Short version: The Mount of Venus is the pad at the base of your thumb. Palmistry reads a full one as warm, a flat one as cool, and the old books fight over a very big one. Press your thumb across to your little finger and watch the pad bulge. That is the mount.
It is entertainment, for fun and not fortune. The mount is thumb muscle and padding, and the rest is stories people told about it. Here are the stories, with the quotes.
The quick version of what the books claim
- Full pad: warm, affectionate, fond of pleasure and beauty.
- Flat pad: cool, reserved, less swayed by romance.
- Overfull pad: the same warmth with too much of it, which some authors called a fault.
Everything below is where those three lines came from, and where the writers stopped agreeing.
How to find it on your hand
Hold your hand open in good light and look at the thumb side of your palm.
- Find the curved crease that wraps around the base of your thumb. Palmists call it the life line.
- The area inside that curve, between the crease and the thumb, is the mount.
- Bring your thumb across to your little finger. The pad bulges, and the crease deepens.
- Relax the hand and compare the pad with the one under your little finger.
Check both hands. They are rarely identical, which is one reason this kind of reading is loose.
Palmistry named several pads on the palm after planets, and Venus got the biggest. Here is how one author fixed this mount in place:
"The Mount of Venus occupies the base of the thumb, bounded by the vital line."
"Vital line" is his name for the life line. Same crease, older word. If your lines form a letter near it, the M on your palm page covers that.
A self-check you can do lying down
Rest your hand palm up and try three things. Then see what each book would have said.
- Press the pad. Is it firm and springy, or soft and squishy? Campbell read firmness as staying power:
"Its firmness or elasticity shows the enduring qualities of the person."
- Check the color. Is it pinker or paler than the rest of your palm? Benham counted a highly colored, prominent mount as an excess of the type.
- Look at how much it stands out. Compare it with the other pads. Benham put it this way:
"This Mount rises into the palm, has the largest prominence shown by any of the Mounts, and by its size and markings you must estimate the amount and kind of Venusian qualities possessed by the subject."
Notice the word "estimate." Even a confident author asks you to guess how much is a lot. Size, firmness and color also shift with temperature, grip and the hand you were born with. A cold hand looks paler, a warm hand pinker, and a hand that grips things all day builds more pad.
Benham's verdict on a pad with no development at all was blunt:
"it is a deficient Mount, and the Venusian qualities are entirely lacking."
What a big Mount of Venus meant for love
This is why half of us are here. The short answer from the books: warmth, affection and a strong pull toward the opposite sex, with a warning label if it was too big.
Markun, writing in 1925, put the good version in one line:
"A good mount gives the reading of affection."
Cheiro called a well-marked one a warm and lovable nature. Frith, quoted below, thought too much of it made for love that was inconsistent and changing. For dating, then, the old advice was mixed. A big pad was charming and a bit risky, and a flat one was cool. Whether any of it matched how people actually dated is a different question, and nobody measured.
What Cheiro said about a large Mount of Venus
Cheiro is the best-known name in the library, and his argument for this mount starts with plumbing.
"it follows that when this mount is large, there is a greater flow of blood through this arch"
From there he walks to good health and a more passionate nature. I am skipping the health part, because a pad of flesh is a poor basis for telling anyone anything about their body. What stays is the personality half, which he kept for a mount that is large but not extreme:
"People with this mount well marked have always considerable desire for luxury, they have great taste in color, music, and art."
So in Cheiro's system a full mount is a warm, pleasure-loving, impressionable type. A small one is the opposite.
Full, flat or overfull
Markun's scale is the shortest in the library:
"If the region is flat, coldness is supposed to characterize the emotional life of the subject."
Look at the words "is supposed to." Markun was a skeptic who still listed the folklore. A flat pad was read as cool and detached, a full pad as affectionate, and an overfull one as too much. Those were opinions, not measurements, and plenty of warm people have flat palms.
Marks on the mount
Almost everyone has fine lines on this pad. They are skin folding when your thumb moves, and a thumb moves all day. The old books read them anyway.
Benham's general rule was that a grille, cross-bars or crosses on any mount showed the defects of its type. The four marks people ask about most:
- Grille: a patch of fine lines crossing each other, like a small net.
- Cross-bars: short lines that cut across the mount, like rungs on a ladder.
- Triangle: three short lines that close into a small three-sided shape.
- Island: a line that splits and rejoins, leaving a tiny oval.
Markun gave the best-known readings in one dry breath:
"A triangle indicates calculation in affairs of the heart."
He also read islands on the mount as lost marriage opportunities, and then closed the passage with "So the story is told." That is a man telling you where the story came from, not vouching for it.
For the arc some palmists place above the heart line, see the girdle of Venus, which gets its own page.
Many lines on the Mount of Venus
This is a common search, and the books answer it directly. Cheiro read lines that run alongside the life line as a sign of need for affection:
"Many lines on the Mount of Venus running parallel to the Line of Life denote a nature very dependent upon affection"
Other authors in the library read many lines as heat of passion, and a mount with no lines as cold, so the same crosshatch could be flattering or not depending on whose book you opened.
Where the authors disagreed most
The big split is over what a very large Mount of Venus is for. Frith, writing in 1895, goes hard on the excess:
"The excess of the Mount is bad, and betrays a heat of passionate affection which is inconsistent, changing, and not honourable."
Here is how five of them used the same pad:
- Cheiro: a body story. A large mount means more blood and robustness, and a warm nature if it is not extreme.
- Frith: a moral story. Too much is dishonourable, and the mount helps with friendship and affection but not much with progress in the world.
- Campbell: a build story. He reads it for firmness and for physical make-up.
- Benham: a typing story. Size and markings place you on a scale from deficient to excessive.
- Markun: a love-life story, told by someone who kept his distance from it.
Five writers, five different jobs for one pad. Any answer shaped like "your Venus mount means X" has picked one of them and hidden the rest. For the wider question of whether any of this holds up, there is a page on is palm reading real. If you came here from relationship questions, the marriage line page covers the other spot palmists linked to love.
One last thing, said once more. The mount is thumb muscle and padding. The rest is stories people told about it.
Questions people ask
Where is the Mount of Venus on my palm?
It is the fleshy pad at the base of your thumb, inside the curve of the life line. It is the largest of the palm's mounts and the easiest to see.
Does a big Mount of Venus mean I am romantic?
The old books said a full mount meant warmth and affection, and some said an overfull one meant too much of it. Those readings came from individual writers who disagreed.
Is a flat Mount of Venus bad?
Markun wrote that a flat one was supposed to mean coldness in love, and Benham called a pad with no development deficient. Those were opinions about a personality, and they are not a grade.
Why does my mount look different on each hand?
Hands are rarely identical. Your dominant hand often carries more muscle, and a warm or cold room changes how the pad looks. The books mostly ignored this.
Read your own hand
Alma looks at the photo for how full or flat the pad appears next to the rest of your palm, and for where the thumb crease runs. She does not measure it. It is a visual judgment call, and she says so, then quotes the authors who wrote about it, including where they argued. The free read takes one photo, needs no sign-up, and starts at /read?whose=self.