Tasseography is a divination or fortune-telling method that interprets patterns in tea leaves, coffee grounds, or wine sediments.
An example of a tea leaf reading, showing what may be interpreted as a dog and a bird on the side of the cup.
Dwaasheid van het bijgeloof (Foolishness of superstition), a 1782 engraving by Daniel Chodowiecki.
Spring Pouchong tea (Chinese: 包種茶; pinyin: Bāozhòngchá) leaves that may be used for tasseography divination
Zodiac cup and saucer with zodiac signs and shamrock
Divination is the attempt to gain insight into a question or situation by way of an occultic ritual or practice. Using various methods throughout history, diviners ascertain their interpretations of how a querent should proceed by reading signs, events, or omens, or through alleged contact or interaction with supernatural agencies such as spirits, gods, god-like-beings or the "will of the universe".
Display on divination, featuring a cross-cultural range of items, in the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, England
Russian peasant girls using chickens for divination; 19th-century lubok.
Joseph Enthroned. Folio from the "Book of Omens" (Falnama), Safavid dynasty. 1550. Freer Gallery of Art. This painting would have been positioned alongside a prognostic description of the meaning of this image on the page opposite (conventionally to the left). The reader would flip randomly to a place in the book and digest the text having first viewed the image.
