Palm Leaf Reading: Futures Written in Leaves, Chosen by Us
My grandfather knew his wife’s name a decade before he met her.
When he was thirteen, my grandfather had a palm leaf reading. The Palm Leaves are ancient Indian manuscripts written thousands of years ago by Maharishis, ancient Indian sages. The Maharishis were nomads—always looking up at the planets and stars to navigate to their next destination. Through their travels, the Maharishis developed a profound understanding of the celestial bodies—an understanding that allowed them to foresee humanity’s future (Vera 2014). The Maharishis condensed their predictions into a map that predicts human life till its end, tracing each of our individual lives (Sadhguru 2014). The Maharishis documented their predictions onto palm leaves; today, Indian temples hold millions of palm leaf bundles. Each leaf holds one of our stories.
The Maharishis wrote these palm leaves “to provide guidance, not as a life script to tell us exactly when, how, and what we will and should do” (Vera 2014). Every palm leaf has three sections: a matching portion that determines whether the leaf corresponds to the seeker, a main portion that predicts key events in the seeker’s life, and a guidance portion that helps seekers achieve their destiny.
My grandfather still recalls his palm leaf reading experience today—60 years after it took place. After paying the temple manager ₹10 (about $0.10 USD), his right thumbprint was taken. The manager categorized the thumbprint to 1 of 108 different types and chose two corresponding palm leaf bundles. He then started the matching process. The manager read the statements on the matching portion of the palm leaf (such as “your brother has a heart problem”) and my grandfather validated or rejected these statements. If validated, they went on to the next statement. If not, they would switch to the next leaf. This repeated until my grandfather was able to validate every statement on the palm leaf—signaling that the palm leaf was his.
The manager then began reading the Maharishis’ predictions for my grandfather’s life. He was floored from the start. The palm leaf gave the names of his parents with perfect accuracy (I still can’t spell their 30 letter long names). It continued with some rather specific predictions: he will marry a woman named “Sushila” (one of the rarer Indian names), his marriage will happen on the 26th day of the month, and he will have two sons and one daughter. Remember, my grandfather was thirteen. He had never thought about marriage—let alone children. But all the predictions slowly unfolded to be true. He married Sushila on the 26th of June, and had my mother and her two brothers.
These readings are highly regarded in India—I don’t think my grandfather can remember much else from his teenage days. The Maharishis were the bridge between humans and gods, their predictions the truth for most Indians. And indeed, their track record supports this: nearly everyone who has had a palm leaf reading can affirm that almost every prediction came to fruition. But there is something interesting about how known predictions end up true. Are these predictions actually inevitable—or are they sought out upon knowing them?
For most Indians, the answer to both questions is yes; they seek the predictions with the hope the inevitable will happen sooner. My grandfather believed the Maharishis’ predictions represented his Dharma—the duty he needs to fulfill in life. And to make sure he didn’t stray away from his Dharma, he tried to manifest the predictions himself. At his time, bachelors put newspaper ads to seek out a potential wife. My grandfather’s released ad said “I’m looking for a woman named Sushila.” After my mom and her older brother were born, my grandfather, in order to fulfill the Maharishis’ prediction of having three children, had another child. Financial common sense said otherwise.
My grandfather’s palm leaf experience was rather innocuous—just the difference of having another child. But the impact the readings can have on one’s life can be far more substantial. Take my mother’s cousin. Her palm leaf said that she had a marriage blockage such that any marriage would end in shambles. She believed it. And for the last forty years, she hasn’t made any effort to have a relationship, believing it would only end in disaster. So, yes, the Maharishis’ predicted marriage blockage came to be true—but it’s hard to give all the credit to them.
Much of the debate about palm leaf reading remains here: whether the predictions are accurate or not. But for my mother’s cousin, that question didn’t matter. It wasn’t the prediction itself that prevented her from trying to have a relationship. It was the fact that she blindly trusted the Maharishis’ guidance.
This is the cultural flaw that keeps the palm leaf reading institution going. Thousands of years ago, the Maharishis wrote their map after looking up at the stars and planets for guidance. Today, Indians, in much the same way, are looking up—seeking guidance from the revered when they’re unsure of what to do themselves. This extends beyond just palm leaf reading. At the end of high school, my mother was unsure what major to pursue in university; instead of deciding it herself, she asked a holy guru to make the decision for her. My father didn’t know whether to marry my mother or another bachelorette his parents had found. His neighborhood temple’s head priest dictated my existence here today.
Always looking up at the gods and their earthbound intermediaries—gurus, priests, and the Maharishis—stifles the individual’s choice of how to live their life. Blindly trusting the prediction that she wouldn’t have a successful marriage stopped my mother’s cousin from going on a single date. The joy of our lives comes from having the autonomy to choose where it goes—choosing who we marry, what we study, and where we work. It doesn’t matter if the Maharishis’ predictions end up true. Just by looking up to get there, Indians surrender their freedom to navigate the vast journey of life that lies before any prediction comes true. When I talk to my mother’s cousin today, it’s evident that she would’ve much preferred a normal life. A life where she could experience the hardships of a relationship, not get barred from it at the age of 12.
Today, looking up is as detrimental as ever. Back in my grandfather’s time, there were a select few descendants of the Maharishis who were trained to find and read the palm leaves. It was said that the energy to conduct a palm leaf reading was only present in Hindu temples. But the Maharishis’ words haven’t survived today’s wave of misinformation. Palm leaf readers have become random people dictating futures from the back of their car. And the trained gurus whom Indians respect have become “gurus” who earned the title after a single online course. This hasn’t stopped Indians from looking up, however. They continue to search the skies for meaning even as the stars are obscured by clouds of deception.
Getting your palm leaf read today isn’t quite as cheap as it was in my grandfather’s day. But still, for about 5 dollars, thousands of Indians get the story of their life read out to them every day. Now it’s hard for me to critique the choices that brought me to the world, for indeed, had my father not chosen to look up to his neighborhood priest, I wouldn’t be here to write this essay today. But the Indian culture of looking up spans beyond the individual—it’s hurting a billion person culture. The autonomy to choose where our life goes is what makes it exciting; following a script written by someone thousands of years ago strips that away. And unfortunately, addressing this isn’t a simple matter of policy. At its core, it’s a cultural issue. Banning all temples from conducting palm leaf readings wouldn’t solve the problem. It would just open the door for untrained gurus to become the advice providers. As long as Indians keep looking up, there will be someone to look up to.
It’s hard to imagine removing such an ingrained cultural institution, but the first step is to recognize it. It’s important to view following predicted plans as not fulfilling one’s Dharma but restricting their freedom of life. After all, if the predictions are true, they’ll always end up there—regardless of what route they take. The same night sky holds different stars for each of us. Today, my grandfather sees Libras scattered across his sky while Leos envelop mine. The stars don’t dictate where we are; we dictate where the stars are.
References
THE. 2020. “THE TRUTH behind the INDIAN PALM LEAF MANUSCRIPTS.” THE TRUTH behind the INDIAN PALM LEAF MANUSCRIPTS. October 27, 2020.
https://www.greentaracanada.ca/blog/the-truth-behind-the-indian-palm-leaf-manuscripts.
“Does Astrology Work?” 2024. Sadhguru.org. February 13, 2024. https://isha.sadhguru.org/en/wisdom/article/does-astrology-work.
Indian Palm Leaf Reading Institute. 2021. “Full Nadi Astrology Reading for Jakub Lesniak.” YouTube. June 22, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVM4bx4g90w.