Here’s what it’s like to have your palm read

Scratch’s Emma Hobday had the eye-opening opportunity to sit down with James Divine for her own palm reading, and gained a valuable insight into herself in the process…

It’s 9pm on a Wednesday evening and 1pm in Seattle when I met James virtually over Zoom. He answered with a cheery, “Emma!” and I immediately loved everything about him – from his cheerful floral shirt, to his navy wallpaper patterned with gold stars, to his bookcase just behind him, crammed with books, crystals, and pretty ornaments.

He reminded me of the history of palm reading, and then proceeded to explain one of the reasons why he loves palmistry so much.

“How could your palm say anything other than how amazing you are, and how divine you are?” he said. “Your hands are used to communicate, to create, to touch, to hold, to write… just like you and your whole being is divine, created by…” he paused. “Insert who you believe in here!”

I loved that. I’d never truly thought of my hands in this manner – I realised how much I take my hands for granted; how they do so much every day without myself even realising.

Is everything always positive with palmistry?

James was quick to clarify. “I’m not spiritual bypassing; I’m not like Edina Monsoon from Ab Fab,” he spluttered, making me laugh. (Edina ‘Eddie’ Monsoon is a Buddhist, boho, spiritual owner of a London PR company who is obsessed with fashion and celebrity).

“I’m not about that at all,” James continued. “I suffer with depression, which is also the source of my empathy. So I thought, how am I going to use this thing that causes me trouble in my life? You get to decide how to use it. Is it a block, or is it a benefit?”

I found myself nodding in agreement. Mental health can be so debilitating, but people like James who are able to turn it into a benefit are incredible.

Talk turns to whether your palm lines change throughout life, and whether they deepen or change as you age.

“Absolutely,” said James. “You’re a full-time writer, but say you changed career, and became a bricklayer,” (James’s sense of humour is clear to see throughout the reading) “your hands will go from smooth writer’s hands to harder, callused hands. If you start playing the guitar, strumming the chords, your fingers will change. If you do a lot of driving, the tension you’re using to hold onto the steering wheel will cause your hands and fingers to change. It’s the same situation if you suffer with stress, or lose or gain weight – these things can all impact how the lines on your palm will appear.”

James then shared his screen to reveal the close-up shots of my palms that I had sent him a week or two earlier, and revealed to me that I have an ‘Air’ hand.

“Air is the realm of intelligence, intellect, logic and rationality. It’s also the realm of communication, interestingly, so people with Air hands often work in communication, or if not – communication is just an overall strength of theirs,” James commented.

“The pattern of mental processing for you tends to be logical and rational,” he continued. “With your thought process, if someone started screaming that the building was on fire, you would very calmly and logically know what to do. You would think of others and make sure everyone had been accounted for, and be able to calm those that were scared.”

Which hand are you?

“I have a combination hand,” James told me. “I can’t read my own palm, because I’m biased, so I had my apprentice read my palm and she believed that I have elements of all four in my hand.”

Do you think that’s correct?

“I’ve always found myself to be a jack of all trades,” he mused. “I’m a painter, an author (he’s currently in the process of writing his first book), a teacher, a tarot reader, a palmist, and I’m also other important things like a grandfather, a father, a husband…”

“A very multifaceted person, with many different sides to you,” I commented.

He agreed, and returned to the photos of my palm, keen to turn his attention back onto me. “What’s interesting here is that you hold your middle finger and your ring finger very close together. The middle finger is Saturn, which represents rules, boundaries and limits. The ring finger is the Sun, or Apollo, which represents your identity. So you’re holding your rules and your identity very closely together.

“Whenever someone does that, it means ‘I am holding to my boundaries and my identity together, and I am being highly ethical.'” He revealed. “I can tell it’s hard to have you do something against your ethics, but if you ever have done it has hit you hard, as you can be sensitive and feel so highly about ethics and morals. If anyone else does something wrong, you’d probably look at them and think, “how can you do that?” You probably get friends and family say to you, “’don’t take it so hard, don’t be so sensitive.'”

“This is like an insight into my soul,” I laughed.

“I know, because your hands are totally ratting you out,” James laughed. “Isn’t this fun?!”

It was impossible not to have fun with James.

James told me that I have a short life line, but it doesn’t mean what you think – it in fact means that you are a young soul, with a longer line meaning that you are an old soul. (It is completely possible to have young people with long life lines, being an ‘old soul’, such as his seven year old granddaughter. “She’s said things which I think are from her past life,” James said.)

James elaborated, “Young souls are vibrant, sparkly and effervescent. You bring energy to things and a fresh new perspective. You like to always be thinking of new and different ways to do things, instead of sticking to the old. You bring that Aries sun to things (we discovered that we are both an Aries star sign, with four days between us) and you’ve had really innovative ideas!”

I also discovered that I have a strong fate line (the vertical line in the centre of your palm). “Your fate guides you, and you can end up in times and places where things just happen. Allow yourself to have the life experience – you don’t have to plan things out all the time,” said James. I nodded furiously, as I am famous (or infamous!) for planning – from lists, to days out, to qualifying as a wedding planner. “Planning is a classic Air hand trait; I know you love to plan,” said James. “But sometimes it’s good to just let things be and go with the flow.”

James zoomed in on my thumb. “I already know you’re a writer, but you do have the editor line here,” he revealed, identifying a horizontal line at the base of my thumb. “This tells me you have the ability to edit content and use editing in a really effective way.”

I made a mental note to tell my editor. “If I wasn’t a writer, what would that editor line mean?” I asked. “It would still mean that you’re very good at crafting communication. The editor line can also mean sometimes you censor yourself, but other times you know how much to communicate, and how to present that communication accordingly,” James replied.

The bottom line of my palm reading?

“It doesn’t matter what you do, you will always approach everything logically and rationally,” he said. “You always give more than 100%. You don’t do anything without putting your heart and soul into it, and you like to make it absolutely perfect, and make things perfect for other people.”

An inspiring and enlightening experience that I won’t forget, I logged off Zoom feeling like a new person – I’d been advised of my good points and not so good points (in a kind and funny way) and it had truly lit up an ordinary evening at home.

James had waved me off with a beaming smile, a promise to help with anything I needed in the future, and “I adore you, this has been so much fun!” The feeling is mutual.

Click here for James Divine’s website.

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