13. The practice of reading tea leaves to predict the future was brought to Europe by Dutch traders, though similar superstitions were already commonplace the world over
People have been trying to find meaning in seemingly-random patterns for millennia. Most famously of all, for many centuries, self-proclaimed seers have claimed to be able to read fortunes simply by looking at tea leaves, coffee grounds or even the sediments left over at the end of a cup of wine. While the exact origins of tasseography (a term derived from the Arabic word ‘tassa’ meaning cup and the Greek ‘logy’, or ‘study of), most accounts trace tea-leaf readings in Europe back to the start of the Middle Ages.
The practice was brought to Europe from China by Dutch merchants trading in tea, and quickly caught on. By the 17th century, potters in northern England were making special cups, designed especially for reading leftover leaves. In the Middle East, meanwhile, people have been reading leftover coffee grounds for centuries. In some countries, a reading is made with the grounds still in a pot or a cup, though in Turkey, the leftovers are put on a fresh, clean plate and then interpreted that way.