Tasseography, the reading of tea leaves or coffee grounds, has a name built from French tasse, borrowed from Arabic tassa, plus Greek suffixes. Tea leaf reading began in China soon after tea itself, while coffee reading followed coffee out of Yemen through the Ottoman Empire and the Balkans, carried across borders in part by Romani oral tradition. In Europe older diviners read molten wax or lead dropped into cold water, and a Philippine healing practice called pagtatawas reads wax shapes to diagnose illness. In 16th century Ottoman palaces, women of the harem drank unfiltered Turkish coffee and turned the sludge into a tool for gossip and palace politics.

The Turkish method covers the cup with its saucer, flips it, and reads the grounds on a grid: bottom for the past, rim for the future, left for no, right for yes. A saucer that sticks is called the prophet’s cup, and some readers say a cup sees only 40 days ahead. Tea leaves demanded a swirl and a Victorian dictionary of symbols, and potteries printed zodiac and playing card cups given away with bulk tea. The practice appears in Harry Potter, Coraline, The Waltons, and Abdel Halim Hafez’s song Qareat al Fengan, and the episode links it to pareidolia and the 1921 Rorschach test.

• It is customary to ask a Romani elder’s permission before giving a reading.
• A spade means success through hard work, a snake an enemy, and a mountain a hard journey.
• James Randi recorded Victorian rules such as a fat stem near the rim foretelling a stout visitor.
• Professor Trelawney sees the Grim in Harry’s cup.
• Like an inkblot, the grounds give the brain chaos it rushes to turn into meaning.