Coffee Ground Reading: what the symbols in your cup mean

How to read coffee grounds

Coffee ground reading has a proper name, tasseography, and a very plain ritual behind it. Brew the coffee Turkish style, with no filter, because the grounds are the whole point. Drink it and leave a mouthful of liquid with the grounds at the bottom. Take the cup in your left hand and swirl it three times clockwise so the grounds spread up the walls. Turn the cup over onto the saucer in one quick movement and give it a minute or two to drain. Then lift it and look at the patterns left on the walls and the bottom.

Where to look in the cup

By the handle. The handle is you and your home. Signs beside it are read as being about you, your family and the people closest in.

Opposite the handle. The far side from the handle is about other people and about circumstances coming at you from outside.

Near the rim. The top of the cup, right at the edge, is the time just ahead: days and weeks.

Toward the bottom. The lower a sign sits, the further off in time or the deeper in the past. The bottom is the most distant and the deepest of all.

Large and clear. Big, distinct shapes carry more weight than small blurred ones. Start your reading with those.

Symbols and what they mean

What to keep in mind

The grounds set in random blots, and what you make out in them is whatever is already on your mind, the same way it goes with clouds and ink stains. That is the whole truth of it: coffee cup reading works as a mirror of your thoughts. Whatever you saw tells you what you have been thinking about. I do not prophesy anybody's fate out of a cup.