Reading the hand

Do you have a simian line? How to check in a photo (and how a camera fakes one)

A true simian line is one crease where most hands have two. It is uncommon, and a photograph can make an ordinary hand look as if it has one. Here is how to check yours properly.

What you are looking for

Most palms show two horizontal creases across the upper hand: the heart line below the fingers and the head line beneath it. On a minority of hands the two run together as a single deep groove. That is the simian line, or single palmar crease. The question is whether yours is one groove, or two lines that happen to sit close together.

A five-step check

1. Open the hand flat and relaxed. Do not stretch the fingers hard or curl them. Tension folds the skin.
2. Look for one groove from edge to edge. It should cross the whole palm as a single line, with no second line above or below it running the same way.
3. Check for a faint second line. Many hands have a short or faint head line tucked beside a strong heart line. That is two lines, not one.
4. Flex the hand gently. A real single crease stays single when the hand relaxes and closes a little. A fold from posture disappears or splits.
5. Check the other hand. A single crease can be on one hand or both. The simian line explains how the tradition reads each case.

How a camera fakes one

This is the feature most often mistaken in photographs, and the cause is almost always the picture, not the palm.

• A cupped hand. Curling the palm pushes the two lines together and deepens the skin between them.
• Flat, front-on light. A phone flash or overhead lamp removes the shadow that separates fine lines, so two look like one.
• A tilted camera. Shooting from the fingertip end squashes the upper palm, and the gap between the lines shrinks.
• Soft focus or a small image. A faint second line is the first thing lost.

The same things can add a false cross between the lines, which is why the mystic cross is also easy to see in a photo and gone in the hand. How to photograph your palm covers the setup: side light, a flat hand, and the camera straight above.

If it really is one line

A single crease is uncommon and forms before birth, so it is not something you did or can change. In the palmistry tradition it is read as thought and feeling running on one track, a hand of intensity and focus. That is convention, not measurement; palmistry has no demonstrated predictive power. The mounts, the other lines and the thumb all still count, and the mounts of the palm is a good next page.

A single palmar crease is just a feature of the hand. If you have a medical question about your hands or health, ask a doctor, not a palm reading.