Knowing 'facial astrology' could give you the edge at work

Marthie Maré says she only needs a few seconds to look at you to know just who you are. A physiognomist, she reads faces for a living and is teaching business people to do so too, writes Leigh-Anne Hunter

The Parlotones singer Kahn Morbee, having his face perused in a Joburg coffee shop, is sceptical. “I don’t know how much of this is esoteric, hippy stuff,” he says. 

I’m waiting for Maré to whip out a pair of callipers. Instead she scans Morbee’s face like she’s reading the menu, rattling off observations.

His forehead is slanted: he’s a visual person. His heavy eyelids show his relationships must have substance. “I’m just giving you the highlights,” Maré tells him. “I’m bald. I don’t have highlights,” he says. Ah. That would be the sense of humour she saw in the creases around his nose.  

Even his Tolstoyan eyebrows don’t escape notice. Bushy-browed people tend to make things more complicated than necessary, says Maré. Morbee chuckles. “She’s pretty good ‘ey?”

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WHAT IS PHYSIOGNOMY?

Physiognomy references can be traced as far back as Homer (the guy who wrote The Iliad, not the animated dolt). You knew who the bad guys were because they had deformed heads and one eye. Literary suspense hadn’t been refined back then.

The ancient Greeks discovered that the shape, position and size of each facial feature has meaning, Maré explains. By analysing these, a physiognomist can tell you about your personality, work style, and even attitudes towards things like money. It’s like astrology for the face.

Physiognomy uses plenty of equations to work out things like  ear-chin-forehead ratios. So perhaps it’s no coincidence that the Greek mathematician Pythagoras used face-reading to recruit candidates for his school.

FACE READING SKILLS ARE AN ASSET IN THE CORPORATE WORLD

Thousands of years later, Maré is continuing Pythagoras' tradition by training HR personnel in the art of physiognomy. “We look at everybody around the table. Look at her eyebrows. They look round but actually they’re straight with a bit of an angle…”

She dismisses many of the myths around physiognomy (sorry, Homer). “The old people used to say, ‘Oh he’s got a weak chin. He’s a weakling.’ It’s nonsense.”

Sales departments are another big client base for Maré. Just by looking at a client’s face for five seconds, a sales consultant can “speak the person’s language and they will have a more positive response”, she says.

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It’s also a teambuilding asset. “If you know why your colleague acts like this or that, then you know how to adjust your approach. Physiognomy is not about judging people. It’s about understanding people.”

Face-reading is a tool Maré uses in her personal life too, from screening her grownup children’s dates, to finding the most helpful shop assistant.

She whispers as our waiter leaves the table. “He has high ears, which means he can be impulsive.”

DO WE HAVE TWO FACES?

Wrinkles also hold clues to who we are, and there are many types. Have a line that runs across the bridge of your nose? You could be burnt out. A “secrecy line” – a semi-circle at one or both corners of the mouth – is often found among people who handle confidential information, like doctors and counsellors, says Maré.

The side of the face that wrinkles and blemishes appear also has meaning. That’s because the right side represents your public persona, the left your private identity, Maré explains.

So a pimple that reappears often on the left of your chin suggests frustration about personal decisions. And here I was thinking you got pimples from oily skin.

This dichotomy also explains why faces are often asymmetrical. “Most people consider someone to be beautiful when their features are fairly symmetrical,” says Maré.  “If you have average features you will have an average personality.” So someone like Charlize Theron? “Charlize? She’s actually very average.”

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WHAT ABOUT PLASTIC SURGERY?

If your personality changes, it will show on your face, Maré says. But it works both ways. If you have plastic surgery or Botox, the characteristic linked to the altered feature will change too.

“For instance, the nose represents your work style, so if you have a nose job your work style will change. You should be careful. We all deserve the faces we have.”

Watch Kahn Morbee get his face read:

Marthie Maré is the author of 'Your Face Puzzle: Physiognomy Simplified' (LAPA Publishers).