Thumbs – Clubbed – “Murderer’s Thumbs”

The cross-referencing to other signs in hands will always determine how any one feature might play out in the psyche of the owner. This is especially true when assessing the traits of those with “clubbed” thumbs.

In traditional palmistry ‘clubbed’ or ‘toe’ thumbs have seriously bad press; they have been assigned the grim name of ‘murderer’s thumbs’.

One website even reports: “This thumb is in a shape of a club. People possessing [‘hammer’/’stub’/’Dutch’] thumbs are animalistic in nature and thought system. They bear brutality of the elementary type. They can harm or murder out of callousness. They lack premeditation and depth.”

This mostly redundant theory was based on the association of thumb tips with our will, and the belief that a bulbous tip blocks expression of will, resulting in pent-up energy, which can then unpredictably explode in violent outbursts.

It is true that some of these traits may apply to the owner of elementary, rather course and cruel looking hands; they will have thick, course, red, hard hands, with over-developed Mars and Venus mounts, and with significantly short index fingers with whorls.

But in chirology, while owners of clubbed thumbs don’t easily express themselves, this ominously dark belief is mostly completely obsolete. To the contrary, the majority of people with ‘potter’s thumbs’ are earthy, kind, deeply sensitive, tolerant, conscientious, hardworking and loyal.

Medically, this anomaly is called brachydactyly type D (BBD). It is caused by an inherited gene which causes shortening of the thumb tip bone of one (or both) thumbs, resulting in a compressed, fleshy tip with a wide and narrow nail.