Also called: Shukra Parvat · Thenar eminence · Ball of the thumb

Where on the hand: The large fleshy ball at the base of the thumb — the thenar eminence — wholly enclosed by the sweep of the life line, running from the web of the thumb down to the rascette. Its radial boundary is the thumb itself, its ulnar boundary the life line; below it lie the wrist and, in Indian schemes, the Ketu/Neptune region. Centre roughly x 0.14, y 0.35.

What it looks like: Normally the largest mount on the hand: a broad muscular cushion, ideally full, firm, pink and marked with fine vertical lines rather than a criss-cross of horizontals. The third phalanx of the thumb is effectively its upper zone.

Venus is the mount of love, warmth, vitality and physical life. It measures the capacity for affection and sensuous enjoyment, the reserve of bodily vigour, and the health of family and marital life. Its size and firmness read as the sheer quantity of vital force a person carries.

Western reading: Western cheiromancy reads Venus mainly as the reservoir of affection and vitality, and makes the Venus-toward-Luna displacement the classic sign of the erotically imaginative nature.

Read with care: Claims about fertility and infertility, and the gendered readings of lines below the thumb as sons and daughters, are traditional doctrine only; no palm feature indicates reproductive capacity or the sex of children.