You photograph your face and the reading covers physiognomical indicators: face shape (square, oval, heart-shaped, round, triangular), characteristics of the forehead, eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth and chin. Each facial element in physiognomical tradition carries a message about character, intellectual style, emotional nature and life energy. The analysis covers both Chinese physiognomy (Mian Xiang) and the European face-reading tradition. The result is a narrative character profile.
Where it comes from
Reading character from the face is attested in ancient Greece — a treatise on it circulated under Aristotle's name — and in Chinese practice as mian xiang, which developed along entirely separate lines. In Europe it was revived by Johann Kaspar Lavater in the 1770s, whose illustrated essays were enormously popular. In the nineteenth century it became entangled with phrenology and with Cesare Lombroso's theory of the born criminal, which was used to justify serious injustice and is now wholly discredited. That history is the reason physiognomy carries the reputation it does, and it should not be glossed over.
How the method works
The practice divides the face into three zones — forehead, middle face, lower face — and reads each for a period of life and a mode of functioning. The features are assessed individually: the shape of the forehead for thought, the eyes for attention and openness, the nose for drive and how resources are handled, the mouth for expression and appetite, the jaw for resolve. Chinese mian xiang works differently, using twelve palaces mapped to specific regions of the face and reading them against the five elements.
What a reading covers
A reading gives the three zones with what each is traditionally read for, the individual features and their assigned meanings, and the overall balance. It is an interpretive exercise on a traditional vocabulary, not a judgement about anyone's abilities or conduct.
Common questions
- Is there evidence for this?
- No. Attempts to predict personality or behaviour from facial structure do not replicate, and the historical attempts to do so caused real harm. The tradition is worth knowing as a tradition.
- Is it the same as Chinese face reading?
- No. Mian xiang uses a different map, different categories and the five element system. The two developed independently and give different readings of the same face.
- Does a face change?
- Yes, considerably over a lifetime, and the traditions account for that by reading different zones for different periods of life.