As mentioned in “Meaning of rings on fingers“, wearing rings in general can show a subconscious feeling that a person either feels restriction or need support in the traits related to that finger. To understand the meaning of wearing a ring on the index finger, it’s helpful to look at the traits that are associated with this finger:

Index Finger Traits and corresponding Index finger Ring Meaning
The index finger represents the following:

• The “Self” & self-esteem: Wearing a ring on the index finger can reveal a desire to strengthen your self-esteem and self-confidence. People who wear index finger rings may be in situations in their life where they really need to gather a lot of self-confidence to keep going. Deep down they may feel shy or lacking in confidence but try to hide this and get over it. Sometimes the focus on building the self may exhibit itself as self-absorption and other times it may present itself as someone becoming egotistical. The bigger the ring or the more elaborate (e.g. with large gemstones), the bigger the ego-strengthening that may be perceived. On the theme of the index finger representing “The Self”, sometimes wearing a ring on the index finger may be done as a subconscious attempt to try and understand ourselves better, such as when seeking out what we want to do with our lives.
• Ambition: The index finger is the finger that relates to ambition. Wearing a ring here may be a subconscious attempt to strengthen that ambitiousness. A ring on the index finger can sometimes be found on people with a strong need for power and recognition.
• Leadership: In palmistry, the index finger is to do with leadership. It’s interesting to note that in portraits of famous leaders in history (and also in their spouses who needed to bolster their self-confidence to be with strong leaders), they often wore large rings on their index fingers, as if to support them in their leadership skills. See examples of such leaders in the pictures below. If you hover over the image it’ll tell you who the person pictured is. At it’s extreme end, “strong leadership” strengthening can come across by being overly bossy or controlling over others to get things done your way.
• Spirituality: If you ever see Esther Hicks channeling Abraham hicks, you’ll notice that as she talks, her index finger is often sticking out. According to palmistry this fits with the index finger’s link to spirituality. Since most people in the world today are more likely to be preoccupied with physical life rather than spiritual life, and since those who are spiritual tend to already have confidence in their spirituality so do not need extra strengthening in this area, it is rare that wearing a ring on the index finger has a spiritual meaning, but technically, it could signify a subconscious attempt to strengthen a person’s link with their spirituality, with their inner voice and with the “God within”.

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Wearing an index finger ring on the left vs right hand:
The left hand relates to a person’s personal, private life (eg. at home, with family) and the right hand relates to the public life (eg. at work, in society etc).

So wearing a ring on the index finger on the left hand indicates that it is within the person’s private life that their self-esteem, leadership skills and / or ambition are being strengthened, whereas if the index finger ring is on the right hand, bolstering is taking place in their public life.

Examples of situations where people may wear a ring on the index finger

• A freshly appointed king, queen, CEO or manager who feel a need to boost their self-confidence and their faith in their leadership ability.
• The wife who is feeling low self-esteem and makes up for it by bossing her husband around.
• The celebrity with millions of fans who is ambitious and/ or is a bit self-orientated and / or likes being in a position of authority and recognition. It could also be the celebrity who needs extra support for their self-esteem eg. needing others to give them praise to affirm they are loved and appreciated, and thriving on the feeling of getting a round of applause. You’ll find index finger rings are quite common in actors, models, presenters, youtubers, singers and celebrities in general. (Seen on Jennifer Lopez here, Ashley Olsen Of the Olsen twins, Angelina Jolie, JennXPenn, Kate Moss)
• The celebrity facing public accusations or shaming of some kind and needs to strengthen his self-esteem. I found it interesting that YouTuber Alex Day who was faced with self-esteem-wearing claims in a scandal in 2014, wore a larger than usual ring on his index finger (seen here), although even before the allegations he did wear a more subtle index finger ring (seen here) and that still makes sense because it seems to fit with his ambitious, leading personality. Note the ring is on his right hand – the hand relating to attitudes towards the public.
• The person who is in the process of trying to overcome shyness or self-confidence issues and is focused on personal development.

Skeptics may argue that it doesn’t matter which finger you put a ring on – all the fingers are the same. But it’s interesting that sometimes a ring just doesn’t “feel right” on a certain finger but it does feel comfortable and “right” on another. This feeling of “rightness” of a worn ring is what hand reading works with.

In hand reading each finger has specific qualities associated with it, so in general, if you wear a ring on a finger, the ring can have one of two effects on a finger:

• a.) Strengthening / Supporting: A ring can indicate a subconcious desire to support & strengthen the qualities associated with that finger.
• b.) Restricting: A ring on a finger may reveal a feeling of being restricted in the qualities associated with that finger.

Before talking about what each finger ring represents, let’s look at what “no rings” indicates:

What if someone doesn’t wear rings?

Some people cannot stand the feeling of rings on their fingers at all or just have no desire to wear them.

For the more mild version of non-ring wearers, who just don’t particularly feel like wearing rings but don’t have a strong aversion to them, according to some hand readers, not wearing rings can indicate that there is no need for extra support / strengthening of any of the finger-traits. It can also mean that the person does not feel restricted in any of the finger-related traits.

If the feeling is more of a “I can’t STAND wearing rings!” it may indicate something a little different. It may suggest that this person really, really values their freedom, more than the average person. They want to feel free and unrestricted, not tied down to anything. In other words they may really appreciate and feel a need for the feeling of freedom in their life.

Does size of ring matter?

Yes. According to hand reading, the bigger the ring worn, the stronger it’s related meaning.

What does a ring on a specific finger mean?

• Ring on thumb meaning
• Ring on index finger meaning
• Ring on middle finger meaning
• Ring on ring finger meaning
• Ring on little finger meaning

References

All the information in this article is learned from the following sources:
- Lown. R. 2014. Class notes from the Palmistry Course at the College of Psychic Studies
- Clifford. F. 2002. Palmistry 4 Today. (Book: on Amazon.co.uk ; on Amazon.com)
- Clifford. F. 2012. Rings on our fingers. Heaven and Earth Workshops (online article)