A dark beard is good, but the possessor is usually of a melancholy disposition; yet it denotes a person to be ingenious, sincere, thoughtful, constant, cordial, bold and fit to make a warrior.
A pale beard denotes a phlegmatic person, who is temperate enough and tolerably prudent.
He that hath a decent beard, handsome and thick of hair, is good-natured and reasonable in all things.
Those who have little or no beard, but a small mustache, are of an ill humor, but very luxurious.
The practical part of chiromancy is that which gathers probable predictions from lines, the places of the planets in the hand, and from the notes and characters everywhere posted and marked out in the hands and fingers. These lines and their planetary relevancy are thus defined:
1. _Cardiaca_, or the line of life. 2. _Hepatica_, or the love’s line; also called the natural mean. 3. _Cephalica_, or the line of the head and brain. 4. _Thoralis_, or the table line. 5. _Restricta_, or the dragon’s tail. 6. _Via Solis_, or the sun’s way. 7. _Via Lactea_, or the milky way. 8. _Via Saturnia_, or Saturn’s way. 9. _Cingulum Veneris_, or the girdle of Venus. 10. _Via Martis_, or the way of Mars. 11. _Mons Veneris_, or the mound of Venus. 12. _Cavea Martis_, or the cave of Mars. 13. _Mons Jovis_, or Jupiter’s mount. 14. _Mons Saturn_, or Saturn’s mount. 15. _Mons Solis_, or the sun’s mount. 16. _Locus Luna_, or the moon’s place. 17. _Mons Mercurii_, or the mount of Mercury. 18. _Mensa_, or the table containing the part of fortune. 19. _Pollex_, or the thumb. 20. _Index_, or the forefinger. 21. _Medius_, or the middle finger. 22. _Annularis_, or the ring finger. 23. _Auricularis_, or the little finger.
The question often arises as to whether judgment should be given by the right hand or the left. It is certain that in one hand the lines and other signatures are very often more manifest, and are thus more plain to be seen than the other, as well in the hands of gentlemen as ladies. That hand is the proper one (in both sexes) which shows and exhibits the lines thereof most clearly, and abounds with a series of characters and signs, yet so as that the other, whose lines are more obscure, may pay its contribution. If in both hands they consent, and appear to be fair and comely, they declare a constancy of fortune and health. The cause of diversity is that he who is born in the daytime, and has a masculine planet (the Sun, Saturn, Jupiter and Mars) lord of his geniture, bears the more remarkable signs in his right hand, especially when the sign ascending is also masculine. The contrary happens to those born at night, as often as a feminine planet predominates. If both hands agree, it must be that in a diurnal nativity the feminine planets rule, or that there falls out a mixture of masculine and feminine; so in the nights by the contrary reason.