The Head Line

The head line runs across the middle of the palm, and the tradition reads it for intellect, the manner of thinking, memory and concentration, taking a long line for breadth of interest, a straight one for practicality and a sloping one for imagination, with breaks and islands read for interruption and difficulty. In some hands the head and heart lines are fused into the single transverse palmar crease, which the older palmistry called the simian line and read as a sign of intensity or of a divided nature. That feature is the one place where the palm carries genuine clinical information: it occurs in a small percentage of the general population and at raised frequency in certain chromosomal conditions, and dermatoglyphic study of it is a real if narrow field. The palmistic reading of it is not supported, and the older literature's characterisations of people with the crease are both unfounded and offensive.