Interview With Mr. T Stokes A Palmist by Samnan Ali

Article by Samnan Ali

T Stokes is known worldwide as the “Consultant Palmist” & is regarded as one of the finest palmists in the West. He has many years of combined practice and blending from an array of diagnostic skills  coupled to 10 years training in the Harry Edwards school of spirit mediumship and guidance, and accessing the wisdom of the multimedical and multispiritual arenas of the Indo/Pak subcontinental energy flow disciplines such as Hasthricka and Il-Mul-Kaff, have meant a sharpening and honing of clairvoyant skill ranges which can take a subject from pre-birth through the main events of the life, to the present day.

Saptarishis Astrology would like to thank Mr. Samnan Ali for conducting this wonderful interview.

1. How did you get started in Palmistry? Or what made you decide to study it more seriously? How did you get from there to your deep study in forensic palmistry? It would be great if you can walk us through your life briefly?

T Stokes: My interest in palmistry started when I was a small boy, quite by accident I discovered I could see things in people’s hands, and when I touched them, feelings and pictures would gather in my head, this would be aged about 7. I began readings first with kids at school then to adult outsiders and then people would come some distance to see what I could tell them about their lives, and I began to read everything on Chiero the 19th century palmist, but it was not until I was aged 10 that I discovered astrology, and began to study this too, at first as a skeptic then later as a novice. Palmistry is not something I would have chosen to study, it was a huge shock to me to find that I had these abilities and as a child I was very psychic which led me to the spiritualist church as a teenager, where I found that adults who had spent years learning and studying in many cases became jealous of what to me was fairly easy, I was always very shy and modest and did not really like the limelight that this brought. I also found that I had some success as a healer and exorcist and I met and worked with the top practitioners in this field over some years.

While working in a psychic bookshop as a very young man doing readings, I met some doctors who worked at the local hospital, and the heart specialist would send people to me for checkups, and I would give talks to doctors on signs of illness in the hands, and this led later to studies with Wipps Cross hospital on patients hand prints, and then to working with the great Prof. Henri Rey on handprints for the Maudsley Psychiatric Hospital in London.

2. Different branches of occult sciences have their own way of predictions. Out of astrology, palmistry and numerology etc. which knowledge do you find the most accurate?

T Stokes: For me, and I am sure for all experts it is different which discipline is the most accurate, but with tarot cards you read the cards, with astrology you read the stars, but with hand reading it’s the persons own hands that are read, so this must be the closest you can get to who that person really is, a psychologist will see someone for 6 months before giving an adequate diagnosis, I can do this in one session.

3. At your expert level, what are the first few things that you look up, once you review a hand print?

T Stokes: What do I look at first in a hand, well I just look and think “what does this hand want to say to me? What info does it want to convey”?  I have developed my own techniques over the years with how a reading should be, but giving talks and lectures over the years much of this has appeared in other people’s books.

4. For aspiring palmists, what would be your advice? Any good books or practices that you would like to recommend?

T Stokes: For study I would say; anything by Noel Jaquin, slightly dated but excellent,

David Brandon Jones “Practical palmistry”, Prof M A Malik’s book “New Horizons In palmistry” And “Fortune Telling By Palmistry” by Rodney Davies

5. Many of your students, fans and friends (including me) have been waiting for a book authored by you? When is that in your plan?

T Stokes:  I am under pressure before I die to write a book and I have promised to do so.

6. Who would you give recognition to, as your mentor? Any personalities that you look upto in your life.

T Stokes: You ask about mentors and there have been many, the late palmist David Brandon Jones was a great inspiration for me, and Mir Basher was a man I very much admired and I did some readings for him when he was busy, but when I went on my own as a palmist, he saw me as competition and he refused to sign my book and this did upset me greatly, Khalil Gibran for his pure spirituality,  Carl Jung and Hans Eysenck for their psychological insights  and really too many others to name, in the Indo/pak subcontinent astrology and palmistry are taken for granted, but in Britain they are discouraged.

7. You have connected the knowledge of palmistry to meditation and prayer. As a palmist, did you contribute to charity or any religious activities?

T Stokes: I have also over many years done so much for charity, work for the Hindu Communities has given me a standing invitation to visit any of their centers at any time, and I consider myself an honorary Muslim for the time I have given to read hands at their events for fundraising and of course I have given much time for Christianity too, this giving back is important.

8. You are well known for the accuracy of your readings, what is the secret recipe? Everyone wants to know.

T Stokes: When you ask of accuracy, I used to read a book not once but several times to fully absorb it, then I would ask the people who came to me some of the things in it, and if I got 3 or 4 people who said no to something I had read, then I would drop that interpretation, and keep the meanings that I had read that people said yes to, so over a time period I reached a point where everyone said yes to what I said.

9. For those many people interested in learning from you, or sending you their palm prints, how can they reach you? Do you plan to start up some learning venture online for your international students?

T Stokes: People from around the world do email me at palmist@fsmail.net, my website at www.t-stokes.co.uk just gives a small taste of what is possible, I have helped police with handprints and worked on a couple of hospital studies, people here in the west are not as open minded or spiritually accepting as those in India and Pakistan, and it used to fascinate people who visited my consulting studio to find I had the signed handprints of  several Bollywood stars and many Indo/Pak cricketers on the walls,  these men are seen as absolute heroes in Britain.

Britain owes a great debt to India, and as I reach the end of my life it is perhaps my greatest sadness that I never visited the Indo/Pak subcontinent, as I love the culture, history and wisdom of the people.

10. How many students or young palmists are in contact with you? And what is your advice to them?

T Stokes: I do get a lot of people from around the world who wish to study palmistry and ask me for help, but the truth is it’s a lifetimes study, one amateur palmist has a book “from novice to expert in 24 hours” which is hardly feasible, the great palmist Noel Jaquin told me to study for 50 years before I could call myself a palmist, and of possibly 750 books available on the topic, my book case contains just 35 books, so many are just tosh,  true palmistry is a healing art and to this end I have studied medicine mainstream and fringe, psychology, philosophy, comparative religions and various spiritual disciplines, because what I do contains a  lot of counseling and advice, it’s not all about the future in fact most of it is about a person coming to terms with their  past and where they stand on the present rungs of the ladder of life.

11. Some of us just know palmistry as a study of lines and that’s it, how deep is this knowledge? What is the professional responsibility of a good palmist?

T Stokes: There are many types of palmistry, there is the pure intuitive school who work by psychic feel, this is called psychometry, and then you have the scientific palmists who say a line here and a line there must mean this or that, but I trained for some years in what I call “subconscious amplification” which means you look scientifically first then use the intuition as a magnifying glass on those aspects, giving the best of both worlds, and indeed there is the system of 7 as made famous by Chiero, the Carus system of 6 and the Chinese Gettings system of 4 hand types, I use all these at different times, I also make sure that anyone who wishes to learn palmistry uses meditation, prayer and concentration along with their studies, and realizes it is a sacred art and like the priest or the doctor must be in total confidence, I have never spoken of the hands I have read of royalty because to do so is a breach.

12. What do you see as the future of Palmistry?

T Stokes: Palmistry has a great future, and as I reach the end of my life I would like to see real certification of ability, And to weed out all the fakes, fakes are something that upsets me greatly and my weekly postbag contains many stories of poor humble people being ripped off, I sure would not like the karma of the fraudsters.

13. What is the most memorable thing that you have experienced as a professional palmist?

T Stokes: Well, over a lifetime there are many but just a couple of years ago, I was made to feel very humble when an old lady emailed me from a remote area of Pakistan, she said she had walked 15 miles into the town to ask in the library if someone who spoke English could email me and ask a question about her lifeline, this touched me more than many people who had crossed the world to see me, and this I would like to be my epitaph that I was a palmist for the people, not big celebrities or politicians but the man in the street and that is why I charge one third of what many others do and am the world’s only practitioner for over 50 years to offer a refund if the client is not happy.

14. You have been a teacher to many students, can you name any or few of them, which you think will make big in serving the people through palmistry?

T Stokes:  I have both a teaching and a college lecturers degree but it’s hard for me to teach because it’s taken me so many long years of hard study, the various complicated Indian systems, the Chinese, Muslim and Tibetan systems and of course the western, all must be digested and used with tact, diplomacy and compassion. I have had students in the past with which I have spent some years bringing up to a good standard, but there are many short courses on offer and for the average student these are probably fine. I have been asked many times by magazines for articles, and these do help to get peoples interest. I have started to write a book, which will give much new info, but remember much of what I have taught in the past has ended up in others books.