The Hand of Suicide

Plate XIV shows the hand of a woman who was possessed with suicidal mania. In this case the line of head may be seen sloping sharply downward toward the wrist under the Mount of Luna.

The young woman, although she had a good home, developed acute suicidal mania at the age of eighteen. She tried to kill herself on four different occasions until she finally succeeded in her purpose as she entered her twenty-eighth year. Note that her hand belongs to the long narrow psychic type with 'philosophic' joints to the fingers, corresponding to my description of the Psychic Hand in Chapter 7, Part I.

It is interesting to bear in mind that this young girl has the Circle of Saturn at the base of the second finger with a line from it cutting the line of life at about her age of twenty-eight and on the line of Sun the commencement of an 'island' at about the same date.

The line of head when sloping under the base of the Mount of Luna is a much more positive indication of acute suicidal mania than when the line of head curves downward into the face of the Mount of Luna. In the latter case the subject has a naturally despondent nature, which only requires some added blow of fate or disappointment, which the highly imaginative disposition exaggerates (sloping head-line on Luna), to bring about the fatal act.