What the letter M on your palm means

Open your hand under a lamp and look at the three long lines across it. In many hands they cross in such a way that a letter M is written plainly in the middle of the palm. People come to me certain it is rare. It is not rare — but it is worth reading.

Where the M comes from

The M is not a line of its own. It is made by three you already have: the heart line, which runs beneath the fingers; the head line, which crosses the middle of the palm; and the life line, which curves around the base of the thumb. When the head line rises to meet the other two at a steep angle, the four strokes of the letter appear. A fate line running upward finishes it.

So the question is never really about the M. It is about how clearly those three lines are drawn, and how they meet.

A letter means little. A clear hand means a great deal.

How the old readers read it

The books I was given call the M a mark of self-knowledge. Not luck, not fortune — knowing. A hand with a well-formed M was said to belong to someone difficult to deceive, because they notice the small wrong note in a sentence and remember it. Some writers add discipline; the older ones add stubbornness, which is the same trait told honestly.

A faint or broken M is read as the same nature, less settled. A palm where the lines never meet is read differently again — such a hand is said to keep its feeling and its thinking in separate rooms.

Finding it on your own hand

Relax the hand rather than stretching it; a stretched palm invents lines it does not have. Tilt it toward a warm light and look for the crossing point in the centre. Look at both hands. The hand you write with shows what you have made of yourself. The other shows what you were handed at the start.

Read the hand you were given first. Then read the one you have used.

And take it lightly. A palm is a map of habits, not of years to come. Nothing on your hand obliges you to anything.