Chiromancy is a science which teaches us to read not only the character but the whole destiny--for good or evil, the length of life and often the manner of death of a man by the lines and marks to be seen in his hand. This study is sometimes called Palmistry, in which case, however, it properly refers _only_ to a judgment formed from what appears in the palm of the hand, whilst Chiromancy (taken from the word _Cheir_, a hand, and _Manteia_, divination) signifies the revelations made by the hand, taken as a whole. Chiromancy is nearly as ancient as astrology, with which it is _indissolubly_ connected, for the hand represents, as has been before said, a natural horoscope, which is placed upon it at the time both of the conception and the birth by the influence of the stars. The seven planets are all represented in the hand and also the twelve signs of the zodiac, so that the casting of a nativity is needless, as by simply examining a hand by the light of Chiromancy we can indicate what planets have been powerful at the time of birth, and what, therefore, will be their effect for good or evil over the existence; and we can also find the dates of the principal events of the life. We find many allusions to this subject in the Bible, and still more in the ancient Kabbala. The Holy Kabbala, as it was called by the Magi, must not be confounded with what is called "The Black Art"; it is, on the contrary, the quintessence of reason and morality as they were understood by the ancients and contains that traditional science of the secrets of nature which, from age to age, is borne towards us as the wave is carried by the tide to the shore; but it has been transmitted obscurely, because the doctrines of the Kabbala were known only, in those early ages, to the adept and the initiation, later on, of neophytes was only yielded after a series of severe and terrible ordeals, whilst the revelation of its mysteries to the uninitiated was punished by death.