Coffee, Tea or … Chocolate? Part Five: Tasseography or What’s at the Bottom of Your Cup! ©

Photo by the Author.

   

Oh no!  Here you are, drinking a nice cup of late 18^th and early 19^th style tea, coffee or hot drinking chocolate and there are dregs in the bottom of your cup.  What do you do!  What do YOU do!  Well, you could rinse those dregs away, or just like some people did during the late 1700's and early 1800's, you could use those spent tea leaves or coffee grounds and tasseography to divine the future.

  

Today, at least in the U.S., in this modern age of coffee filters and tea bags; it would embarrass your host or hostess if you found spent tea dregs or coffee grounds at the bottom of your cup.  But historically this wasn’t always the case, in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries, there were no filters and coffee and tea was simply dumped into the pot to brew.  And so, coffee and tea drinkers recognized that slops happened, and they even invented a fortune-telling “science”, called “tasseography”, to have fun with the inevitability of spent grounds and leaves at the bottom of their cup.

 

“Telling Fortune in Coffee Grounds”, by Isaac Cruikshank, 1790, Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

So, what is at the bottom of your cup and what does the science of tasseography say about your future!?

Louisa Lawford, who wrote The Fortune-Teller; or Peeps in Futurity, in 1861, explained tasseography as straight lines are good, wavy lines are bad and circles mean you should expect to receive money.  In addition, she explained further that dogs and human figures are lucky, while other four-footed animal figures are not and speaking of bad luck, it was considered to be bad luck to read the grounds or dregs in your own cup.  To try this fun tea-party game at home, brew yourself, and a couple of others, a nice strong cup of tea or coffee, or even of drinking chocolate and then consult Ms. Lawford’s tasseography instructions below.  And for more information on how to brew that perfect cup of late 18^th and early 19^th century drinking chocolate, tea or coffee follow the links, drinking chocolate, HERE, tea, HERE, and coffee, HERE.

 

Excerpts from Louisa Lawford’s The Fortune-Teller; or, Peeps into futurity, the cover and pages 109 to 111

I hope that you have enjoyed this article as much as I did.  And next time you are drinking a cup of late 18^th and early 19^th century style coffee, tea or even drinking chocolate, from your modern day mug, and you find dregs at the bottom, don’t despair, just hand it to the person next to you and ask them to tell you what shapes they see!

 

Dregs in the bottom of a cup of hot drinking chocolate, I wonder what it means?  Photo by the author.

I hope that you continue to enjoy The Woodsman’s Journal Online and look for me on YouTube at Bandanaman Productions for other related videos, HERE.  Don’t forget to follow me on both The Woodsman’s Journal Online and subscribe to BandanaMan Productions on YouTube, and if you have questions, as always, feel free to leave a comment on either site.  I announce new articles on Facebook at Eric Reynolds, on Instagram at bandanamanaproductions, and on VK at Eric Reynolds, so watch for me.

That is all for now, and as always until next time, Happy Trails!

Sources

Cruikshank, Isaac, “Telling Fortune in Coffee Grounds”, [R. Sayer, Fleet Street, London, April 10, 1790], Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University, http://findit.library.yale.edu/catalog/digcoll:550651, accessed 2/19/20

Lawford, Louisa; The Fortune-Teller; or, Peeps into futurity, [Routledge, Warne, and Routledge, London, 1861], https://ia802205.us.archive.org/7/items/fortunetelleror00lawfgoog/fortunetelleror00lawfgoog.pdf, accessed 1/15/20