Note the type of your subject, and whether heart disease is a natural defect of this type. If it is, the presumption is strong that the marking is a health defect. Next examine the nails, and see if the structural heart-disease formation or blue color at the base be present, and if both or either of these indications are seen, you should be still more strongly convinced that it is a health defect. Note the Life line to see if there is any unevenness, whether it breaks, splits, islands, is crossed, and especially if a line runs from the defect on the Heart line to the Life line. If the Life line shows such defects be sure the indication on the Heart line is one which refers to the physical heart. The Saturn line will often show confirmations of a check to the career seen in the Life line by breaking in two or by other defects. The Mercury line, either by stopping at the same age indicated by the defect on the Life line, or by showing some defect, often gives an added confirmation. Not finding any of these health defects, it is evident the mark on the Heart line is one showing some characteristic of the affections and not disease. This method must be adopted with every line on which you encounter a change from the normal condition.

Review everything bearing on disease, first beginning with the health defects of the type to which your subject belongs, and noting in succession nails, color, and all lines that bear any relation to the defect under consideration.

Careful practice will in this manner enable you to make a distinction between character and disease. Begin at the starting point of the Heart line, and examine the line along its entire length for defects. These may be splits, crossbars, islands, dots, or breaks. Wherever one of these defects appears, it is either a health indication, or one showing some event connected with the affections. The first thing is to examine in the manner above outlined, in order to determine whether ill health is indicated, and if it is, draw your conclusions as to the effect the condition found will have on the affections of the subject. Finding no confirmatory indications of heart difficulty, you turn naturally to other matters. The first defect to consider is the split, which you already know how to diagnose. If you find it to be a health defect, it is serious in proportion as it splits the Main line in two and divides the Current, directing part away from its proper channel. Split lines as health defects show a weakened condition of heart with impaired circulation, and the date of the trouble can be read from the line. As character indications, the place they occur, size of split, and the place to which they run must be guides in reading them.

Splits will occur upward or downward according as the split lines rise above or fall below the line. All lines which rise from a Main line are more favorable than lines which fall from it, so split lines rising from the Heart line are better indications than those which fall below it. These lines which split from the Heart line will rise to or near a Mount, and will indicate that either the characteristics of the Mount, or someone belonging to that type, so strongly attract the heart as to split off part of the line and draw it up toward the Mount. Thus a split rising from the Heart line under Jupiter (49) will show that ambition will guide love, and the person who will attract this subject will be someone on the Jupiterian order. He does not necessarily have to have money, but he must be prominent, or one who gives promise of rising. A split line rising under Saturn (50) will indicate that the subject is attracted by some of the Saturnian qualities. If the subject, on whose hand you find this line, is developed in his mental world, it will be this side of the Saturnian that will attract him, and he will love one who has scholarly attainments. If your client's middle world is strongest, he will love one who has farming, mining, or horticultural aptitudes, or scientific talents.

If his lower world is strongest, he will love one who has the saving disposition of the Saturnian. In every case this subject will like best one who has the soberness, caution, and wisdom that belong to the Saturnian type. The subject himself may not belong to the Saturnian type, but he will admire these qualities. I have seen the most giddy persons with this marking, and believe they realize their need of the Saturnian balance-wheel. A split line rising under Apollo (51) must be reasoned as in the previous case, and your subject will be drawn toward Apollonians. If your subject lives in the mental world, he will love one who is ideally an artist. If the middle world of your subject is strongest, he will love one who is an artist, but he wants this artist able to make money from his art. If the lower world is strongest your subject will love one who dresses in a showy fashion and who knows how to make a display. Remember the Apollonian, and that this split line from the line of Heart makes the subject love the qualities of that type; you can carry your explanation as far as you please by describing all that Apollonians are, and saying that this is what your client will love.

No. 49.

No. 50.

No. 51.

No. 52.

No. 53.

If the split line rises to Mercury (52) your subject will love Mercurian qualities; which side will be shown by the world which rules in his hand - the oratory and eloquence of the upper world of Mercury, the scientific side shown by the middle, or the money-making side shown by the lower world. In the latter case the subject will suffer love to be influenced by the amount of money a lover has, or by his ability to make it. If these split lines rise in the centre of the Mounts, read them confidently. If it seems doubtful on which of two Mounts they do end, estimate which one seems most clear and read in this case with some degree of reserve. Good judgment must be constantly cultivated. Split lines which fall from the Heart line (53) show a part of the conflict between heart and head, and at the time these lines fall, the head is exerting a very strong influence. If, as is often the case, fine lines fall from the Heart line all along its course, there is a perpetual conflict between heart and head for the mastery.