Also called: Frayed end · Brush end · Splayed termination

Where on the hand: At the termination of any major line — most often at the end of the life line near the wrist, and at the ends of the head, heart, fate and Sun lines.

What it looks like: At the end of a line it splays into many fine hair-like strands fanning outward, like the frayed end of a rope or a brush. Distinct from a fork (two or three strands) and a trident (exactly three, deliberate and equal).

Terminal dissipation — the Current scatters too widely to recover. Benham: fork and tassel both show “the end of its usefulness,” but a fork is a simple split that may continue as an island, while a tassel “scatters the Current too widely for recovery.”

Read with care: The head-line reading (“senility, mental scattering”) and the heart-line reading (“cardiac decline”) are the harshest claims attached to any line ending, and they have no clinical basis of any kind. A frayed line end does not indicate dementia and does not indicate heart disease. Dementia and cardiac disease are diagnosed by clinicians, never from a hand. Treat this entry as a record of what the tradition says and nothing else.

scatters the Current too widely for recoveryBenham

occasionally a square can protect even a tassel formationBenham