Also called: Second finger · Finger of Saturn · Shani finger · The balance finger

Where on the hand: The central and longest finger, rising above the Mount of Saturn. It is the baseline against which every other finger is measured.

What it looks like: Should be the longest finger, exceeding its neighbours by roughly half a phalange — about half an inch on an average adult hand — but not disproportionately so.

Saturn governs duty, structure, discipline, restriction, karma, soberness, philosophy, land and the occult. A straight, well-proportioned middle finger gives seriousness and a working conscience. Excess brings melancholia and morbid rule-bound thinking; deficiency brings carelessness about consequence.

Western reading: Cheiro reads a long Saturn nail phalange as a cause of melancholia and superstition.

Read with care: The Indian and Western verdicts on a very long Saturn finger flatly contradict each other — excellence versus morbidity. Present both, decide neither.