Making Your Mark and Final Thoughts
Episode #9 of the course How to analyze signatures by Annette Poizner
“Every single stroke of handwriting expresses a whole life.” —Okakura, Japanese Scholar
Welcome to the last lesson of the course!
Every time you pick up a pen, at least on a concrete level, you are making your mark. Over the last eight days, we have been exploring what we can actually learn about you from the mark you make.
Today, we will be looking at the way writers will potentially draw, or literally create images, of talents, identifications, and interests, all without conscious knowledge of the pictorials they are embedding in their signature. Graphology teaches us how to see, and in so doing, we will see what the writers themselves do not.
Thumbnail Sketch of Me, Myself, and I
Former Olympic athlete Mark Spitz won seven gold medals in the 1972 Munich Olympics. In interviews, he described his competitive spirit by noting that he was never able to swim with his children because he immediately clicked into a hypercompetitive mode. Below we see his signature.
Signature of Mark Spitz
Note that his personal name, associated with the more personal self, has been shaped not like a name, but like a glyph or image of a horizontal swimmer with arms extended (remember, he did the butterfly stroke), smashing the water and hastily making his way to the right margin, almost forcefully pushing the last name out of the way. See it?
The fact that this image is found in his personal name, his personal self, shows the degree of identification with his athletics. On the most personal level, he is that swimmer swimming fast and furious toward a goal medal! A very strong identification.
Do you see any symbols in the signature of astronaut Neil Armstrong?
Signature of Neil Armstrong
Note how he effectively draws a launch pad and a rocket taking off! Note the emphasis on the vertical axis! For Neil Armstrong, his mission was so tied up with aeronautics that he forgoes expressing his own name in the signature and instead, represents that powerful rocket taking off into space. In a sense, this is what we are all to aspire to. To erase ego and to blend and merge with our life purpose. Once again, we are seeing that handwriting can give us information about writers that can be clinically—and personally—meaningful.
Final Thoughts
At this point, you should find that you know a thing or two when taking a cursory look at signatures, whether recognizing the rounded script of the warm-hearted or the angular jabs of the analytical sharpies. Maybe you’ll register concern when you see a signature that seems to vigorously cross itself out. Or note conventional-looking letter forms that indicate the traditionalist or the unusual letters that bespeak the rebel. And scanning for hidden symbols, might you find a smile embedded in a lower zone, indicating a writer with a sense of humor? Words shaped like musical notes, showing an affinity for music? Letters that look like numbers indicate those who like money a lot!
I believe that your new awareness will have you noticing more than we have mentioned here, as you develop a new type of sight that allows you to see into the deeper layers of what is. As Scottish financier Lancelot Law Whyte said, “What is most obvious may be most worthy of analysis. Fertile vistas may open out when commonplace facts are investigated from a fresh point of view.” If I have opened a door to your own higher learning and greater awareness, I wish you great success applying graphological principles and coming up with your own nuanced insights about handwriting as you bring these teachings into your life!
Want to learn more? I have prepared a free follow-up program. Continue getting daily emails for nine more days, use the skills you’ve learned, and get to know colleagues and customers, friends, and family by looking at some of their signature traits!
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More about Hidden Symbols in Handwriting
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