In the Palm of Your Hand: Finding Your Power Hand

Manipulating energy is a lot like juggling balls. You use one hand to send the ball and one hand to receive the ball. Send and receive, send and receive…one hand becomes projective, and one hand becomes receptive. The secret is to not get your hands confused halfway through. This is a traditional method of energy work that works on the theory that one hand is naturally better at sending energy and the other hand is better at receiving energy.

For most practitioners of the magical arts, your power or projective hand is the hand you write with. Then your receptive or off hand is the hand you don’t write with. If you are ambidextrous, I guess it’s up to you. Your power hand is the hand you will hold your athame. One of the easiest ways to see which hand your Power Hand is to casually sit and mesh your hands together. Whichever hand has the thumb on top generally is your Power Hand. This is by no means 100% accurate, but for most people it works.

In many magical and religious traditions and paths, hands are both symbolic and powerful. In theory, hands can receive energy or project energy because they are linked to all the power centers of the body. Our hands are capable of not only holding objects, but also forming shapes that can be powerful magical symbols.

Mudras are ritual hand gestures in several religions that help link the body and mind to the Divine and the energy fields of the world. They have been shown to stimulate endorphins, soothe pain, link the brain to the body, and so much more. Many yoga and meditation practitioners are familiar with Mudras.

The designating a hand for a magical purpose goes all the way back into antiquity. Ancient Greece and Rome held the belief that the right hand was more powerful than the left. The Early Christan Church believed that the right hand was Godlier and more sacred. Part of this come from a belief or story that before his fall, Lucifer, sat on the left side of God and Jesus sat on the right-hand side. To add to the evil of the left-hand side, folk tradition says that Judas sat right next to Jesus at the last supper on Jesus’ left-hand side and then betrayed him. Personally, I think these two stories were used to vilify the left-hand side without having to admit that the Early Church was following the teachings of Pre-Christian superstitions from Rome and Greece.

At one point during the witch hunts in Europe, it was said that being left-handed was a sign of being a witch. The rational was that once you signed a deal with the Devil and became a witch, he made you write with your left hand to show your allegiance to him. Left-handedness to a genetic predisposition, not a demonic possession.

The alchemist of the Middle Ages and beyond began to add handedness to their formulas. They believed that depending on which hand you used to stir or add ingredients would affect the outcome of the formula. Most stirring and adding ingredients, from what I could find, was done with the right hand or the power hand.

In the late 1800’s- early 1900’s the idea of a power hand and magical handedness began to be explored again. Madam Helena Blavatsky, a leading Theosophist, traveled to India and learned about the religions in India, mainly about Hinduism. She began to look at things like mudras and handedness in India and developed the theories of the Left-hand Path and the Right-hand Path. Terms and theories we use to this day.

Your power hand is also known as your Projective hand. This is the hand that you use to direct and send energy. In most cases, this is the hand you naturally write with. In ritual and magical situations, the wand and athame are held in this hand to direct or manipulate energy.

Meanwhile, your other hand is called your receptive or off hand. Off comes from the idea that this hand is not the one you write with and not as powerful. Your receptive hand is just as powerful and important as your projective hand, just in a different way. The receptive hand is used to receive energy or used to pull energy towards the practitioner. This is the hand used to hold objects to sense their energy and used during psychometry.

In the end, unless you have been trained to use a certain hand for a job, use whichever hand feels best to you. With practice you can hone the abilities of whichever hand is chosen to be your power hand.