"I was just thinking about Dogon mythology," she said.
"You know the Dogon tribe has thought for years that Sirius [the North Star] is really a three star system, not a single star. Considering that they have no telescopes or anything, that is truly remarkable. Scientists discovered it was a two star system a hundred years ago and they just recently found another companion star. It has always been their mythology that when the third star gets discovered it will signal a monumental shift in planetary fortunes."
"Good, 'cause I can use a shift in planetary fortunes," he replied.
"Could you pass the salad dressing please," chimed in a third.
"The Dogons say we all came from Sirius as plasma beings and that if we raise our consciousness sufficiently, we can return to our mother planet."
Lunch at the Mythology of Hands Workshop in Zurich, and the discussion was definitely drifting towards the cosmic. In the background a church bell rang out the time, probably the 12th century church a few blocks over. Tomorrow would be getaway day for me, the conclusion of four wonderful weeks in Switzerland. But San Francisco was beckoning.
"That reminds me of all the millenium talk about the Mother Ship saving the divine light beings while the rest of us get stranded on a dying Earth. I have trouble with that," said another.
Sipping an espresso, I glance out the window. The Goodyear blimp is gliding over a picturesque skyline built centuries ago; the Mother Ship with corporate logo, coming to take me home.
Times have Changed
Is it really fourteen years since my first trip here? Readings were scarce back then: not much income but lots of free time to explore. I rented a bicycle at the railroad station and rode endlessly through the winding streets, along the river and by the lake. I remember how different everything seemed: the architecture, the faces, the pace of life. I took a day to ride to the falls. I drew, I people watched, I had an ice cream.
My first lecture in Zurich drew a crowd of three, and two were neighbors from the States who just happened to be passing through. My total earnings just about covered my airfare.
Times have changed. I must have looked at 150 hands on this last trip and Zurich is no longer a foreign city to me. I like the way business has boomed, but I hope the cash strapped Richard from back then can sense the current scene and be pleased. Meanwhile, I'll treasure the still and quiet places he visited.
Readings
Some notes from the current trip are in order before they fade away: the precious young woman with pointy fingertips and a million lines, the three hands with Neptune Stars, the family from Bauma.
A Million Lines + Murderer's Thumbs
It is afternoon. Marianne is translating. A woman of thirty opens her hands: wise, super aware yet painful hands bursting in sores; blistered, as if the oxygen in the atmosphere is too much for her delicate self to handle. Staccato lines race around her entire palmar surface; her fingertips extremely tapered: an etheric personality - a poetess, a wood nymph, a muse.
Standing in stark contrast is a pair of Murderer's Thumbs - a more opposite marking would be hard to imagine. The Murderer's Thumb looks like a clown nose on a stick, a round, bulbous thumb top that, once encountered, is hard to forget.
I have seen maybe sixty or seventy of them in over 50,000 pairs of hands. Owners of this marking have a most intense obstinacy. I have always considered it an excellent attribute: the person who will stop at nothing to run a marathon, learn piano, whatever. Somehow, in palmistry's distant past, this thumb type must have lead to a different outcome.
For this woman, it was what kept her on the planet - this noisy, busy, impossibly insensitive place for someone of her thin skin. Yet here she is, hanging in there the best she can, determined to make her life work.
"I just opened a counseling practice," she told me, "but every little thing seems so difficult. Printing a brochure is so expensive and…and…"
"When does it get easy for me?"
Those familiar with the IIHA system will recognize the above fingerprint chart as the cruel joke it is.
The Life Purpose (Service / Pioneer / Public Impact in the Healing Arts) makes good enough sense. But the life challenge is what is so unfair. Until she can become self reliant, hold a job, her Life Purpose will elude her. She doesn't need to become a tycoon, but paying the rent six months in a row would be a good start. The multiple blisters attested to the pain she was in.
Anyone with pointy tips wrestles with the practicalities of life. Anyone with this Life Lesson will struggle mightily to keep it all together. The challenge presented by these two in combination is almost too much to imagine. But she was guided by a fierce determination and a piercing self-awareness. I had a good feeling about her prospects.
The Star of Neptune
The Neptune Star is another rare occurrence, similarly challenging. It appears as a tiny asterisk at the base of the hand and indicates an intuition of the highest order. The owners of this marking live life at a high pitch: their emotional system seems directly wired into the collective unconscious. Past life readers, archetypal psychologists, ceremonial priests and priestesses - this is the promise of the Star of Neptune.
That is, if it doesn't first drown the owner in the depths of despair. Feelings too deep to name, too powerful to tame; this is the Neptune zone, and a star formation here indicates the most extreme case of Neptune-itis. I had not seen one yet in 2001. In Zurich I saw three in one week.
Each pair of hands also had the Lines of Genius, the mark of the gifted author or public speaker. Ironically, that week I was scheduled for three underwater Watsu sessions and the Mythology of Hands Workshop. Reading hands one building over from the original Jung Center on Gemeindestrasse, I felt overwhelmed by a synchronicity factor bordering on the absurd. Poseidon was chasing me with his trident.
The Family from Bauma
However, the most intriguing sessions during my entire stay were in a clinic 30 kilometers from Zurich. Session one was for a fifteen year old girl, her mother being the translator. The thumb dangled limply at the side of the hand, and the head line was tied to the life line for an excessive length. Chained and islanded, the head line eventually became clear towards the outer edge of the hand. The fingerprints are indicated below.
The thumb pressing against the hands indicates a broken will (usually under the domination of another); the tied up and messy head line indicates muddled thinking caused by family intervention. The fact that the head line cleared up when it left the life line behind indicates thoughts clear up when she gets away from the family.
The Plot Thickens
The fingerprints reveal a Life Purpose of Successful Innovation (Converting the Skeptics) and a Life Lesson of Speaking Out in the Face of Violation. Since this was her Life Lesson, nothing in life could be more difficult than standing up to her family; since her Life Purpose demanded she be able to hold her ground against opposition, she would not open this door until she had practiced at home.
Her mother had dominated her life and here she was to have her life story told and her mother was the translator! I anticipated a difficult session.
But to my surprise and delight that is not what happened. Mom was open and in agreement with the thrust of the reading that she lovingly translated for her daughter. Her daughter knew immediately what was going on and the room danced with light.
Soap Opera Complexity
Now it was the younger daughter's turn. The father hadn't made it for the first session, but having the best English in the family, he was here to translate for daughter number two. She had a Star of Apollo. It shared her palms with an enlarged line of anger. Her Mercury (little) finger was very low set.
The Star of Apollo is the key here. It is the highest marker the hands have for creative possibility (it appears as an asterisk midway between the top of the palm and the heart line, the upper transverse crease; under the ring finger).
However, in this young girl, the middle of the asterisk was missing, as if it had been erased. The interpretation is that the creative side is missing its focus. The line of anger is the outlet that currently serves as a stand-in for creative endeavor. The low set Mercury indicates (in short) issues with father.
Her fingerprints were as follows:
The Life Purpose is Creative Mentoring (a measure of creative success that natural brings to it students and followers), the Life Lesson revolves around family issues (Must I be a lone wolf in order to become successful?).
Having escaped the jaws of death in reading #1, I could only hope that reading #2 could somehow find its way to a successful solution. As in the earlier session, the very problem itself was in the room and I would have to tell him the reading and have him tell it to his daughter. Deep breath, Richard. You will survive this.
Again, miraculous. I started with the Star of Apollo and the Mom and Dad (Mom had stayed for the second session) were nodding vigorously regarding her creative capabilities. Dad took a lecturing tone when I brought out the missing middle and Mom began to argue ever so tactfully with Dad.
I couldn't understand the Swiss German going around the room, but the content was obvious. Dad's English, perfect to this point, mysteriously eroded as I reached the angry-with-father point of the reading and Mom took over some of the translating duties. Daughter number two, only just fourteen, was unerringly present.
Then The Miracle
Dad's entire color and posture shifted as I crafted a story of a lone wolf, succeeding only when sufficiently distant from the pack that seemed to have abandoned him. Now the wolf was searching in vain to return home - at first to prove its point, but at a deeper level, to reconnect. The father began to cry. "That's my story," he said. "I had to leave home, my father was smothering me. By the time I had become a success on my own terms, I tried to go home, but he had died. And now I'm doing the same to my own daughter."
Mom comforted Dad, daughter number 2 embraced them both, and I sat in awe at the power of the hands.
Home
I'm home now, Swiss times fading quickly in an avalanche of e-mails and IIHA projects. Tallied up, I have spent over a year in Zurich. I have good friends there and a favorite bakery. It is another home base, different yet dear. I'll be back in January and maybe there will be just enough snow on the streets to give it that picture postcard look.
I don't really know much about Dogon Mythology, but, all in all, planetary fortunes are looking pretty good.
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