Knowing Hands: The Hand as a Memory Aid and Oracle

A similar principle: The right-hand rule in physics was introduced in the late 19th century by John Fleming in his book Magnets and Electric Currents. (Image: Public Domain)

April 30, 2025

Research project at FAU investigates a special form of mnemonics

The hand as a memory aid and oracle: In China, the tradition of using the hand to memorize information, solve practical problems, and predict things has existed for centuries. In the”Knowing Hands” project, medical historian Professor Dr. Marta Hanson at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) is now investigating these special methods using previously unexplored historical and ethnographic material. Her intention is to reintegrate these practices into the history of knowledge.

Marta Hanson first came into contact with the centuries-old Chinese tradition of using the hand as a memory aid and oracle in the year 2000. The American specialist in historical Chinese medicine was expecting a friend to visit from Taiwan. On the way to the airport, Marta Hanson’s car broke down, so she could not pick her friend up as planned.

At first, it seemed like a coincidence when Marta Hanson’s friend called her immediately after landing, even before she knew she could not be picked up. But it wasn’t a coincidence. “To my great astonishment, my friend told me that she had made some calculations with her hand and worked out that I had a small problem,” says the China specialist.

Centuries-old tradition in China

For Marta Hanson, the calculations, a complicated mode of calculation that is almost incomprehensible to outsiders, including the hand, the finger lines and the diagrams provided by them, was an “aha” experience that has stayed with her ever since. Since then, she has been researching how hands are used in China for memorization and divination. “In China and Taiwan, hands have been historically documented to be used in a similar way in different contexts since the seventh century: Traditional doctors diagnose with their hands, fortune tellers calculate horoscopes, and Taoist priests perform rituals,” explains Marta Hanson.

However, this technique did not become common practice. How has this cognitive use of hands developed there over time? How widespread are these practices in today’s East Asia? The “Knowing Hands” project investigates previously unexplored historical and ethnographic material about these hand-based practices from a comparative and cross-cultural perspective.

Global research collaboration

It is based at the FAU Graduate School “Alternative Rationalities and Esoteric Practices from a Global Perspective,” funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), in short: CAS-E. This examines esoteric practices and rituals of various spiritual traditions and their resilience to an increasingly dominant scientific and technical discourse from a transcultural perspective by bringing together researchers from all over the world, including Marta Hanson and anthropologist and sinologist Stéphanie Homola.
Both lead the “Knowing Hands” project, which runs from 2025 to 2028 and creates a network of specialists in disciplines where hand mnemonics were used in Chinese history – ranging from poetry and linguistics to law, mathematics, and medicine to esoteric Buddhism, fortune-telling, and martial arts.

Reintegrating mnemonics into the history of knowledge

“Knowing Hands” aims to explain how a similar method of knowledge modeling is used in so many different areas, what the peculiarities of Chinese hand mnemonics are, and to what extent the Chinese model can contribute to understanding a form of mnemonics that can be observed in other cultural contexts. The project is the first that aims to combine two different uses of the hand: how people use their hands to support cognitive processes and at the same time what knowledge is literally captured physically with the hands to do things.

These practices will be examined in three ways: in situ, historically and ethnographically in China (and with a view to their use in Japan and Korea), in comparison between East Asian and European traditions, and cross-culturally with a view to Chinese-European interactions. By the end of the project, a digital archive of these techniques in East Asia and a digital exhibition will be created. This is linked to the goal of reintegrating these special forms of mnemonics, how people have used and continue to use the finger joints of their palms similarly to an Excel spreadsheet, back into the history of knowledge.

The creator of the diagram had learned this technique in order to orientate himself at night as a scout. Like an embodied compass, this technique can be used to determine the direction of the moon based on the time and phase of the moon. The finger bones of the hand are used as a table to memorize a table with two entries combining the time (vertical) and the moon phase (horizontal). Each cell shows the direction of the moon in relation to these two variables. (Image: Stephanie Homola)

The drawing shows instructions for a simple prediction technique used in everyday life in which a closed question in the form "will it work or not" is asked. The point is to judge whether the timing of an action is correct or not. The practitioner performs a calculation based on the timing of the planned action by running their thumb over the six positions mentally on their hand. Depending on the position at which the calculation ends, the result is evaluated as positive or negative. (Image: Stephanie Homoloa)

The creator of the diagram had learned this technique in order to orientate himself at night as a scout. Like an embodied compass, this technique can be used to determine the direction of the moon based on the time and phase of the moon. The finger bones of the hand are used as a table to memorize a table with two entries combining the time (vertical) and the moon phase (horizontal). Each cell shows the direction of the moon in relation to these two variables. (Image: Stephanie Homola)

The CAS-E on the webKnowing Hands - Chinese Hand Memory Techniques

Read about the project

Further information:

Prof. Dr. Marta Hanson
FAU Research Group CAS-E
mhanson4@jhmi.edu