Neutopia’s Palms

Recently, a writer sent me Xeroxes of her palms. She calls herself Neutopia. She advocates “lovolution.” She writes copiously about how to change the world through love on her website. She has her own television show in Tucson, AZ, The Lovolution TV Show, which you can access from the same web page.

Neutopia offers solutions to isolation and meaninglessness; the chaos of the car culture; the ugliness of strip malls; pollution, and cancer; the war on the poor; paying taxes to the military; political corruption; and destruction of the ecosystem. She outlines a global philosophy where we consciously evolve our dysfunctional cities into ecovillages, ecocities, and ecologies of world peace.

Granted, reading palms through Xeroxed copies of lines, is more difficult than doing so in person. This is because extra-sensory perception is actually heightened by hand-to-hand contact. I know a doctor in Napa Valley who combines palm reading with his medical practice – though he doesn’t necessarily telling his patients he does so. He attests to accessing supplementary information, including information about health, through palmistry.

Not surprising.

Physicians, palmists, and astrologers influenced the founders of pharmaceutical medicine during the Renaissance. They looked for shapes of hands more so than lines, and with alchemy created the holy trinity of astrology and chiromancy.

There was, history books tell us, a tremendous demand for all three approaches to information. Palm reading, with its emphasis on reading character traits from the palms, helped found modern psychology in the formation of readable psychological types.

Chiromantic turned to chirologic.

Although the magic of chiromancy could not withstand the new spirit of Enlightenment rationalism, the magical combinations of chemistry in compounds persisted.

So, in this day and age, in the face of the dominance of modern Western medicine and its pharmaceuticals, I do what I can.

In times of fear and moments of crisis we return to the “dark gods” of magic and superstition. Will we live past this century? Is the end of the world near? Most of us don’t know.

Neutopia, who refers to herself as “Doctress,” sent me copies of her palms, as I was refreshing my knowledge of this juncture in palmistry history, serendipitously. Doctress Neutopia thinks that although the end of the world may be near, collectively we have the power to steer clear of it. Though the traditional palmists used inking, from these Xeroxes I can see that this woman’s hand has the wide, square shape of a realist. Some would find this surprising for someone who advocates changing the world through love, one person at a time, as she does.

But is it?

Maybe Neutopia’s theories are right. Glancing at her palms certainly gave her theories more credibility to me. Maybe her totalistic alternative to the current American nightmare is not just whimsical thinking, but more practical in reality than keeping our heads in the sand like an ostrich, averting catastrophe by hiding.

This is the palm shape of someone who knows what she wants. She is energetic, reckless, and primitive, in that she clings tenaciously to what she believes. With such a hand shape, yes or no answers come easily. Not often is there much deliberation, hesitation, and nuance. These people pick a project and proceed full speed ahead because they know what is right. And they go for it.

Palmistry is most often associated with fortune-telling, hence the bad rap. But rather than using a look at Neutopia’s palms to foresee events in her future, I chose to look to see how grounded she is in reality now. The one that she already operates in, currently, to evaluate how much success she is likely to have. This is a completely different use of the examination of the hands.

The hand has become a visible manifestation of our conscious and unconscious processes. With the developing hand the mind developed, and vice versa. Not many people know that evolutionary reality.

I am not sure I knew that when I started palm reading, but now it makes sense to me.

Let’s look at another place on the palms. Hold out your thumb. From the thumb to the first knuckle is your conscious energy, or will power. The second phalange – or the space between the first knuckle and the knuckle that joins the palm to the hand – is the indication of balance and logic. From the thumb’s joining down to the base of the hand is the plane of energy resources available to the individual through the mobilization of basic urges.

On Neutopia’s palms, both right and left, this top phalange of her thumb is bent back towards the hand. So this shows she gets a little stuck at times. Who wouldn’t? With such forceful ideas, it is easy to get stuck in an environment that doesn’t believe you.

Didn’t this happen with all utopian thinkers? Where would Karl Marx have ended up, if it weren’t for Frederick Engels? Answer: Still stuck in that British Museum library, collecting notes for Das Kapital .

But on her Mound of Jupiter, under her index finger, there is a star, which shows she is blessed with a lot to get out there; an inspiring new view of the world, even.

She also has round whorls, or circles, on the fingerprints of her Jupiter (index) fingers, signifying remarkable intelligence.

So I would say that this radical visionary thinker has great potential as a leader. She has a lot to put out there. Her hands at least indicate that more people should be following her.

She is currently making a film with her partner. They travel all over the country interviewing utopian thinkers. From reading her palms, I recommend we all go see it.

Batya Weinbaum is a proficient palmist, artist and writer. Call 216 233 0567 for personal consultation. She runs a monthly teaching newsletter, Tending the Soul Through the Palms. A subscription is $35. Include your email.