Short version: The head line is the crease across the middle of your palm, and the old palmistry books read it for how you think. Straight was read as practical, sloped as imaginative, and a fork at the end as a bit of both. Where it starts matters too: tied to the life line read as cautious, apart as bold.
I'm Alma, an AI palm reader. I read palms against a library of 41 public domain palmistry books from 1879 to 1925. Everything below is quoted word for word, with the author, book and year attached, and it is for fun, not fortune. If you want the part about you, skip to So which are you? once you have done the three checks. The heart line is the one with the loud fights. The head line is calmer.
Find your head line
Your palm has three big creases. The heart line is the top one, closest to your fingers. The life line curves around the base of your thumb. The head line is the one in between, and it usually starts at the thumb side of the palm, just above the life line, and runs across toward the outer edge. Hold your palm open and look at the thumb side first: that is where the head line and life line begin, often as one crease.
Then look at three things:
- Which way does it go? Lay an imaginary ruler across your palm, level with the line's start. If the line stays close to the ruler, it is straight. If it drops away from the ruler toward the wrist side of your palm, it is sloped.
- How does it end? A single line, or a fork.
- Where does it start? Tied to the life line for a short stretch, or apart from it.
Eveline Farwell described the start in 1898:
"The line of head rises between the first finger and the thumb, immediately below the heart line, and is, at its commencement, usually joined to the line of life"
Cheiro called it the Line of Mentality and wrote that he regarded it as:
"the most important sign that can be found in the hand"
So which are you?
Put the three checks together and the books give a quick portrait. The sections after this one show where each word comes from.
- Straight and tied: practical, careful, leans on other people's advice.
- Sloped and apart: imaginative, trusts their own judgment, maybe too much.
- Straight and apart: practical and bold, with Farwell watching for calculation.
- Sloped with a small fork: imagination with common sense attached.
The straight head line
A head line that runs fairly flat across the palm was read as a practical mind. Farwell, who is blunter than Cheiro, wrote that this line:
"tells of constant calculation"
She goes further and says it is "usually found in the hand of an egotist." Leo Markun, writing in 1925 and never quite taking the subject seriously, is milder. An even line, he says, gives "a certain rigor of thought," and he adds that the person may be narrow-minded. It is a compliment with a catch, which is how Markun handles most things.
The sloped head line
A head line that curves down toward the base of the palm, the area these books call the Mount of the Moon, was read as an imaginative mind. Farwell again:
"everything is viewed ideally"
Cheiro agrees on the direction and sets a limit. A gentle curve meant a person used their imagination when they chose to. A line that bends too far down meant the opposite:
"the subject is the slave of his imagination"
Markun, the least impressed of the three, reads the same slope as dreaminess and "more or less innocent eccentricities," and adds:
"Persons with such lines write to the editor of their favorite newspaper or magazine to interpret the symbolism of the Bible"
He is the only one of the three who sounds like he has met these people in real life and would rather not again.
So the three of them share one scale. Straight is practical and sloped is imaginative. They differ in how kind they are about each end, and Farwell and Markun are the harder graders.
The forked head line, and the "writer's fork"
Many hands show a head line that splits near the outer edge. Online, a fork at the end of the head line is often called the writer's fork. I searched the library for that phrase and found no book that uses it, so it looks like a modern name for something the old authors did describe. Henry Frith, in his revised 1904 edition, wrote:
"in the Line of Head a fork gives imagination, and also common sense if even and medium sized" (Henry Frith, Practical Palmistry (revised edition), 1904)
He added a warning about size:
"A large fork gives deceit, diplomacy, finesse, even self-deception" (Henry Frith, Practical Palmistry (revised edition), 1904)
So a small, even fork was read as imagination held in check by common sense, and a big one as a talent for angles. Benham, in 1900, is warmer about a fork that splits three ways, toward Mercury, Mars and the Moon:
"This is a splendid marking, showing great diversity of intellect, adaptability, and versatility."
The old authors treated a fork as imagination, and left it to the reader to decide whether that makes a poet or a fibber. Not every writer gave the fork its own entry, so treat it as a few voices and not a consensus.
Check both hands
This is the part worth testing on your own hands. Cheiro read the left and right hands as two different stories, and used the head line to read how a person had changed. If the line slopes in the left hand and runs straight in the right, he said the person had gone against their natural bent and:
"has been obliged to make himself more practical, to study business methods"
So for Cheiro a straight line could be learned. Farwell describes it as a trait and says nothing about it changing. Look at both palms and see which story you get.
Short, long, wavy or faint
The books did read length and depth, though less warmly than they read shape. Benham put the plain version in one line:
"The long Head line per se shows abundant mentality and the short line less of it."
Frith, in 1904, was harsher about short and pale lines, and Benham liked a deep, clean one and called its owner "dignified, even-tempered, evenly balanced." Nobody measured any of this, and a faint line on a real hand usually says more about skin and pressure than about a mind.
Readers also search for a few other shapes, so here is what the library says about each:
- Very long, running to the edge: Gaffney, in 1901, read a very long, straight one as "egotism, positiveness and over-calculation."
- Wavy: Stoddard, in 1898, gave "indecision of character, unreliability." His entry goes on to darker claims, which I leave out.
- Broken: Benham, in 1900, read breaks as producing "lack of concentration, firmness, and self-control." He attached darker claims to breaks too, which I leave out.
- Curving up toward the heart line: Ellis, in 1898, listed "Head line turning to Heart line=Affection controlling," which is the head ruled by the heart. Other books attach darker claims to this shape, which I leave out.
Where it starts, tied or apart
The books also read where the line begins. On most hands the head line starts joined to the life line for a short stretch, and the writers cared about how long the two stay together.
Cheiro read a head line joined to the life line as a sensitive, cautious person who "lacks self-confidence." William Benham made it a sliding scale:
"The longer the Head line is tied to the Life line the less self-confidence has the subject and the more he relies upon the advice of others."
Comte de Saint-Germain, in 1897, reads a slight gap as energy and enough nerve to face an audience, and a full separation as the same traits plus "some recklessness and haste in the taking of decisions."
Cheiro pushes the gap further. When the space is very wide, he wrote:
"it denotes excessive impetuosity and lack of continuity of purpose"
Line them up and the start of the head line becomes a measure of how much a person trusts their own judgment. Tied to the life line, less. Apart, more. Very far apart, too much. It is the closest thing in the library to a real consensus, and it describes habit more than intelligence.
Where I stop
The head line didn't escape the old books' worst habits. Cheiro read a weak head line as a lack of intelligence, other writers tied the lines to dates and the body, and breaks and islands appear almost always as bad omens. I keep the parts that describe a manner of thinking and leave out the rest, because none of it was ever tested.
One more odd shape is a single crease that fuses the head and heart lines. That has its own page, the simian line. If you want the line that was supposed to show success and recognition, read about the sun line.
Head line palm reading, in short
The books read a straight head line as practical, a sloped one as imaginative, and a small even fork as a bit of both. A line that starts tied to the life line reads as careful, and one that starts apart reads as bold. It is a vocabulary a handful of writers from the 1880s to the 1920s roughly agreed on.
Questions people ask
What does the head line mean in palm reading?
In the books I read against, it is the line for thinking style. Cheiro called it the Line of Mentality and ranked it above every other sign in the hand.
Is a straight or sloped head line better?
The books don't rank them. Straight was read as practical and calculating, sloped as imaginative. Farwell is hard on the straight line, and Cheiro is hard on a line that slopes too far.
What is the writer's fork in palm reading?
It is the modern name for a head line that splits at the outer end. No book in my library uses the phrase. Frith, in 1904, read a small even fork as imagination with common sense, and Benham read a three-way fork as versatility.
What does it mean if my head line and life line start joined?
Cheiro, Benham and Saint-Germain all read it as caution and less self-confidence. Benham adds that the longer they stay joined, the more a person leans on the advice of others.
Does a short or faint head line mean I am not smart?
No. Benham and Frith read short and pale lines as less of something, but neither tested it. They describe a hand.
Read your own hand
I can read your palm against these books and quote the authors who wrote about the head line on your hand, including where they disagreed. It is free, it takes one photo of your palm, and there is no sign-up. Read your own hand.