You’ve heard the expression, “follow your heart.” Well, it’s my birthday (don’t ask which one), and here I am in sunny Mexico. Isla Mujeres, to be exact, off the coast of Cancun. I just printed up my cards in English and Spanish advertising. I have been working here since 1990.

Anyway, I am being treated to iced coffee and a croissant by my daughter who works in an Italian cafe. I’m reading one of the books I throw in my suitcase whenever I go off to work in Spanish-speaking countries-Ernesto Issberner Hadane’s Tratado de Quirosofia. It’s a well-marked Spanish translation of a book that first appeared in Germany around 1920.

Hadane informs us in the sixth edition published by a Buenos Aires publisher (Kier) that a wave of mysticism had invaded the people after the world war. He was referring to the people in Europe and to the first one. A new spiritualism led to courses being taught at the University of Berlin including Practical Anthropology, which studied the form and structure of hands. The police also had gotten into palmistry, making use of the tool to better understand subjects in criminology.

With typical German rigor, Hadane advises how to approach the field so as to avoid pitfalls of the novice. He advises reading one chapter at a time, very slowly. Once having gone through an entire book methodically, he recommends you go back and read it just as closely again, once you trust the author. You will see, he says, how much information you will have missed the first time.

While this advice is probably sound no matter what the topic, it is particularly true of palmistry; many drown in all the details. Large nails mean you are impressionable and imaginative. Blue hands mean poor circulation. Thumbs turned inward mean extreme precaution and rigidity. And so on.

So after swimming and chanting in the sea, I took Hadane’s advice and brought his book to the cafe where my daughter was treating me. My intent was to brush up on some details about the ending of heart lines. I had been setting up across from a live music venue under a sign that reads Pancho’s, table cloth, candle, and cards on a large overturned barrel, doing reading for tourists. People on vacation always want to know about their love lines. So I thought I would reacquaint myself with the knowledge of this German expert once again. Besides, it helps me tune into Spanish for Mexican customers.

Turns out, I had consulted Hadane on this very topic some 18 years ago, when I first began to use his book religiously, when first becoming a palmistry zealot. In tiny cramped writing in red water-stained ink on a folded page, I read, as I had once noted-many fine lines in the Mound of Venus means you are sensual. Yet if your heart line ends in many lines going every which way, you will most likely be disappointed in love.

Your heart line is the one beginning about a half inch down from your little finger and extending across the palm, usually reaching at least the base of the middle finger and hopefully the base of the pointer. If this line is marked by many crossings, your love life is likely to be rich in illusion and disenchantment.

What is more, you may be insensitive if you have a heart line that ends at the base of your middle (bird-flipping) finger. And if your heart line ends between that finger (Saturn) and the next (Jupiter, the pointer), your success with the opposite sex is likely to be limited.

What you want to find, either in your own hands or as presented in a prospective partner’s, is a heart line that ends in the mound under Jupiter. Now that spells success!

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