Divination & The Harry Potter Series
Season 13 of Every Day Tarot is all about divination in the wizarding world of Harry Potter, and today we’re turning our attention to palmistry—the ancient art of reading palms.
What we explore in this episode:
The history and basics of palmistry: lifelines, heart lines, and beyond
How palmistry appears in Harry Potter and why Trelawney kept flinching at Harry’s hands
The deeper meaning of palmistry beyond reading your life line to know “when you’ll die”
The Art of Palmistry: Reading Between The LinesPalmistry, or chiromancy, dates back thousands of years with roots in India and China. While pop culture often reduces it to predicting when you’ll die or when you’ll fall in love, palmistry is more nuanced.
Hands are linked with the four elements—earth, air, fire, and water—and even fingerprints carry symbolic meaning. Palmistry looks at the lines, shapes, and textures of the hand—lifeline, head line, and heart line being the most well-known. Together, it reveals energy, adaptability, karmic and relational patterns.
Palmistry, like many forms of divination in the books, becomes a mirror: revealing as much about the interpreter’s biases as it does about fate itself.
Palmistry at Hogwarts
In the Harry Potter series, palmistry gets only a brief spotlight. In third-year Divination, Harry notices Professor Trelawney flinching every time she looks at his hands, which he finds more unnerving than helpful. Palmistry also pops up during Harry’s OWL exam, where he disastrously mixes up the life line and head line, accidentally telling his examiner she should have died the previous Tuesday (geez!).
Rowling seems to lean into palmistry’s pop-culture reputation of doom and melodrama. But if we read between the lines, we can imagine Trelawney’s genuine discomfort—perhaps she really was sensing the heavy fate Harry carried, even if he didn’t want to hear it.
To explore the energy of this episode, I pulled cards from the Sasuraibito Tarot
Ace of Wands - new adventures and authorship of your story
Two of Pentacles - balance, adaptability, and playful resilience
Two of Cups - connection and relational bonds
Five of Swords - conflict and the consequences of action (or inaction)
Each of these cards echoes palmistry’s reminder that our hands are sites of power, choice, and destiny.
💭 Today's Tarot Pull:
From The Citadel: A Fantasy Oracle by Fen Inkwright, I pulled The Herald & The Merchant (Upright).
The Herald - A reminder not to get lost in “what ifs” or regrets. The future is written not just in your palm, but in the choices you make today.
The Merchant - A card of self-worth, trade, and boundaries. Know what you offer, and don’t be afraid to ask for fair exchange.
Reflective prompts on this card:
What do your hands say about how you move through the world?
Where do you need to balance giving and receiving in your life right now?
What “regrets” or “what ifs” could you release to be more present today?
How might your hands be instruments of creativity and connection, not just survival?
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