Two Hands, Two Feet…

‘Your strid­ing feet send the road ahead of you behind your back. The mouth that speaks the truth is bet­ter than the mute one. The open-handed giver sur­passes the wealthy man who hoards for him­self. Twins are not alike in all their gifts, and two hands, though they belong to one and the same per­son, are not equally skil­ful.’ – so holds the ancient, prac­tic­al philo­sophy of the Rig Veda. If we had to decide which is man's most import­ant organ, we could run through the parts of the body, but for now let us turn to the hands.

The hand, togeth­er with its fin­gers, car­ries far-reach­ing sym­bol­ic mean­ing. The left hand is fem­in­ine, the hand of the Moon, mag­net­ic, linked with the past, with passiv­ity and with the neg­at­ive aspects of life, and it is the bear­er of being­ness. The right hand, by con­trast, is mas­cu­line, elec­tric, act­ive, the hand of the Sun, linked with the future, the embod­i­ment of aware­ness and of the pos­it­ive aspects of life, the ritu­ally pure hand. The sym­bol­ic role of the fin­gers is sig­ni­fic­ant too: the thumb is the ruler among the fin­gers, the emblem of the phys­ic­al I-force, or of the divine rep­res­ent­at­ive who comes to dwell in the micro­cosm. In mys­tic­al Chris­tian­ity its three joints are the sym­bol of the Holy Trin­ity, in Hinduism God's power to cre­ate, sus­tain and des­troy. Accord­ing to the Greeks it is ded­ic­ated to Venus, a sym­bol of fer­til­ity. High­er aware­ness is linked with it, and its size mir­rors the strength of the will. In the Far East people often point to things with the thumb, and this reveals the secret and a royal char­ac­ter. In China it is chi, the sign of the life energy.

The index fin­ger is the sym­bol of the you-force, of step­ping out of ourselves, an emblem of Jupiter, and thus the sign of aware­ness. In the past it was held to be pois­on­ous, and point­ing at someone with the index fin­ger was a mark of dis­respect. In the Far East it counts as unclean, in China it is the sym­bol of water.

The middle fin­ger reaches the farthest, and it determ­ines our rela­tion to mat­ter. It is the bor­der­land of con­scious­ness and uncon­scious­ness, the sym­bol of Sat­urn. It is called the shame­less fin­ger, the fools' fin­ger, the obscene fin­ger, and in China it is the emblem of earth.

The ring fin­ger is the fin­ger of Apollo, or of the Sun, the emblem of the spir­itu­al world and of the spir­itu­al part­ner. Since it sym­bol­ises the emo­tions, and the part­ner and the shared life of two are bound up with it, this is the fin­ger for the engage­ment or the wed­ding ring. It is called the phys­i­cian's fin­ger, because heal­ing power was ascribed to it. Its touch heals wounds, and in former times medi­cines were mixed and oint­ments applied with it. In India it is used to paint sec­tari­an marks on the fore­head. In China, fire.

Finally, the little fin­ger is the fin­ger of Mer­cury, the emblem of intel­lec­tu­al power, of the intel­lect. At its base lies the Mount of Mars, and below it, down to the wrist, stretches the Mount of the Moon, the region of the uncon­scious. Its other name is the ear-fin­ger, because it was put into the ear to stim­u­late the sense of hear­ing. The Druids used it in this way, but in yoga too the clos­ing of the sense open­ings of the head dur­ing med­it­a­tion is famil­i­ar. The little fin­ger is also the sign of sexu­al­ity, of the libido and of the sub­con­scious, and in China, air.

Finally, let men­tion be made of a pos­sible sixth fin­ger. The digit­us post­min­im­us is an extra fin­ger, a fin­ger-bud or a flap of skin on the fifth fin­ger, which most cul­tures take as a sign of spe­cial abil­it­ies. The sixth fin­ger is the mark of a sham­an or a tál­tos.

In man's palm two M's are engraved: mind your mor­tal­ity, but across his fin­gers his call­ing is dealt out: the thumb denotes vir­tue, the index fin­ger abund­ance, the middle fin­ger hap­pi­ness, the ring fin­ger free­dom and the little fin­ger love.