Marriage line on your palm: what the small lines mean
Marriage lines are the short marks on the edge of the palm under the little finger. See how to count them, what each is read for and where that comes from.
Curl your little finger slightly and look at the side of your hand. Add a line for each mark you see above the heart line. Tap one to switch it between clear and faint.
You've marked 1 clear and 1 faint.
What three old books would do with the same marks
- Cheiro, 1916
- Sets the clear ones apart: "Only the clearly formed lines relate to marriage, the short ones to deep affection."
- Dale, 1895
- Counts all of them as "the number of husbands or wives", on one condition, and says that otherwise "they may mean lovers".
- Markun, 1927
- "The Marriage Lines appear to be somewhat uncertain." He reports that newer palmists read them as tendencies, or as affairs that never end in marriage.
That's where the counting stops. We don't turn your number into a forecast, because nothing supports one.
The scan looks at your palm from the front, so it can't read these. It shows you your main lines instead.
A marriage line on your palm is one of the short creases on the edge of your hand, under the little finger and above the heart line. Palmistry has long read them as marriages or close bonds. Count yours above if you like. We'll show you what three old books would make of them, and you'll see they don't agree, which is why your count can't be a forecast.
You won't get a date, a number of weddings or a warning here. Nothing in the evidence could give you one, and these lines have caused enough worry already.
Do two lines mean two marriages?
No.
The best evidence is that the people who invented the idea couldn't agree on it. Below is what three of them wrote, side by side. Then go and check your own count against a real life you know about, your parents' or a friend's. That's more of a test than any book ran.
- Cheiro, 1916
- What counts"Only the clearly formed lines", from a very short mark to one running into the palm
- What a line stands forClear ones "relate to marriage", "the short ones to deep affection"
- How sure they soundCertain. "Proved", he says, across his career, with no count shown
- Dale, 1895
- What counts"Small lines on outside of hand on mount of Mercury", all of them
- What a line stands for"The number of husbands or wives", given another sign, and without it "they may mean lovers"
- How sure they soundA compiler listing what older writers said, in flat entries
- Markun, 1927
- What countsThe deepest or longest is "considered most carefully, but the others are also studied"
- What a line stands for"Merely indicate tendencies", or love affairs "which do not end in marriage", say newer palmists
- How sure they sound"The Marriage Lines appear to be somewhat uncertain"
Read across any row. Between 1895 and 1927 the same marks went from a count of spouses to a sign of affection to "somewhat uncertain", and you can watch the claim being softened. Sometimes, Markun notes, they're renamed Influence Lines, which lets a reader tell an unmarried client that she has "been influenced by some person or persons".
He also tells you the real trick, in one of the best sentences in the old literature: "A plain circlet of gold or platinum on a woman's finger is frequently a sign that she is married. I have not found the fact mentioned in any book on palmistry, but chiromancers and other fortune tellers watch for such clues with very keen eyes."
What the marks are, physically
Short creases on the side of the hand. Markun calls them "folds". Palm-line researchers Liu and Zhang don't bother with them at all: they count three principal lines, and describe everything finer as wrinkles, "much thinner than principal lines and much more irregular". We looked for a study of these particular marks, what forms them or how they change, and didn't find one. That's not a satisfying answer, and it's the true one.
You can find them yourself right now, with your hand in front of you.
Length, depth, forks and drooping lines
As tradition, a long clear line is read as a strong bond and a faint one as a slight one. Cheiro's version is that the lines "should be straight and clear", and they are lovely words. Old books treated the gap between a line and the heart line as a kind of clock, too. Nobody has tested that, and there's no calendar on your hand. Some apps go further and offer you an age-by-age map of your life, like palmist.io's page, with no testing behind that either.
Now forks and downward lines, since that's what many people came for. The old books made alarming claims about these marks, and many modern pages still list them as though they were facts. We're not going to repeat them. They were guesses in 1916 and they're guesses now, and a fork in a tiny crease can't tell you anything about you and the person you're with. If something in your relationship is worrying you, talking to them is more likely to help than studying your hand. Our guide to love lines reads those signs in a calmer way, if you want the tradition without the threats.
No lines, or faint ones
Nothing is wrong. Plenty of hands have one faint mark or nothing clear at all. Nobody has shown that people with few marks love or marry any differently from people with many, and the old books give you no way to check. Skin at the edge of the hand doesn't know your plans.
Marriage lines on the palm for women
The marks are the same on every hand. People search for marriage lines on the palm for female hands, and some sites split this out as if a woman's lines were a separate system. The old books mostly don't. The nearest thing to a basis is the rule Dale reports, that "the right palm of the male and the left palm of the female" should be read, which is about which hand you look at, and other authors flatly disagree. Cheiro says to examine both and doesn't split by gender. Our page on which hand to read sets out who says what. The small upright lines people ask about next to these get the same honest answer on their own page.
Better questions than how many
If you came here because you're thinking about a relationship, here's what the marks are good for: a moment to ask these.
- What would a good partnership actually look like on an ordinary Tuesday?
- Which bonds in your life have been the clear lines, and which the faint ones? Are you happy with that?
- What do you want that you've never said out loud to the person it concerns?
If you'd like to play with this together, the compatibility overlay puts two people's traced lines side by side, for fun and conversation. For your own hand, the scanner traces your main lines and the free reading reads one of them, while the palm lines overview shows every line on one hand.
Sources
A love chapter that doesn't count marriages
The Complete Palm Reading reads how you commit, from your heart line and whatever you choose to place on the palm's edge, and it never tells anyone to stay or go.
Complete Palm Reading$9.99One payment. No subscription.
Questions people ask
- Where are the marriage lines?
- On the outer edge of your palm, under the little finger, between the base of that finger and the heart line. They are short lines that wrap in from the side of the hand. Curl your little finger slightly and they show better.
- How many marriage lines do I have?
- Count the short horizontal marks above your heart line on the side of your hand. Some hands show one or two, some more, some none. The number is a count of creases, and it doesn't stand for anything you can plan around.
- Do two marriage lines mean two marriages?
- No. Even the old books couldn't agree on that. Cheiro kept 'marriage' for clear lines and called short ones deep affection. Dale said they may mean lovers. Markun called them uncertain. No study has ever linked these marks to anyone's relationships.
- What does it mean to have no marriage line?
- Nothing. It doesn't mean you won't marry or won't find love. It means there's no strong crease at that spot on your hand.
- Can a marriage line tell when I will marry?
- No. Old books treated the distance from the heart line as a rough clock, and Cheiro himself looked to other lines for what he called more accurate dates. Nothing has ever tested it. There's no calendar on your hand.
- What do marriage lines mean for women?
- The same as for anyone. They are the same marks on every hand. Some sites make a separate reading for women, and that has no basis beyond one old rule about which hand to read.
- What about a forked or downward marriage line?
- Old books made alarming claims about both, and modern pages still repeat them. We won't, because they were never more than claims. A fork in a tiny crease is a fork in a tiny crease, and it tells you nothing about your relationship.
- Do marriage lines change?
- We could find no study that followed them over time. Researchers on palm lines describe fine marks like these as wrinkles, much thinner and more irregular than the main lines, so it wouldn't be surprising if they shift.
No line on your hand knows who you'll love.
Scan your palm for what it does show: your own main lines, on your own photo.