In Thai-Chinese physiognomy, the shape of the face is not merely anatomical but elemental. Using the five Chinese elements of metal, water, wood, fire and earth, these shapes are thought to speak to a person’s inner constitution: their energy, disposition and potential. The face is a topography of the self. We analyse it’s landscape to determine one’s fate.
SEE FULL STORY IN ARTIFACT ISSUE N°1
Illustrations and Text FAWN KONGSIRI & MATSI LAOBOONMEE
The well-known idiom “you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover” encourages looking beyond superficial appearances and understanding the value of someone through their true nature and content. This sentiment never stuck in my early days, in fact I was taught rather the opposite by my grandmother, who is a teacher of the ancient art of physiognomy and feng shui.
A fading art nowadays in a world where it could potentially be considered politically incorrect to make assumptions about an individual based on how receding one’s hairline is. Largely considered a “pseudoscience” now, the teachings of facial physiognomy can be traced back to China’s Zhou Dynasty (1046-256 BCE). Influenced by Daoist and Confucian thought, facial physiognomy (ngo heng) developed alongside other divinatory practices like astrology and palmistry. Early physiognomists believed that physical traits reflected inner virtue or destiny, aligning with Confucian ideas that moral character and physical appearance were linked.
Don’t get me wrong, Western eugenicists have taken advantage of that art and have twisted it to fit into their racial stereotypes. But in Thailand it has always been applied as more of a suggestion rather than a strict set of guidelines to determine whether one should be allowed to reproduce or not.
Amidst many tempestuous brawls with my mother, my grandmother would provide reassurance by telling me that my mother’s strong brows indicated a raging temper, and my god was she right. I myself inherited that strong brow and am falling into that hopeless trope of becoming one’s mother. I’ve always looked back fondly on those moments with my grandmother when she would impart those small slices of wisdom upon me whether it was reading the face of a boy I was seeing at the time to determine if he was unfaithful or simply passing observations on passersby.
I held on to these small quips all my life and as time passed I came to the realisation it would be an utter waste for all this knowledge to simply fade away. And thus my goal with this column is to preserve the art of physiognomy and propose a new, more light-hearted approach to face reading without the heavy constraints that these features should determine your ultimate fate. At the end of the day, people enjoy having guidelines to believe in whether that be your star sign or what your taste in literature says about you. This is simply another form of that.