingerprints. Say the set of hands shows eight whorl fingerprints—now the deck is stacked in the direction of these being fire hands because water hands are unlikely to have that many whorls.
Though infrequent, there are also hands that strongly display multiple elements simultaneously. In such cases, we can expect the person to exhibit a wider range of behaviors and greater variety of approaches to life’s circumstances.
Ultimately, hand analysis is an elegant dance between the categories presented here and how they uniquely express themselves in a person’s life. The most powerful tool we can bring to bear on the subject is a healthy curiosity towards how hands reflect our character and destiny patterns and how they can become a wonderful tool for self-discovery and for the understanding of others.