In face reading the ears are not a part that shows as showily as the eyes, nose, or mouth, yet they have been held very important since old times. People of old called the ear the “Organ of Listening” (chaecheong-gwan), a gate that takes in the sounds of the world, and saw it as mirroring a person’s innate fortune and longevity and the vessel of childhood. Especially when reading a face by the flow of age, the ears are generally read as governing the early fortune from birth to around fourteen.
First one looks at the size and thickness of the ear. An ear large, plump, and firm-seeming is taken as one of ample innate fortune, health, and a large vessel of heart, and the old saying that “a big-eared person has much fortune” was long handed down. Conversely an ear thin and seemingly frail may be read as a keen and delicate temperament — yet this is no flaw but a grain of care and sensitivity, so it is no matter to divide hastily into good and bad.
What is especially noted on the ear is the lobe below, the suju. When the lobe is plump and hangs down, standing out like a bead, it is taken as one of thick fortune of wealth and human favor, often counted a representative of a blessed feature. That the Buddha’s ears are drawn long with ample lobes touches on this very notion. Conversely an ear with almost no lobe — the so-called “knife ear” — is seen as a quick-deciding, intellectual temperament, often read as one who opens their own path by honor or skill rather than wealth.
The ear’s color and position are looked at too. An ear whiter and clearer than the face’s hue is seen as an energy for gaining a name or brightness of mind; an ear set higher than the brows is said to mark cleverness from a young age. When the inner ridges of the ear are distinct and the outline clear, it is also seen that judgment is bright and learning well received. Thus the ear, dividing size and thickness, lobe and color into many grains, quietly mirrors a person’s fortune and nature.
Yet the most important principle in face reading is that the ear is never judged alone. However fine the ear, if the other peaks of the face — forehead and nose, chin and cheekbones — are not in harmony, that fortune hardly shows in full; and conversely, even if the ear is somewhat wanting, when the whole is balanced, that lack is readily filled. The ear comes into its full meaning only when it blends with the other parts within the single landscape of a face.
Yet what must not be forgotten is that the shape of the ear does not nail down and set a person’s fate. A face is made as lived time and heart pile in layers upon the bone one is born with, and the expressions often worn and the stance toward life gradually shift its grain over long years. The habit of a heart that listens and receives well is itself a tending of the “listening” energy held in the ear. So to read a face is less to confirm a fixed fortune than to raise a mirror that reflects who you are now.
Herein lies FortuneLeaf’s reason for introducing the reading of the ears — not to line people up by whether the ear is big or small, whether there is fortune or not, but to help you understand, clearly and tenderly, the energy held in this seat that quietly listens to the world. For the many seats of a face are no hardened fate, but a living landscape that today’s expression and heart reshape, a little anew, each day.