"They'll tell me your future. Drink up then. Go on."

When we moved to Cyprus in 1976 it was very different from the cosmopolitan and modern place that it is now. Life was simpler and the old ways were still a part of everyday life in many families. Three generations of people lived in the apartment below us, and the grandmother, Yiayia, was the matriarch. I spent many hours with her when I was little, and it did not matter that I could not speak her language nor she mine; we somehow communicated. She was an extraordinary woman and I shall tell you more about her soon, but for now I want to tell you about a custom that she still practiced. 

   In Cyprus, like in Greece and the Arab World, coffee does not come in regular size cups or mugs.

The remains of Greek coffee waiting to be read

Instead coffee appears in very small cups and it is strong enough to strip paint. After you have consumed the bitter, eye-opening brew, there is a puddle of, for the lack of a better word, sludge in the bottom of the cup. Village folk like Yiayia would invert the cup onto a little plate, wait a few minutes, and then they would read the patterns that appeared on the sides of the cup. I would lean on Yiayia’s knee to hear what the cups of her family members had to say about the future. I confess that I never saw anything in the sludgy forms that appeared on the inside of those cups

   I imagine many of you have never heard of coffee cup reading, but I you have probably heard of tea reading. For a seemingly innocuous beverage, tea has a dynamic history. The tea trade's past is steeped in colonialism, in violence, and even in revolution. This aromatic beverage's checkered history aside, it is enjoyed in nearly every culture around the world. And tea isn't just for sipping. Tea leaves are also used as a divination tool to explore the past, present, and future.

   Tasseography, tasseomancy, or tasseology, is a form of fortune-telling that involves reading the patterns and shapes that tea leaves, coffee gains (and even wine dregs) leave in a cup after the beverage has been consumed. The word tasseography derives from the Arabic word for cup, tassa, which the French purloined to create their own word for cup, tasse. Then there is are the Greek suffixes -graph (writing), -mancy (divination), and -logy (study of). This practice has been popular throughout history in a wide range of places including Asia, Ancient Greece and the Middle-East.

An antique tea reading cup

   Western tasseography, however, can be traced back to the time when the main trade routes for both tea and coffee, which started in the early 17th century, made their way east from China (in the case of tea) and northwest from Ethiopia (in the case of coffee.) The nomadic populations of the Slavic and Baltic nations, the Romani, actively helped to spread this method of divination throughout Europe. 

   By the mid-1800s loose leaf tea was accessible to the wider public, rather than being reserved for the upper classes, which had been the case in previous eras. Tea rooms and tea parlors became very popular meeting places, to which Romani people were often invited to give readings.

   As the popularity of tasseography increased, the start of the 19th century saw potteries in the United Kingdom and America producing specially designed and patented tea leaf reading cups and saucers. Within the decorative designs were markings and instructions on how to use. This may explain how some people learnt to read tea leaves at home and pass down their clairvoyance skills to the next generation.

Artist Alma Gogin