Have you ever tried practicing coffee grounds reading? This ancestral divinatory art is typical of the Middle East. In Yemen, a country located at the southwestern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, coffee grounds have been used to predict the future since the 9th century. One simply needs to drink a coffee and scrutinize the bottom of the cup to read omens. If you are a coffee lover and enjoy divinatory practices, we will explain how to read the future in coffee grounds.
To read the future in coffee grounds, you must of course prepare a coffee, but not just any coffee! Coffee divination requires the preparation of Turkish coffee. It is impossible to skip Turkish coffee for a very simple reason: with this method of preparation, coffee grounds settle at the bottom of the cup.
Unlike those who practice reading cowrie shells, a form of divination using coffee beans, coffee diviners focus exclusively on coffee grounds.
In Turkey, preparing coffee is a true ritual that requires specific equipment. To practice this form of divination, you will need a traditional copper coffee pot or cezve.
To prepare a cup of Turkish coffee, you need to pour in the equivalent of a cup of filtered cold water and add a spoonful of freshly ground coffee. At this stage of preparation, you can also add sugar and spices like cinnamon or cardamom.
Place the Turkish coffee pot over the heat, stir gently, and wait for a foam to form on the surface of the coffee. Pour the foam into the cup and place the coffee pot back on the heat to create more foam. Once you have enough foam in the cup and have warmed the coffee, pour it slowly into the cup to preserve the foam.
In coffee divination, the choice of the cup is also important. In Yemen, the country of origin of this divinatory art, Arabs were accustomed to drinking their coffee from porcelain cups with matching saucers or silver saucers.
To read the future in coffee grounds, you do not have to use a porcelain cup. It is not the material of the cup that matters, but rather its shape.
In order for the coffee grounds to settle well at the bottom of the cup, tradition dictates that conical-shaped cups should be used. The cup used should not be straight like some Italian espresso cups, but should have a rim that flares out a bit more than the base. It is also necessary to have a saucer to read omens.
Coffee diviners believe that when a person drinks coffee, they imbue their cup with their thoughts, intentions, and energy. This is how practitioners of this ancestral divinatory art can read personalized omens…
It is therefore very important to choose well the container that will be the receptacle of your concerns and personal aspirations. While sipping the contents of your cup, focus on what you would like to know.
Once your cup is empty, turn it upside down on the saucer and wait a few minutes for patterns to form at the bottom and on the edges of the cup as well as on the saucer.
The reading of the coffee grounds can then begin. It is said that the designs appearing on the saucer represent the present, while those forming in the cup represent the future. The marks left in your cup can give you insights about the upcoming day or allow for a more general interpretation.
When starting out in coffee fortune-telling, one can refer to interpretation guides to decipher the different symbols. Here is the meaning of certain shapes in the Middle Eastern tradition:
• birds carry a message.
• other animals represent people in your surroundings.
• the dragon may represent you or symbolize someone with whom you have complicated relations.
• the ram signifies that you are entering a period of rebellion.
• letters can be the initials of a name or first name.
• numbers may indicate an upcoming month or a day of the week.
You may also recognize the shape of certain objects in your cup. For example, it is said that a boat represents a journey and a horseshoe represents luck… However, whatever symbols you see appearing in the coffee grounds, trust your intuition to interpret them.
As often in divinatory arts, the most important thing is to trust your feelings. The personal meaning you associate with a shape is more important than a ready-made interpretation found in a book or on a website.