Turkey - Coffee Tasseography

Coffee tasseography is traditionally practiced using Turkish coffee or any method of coffee brewing that leaves grounds sitting at the bottom of the cup. Most of the coffee in the cup is consumed, but the sediments are left to settle. It is often believed that the querent should not read their own cup. Since the 17th century, inhabitants of the Levant, or the area around the Middle East and near present day Turkey, have been drinking coffee. Because Turkish coffee is not filtered or strained, as the coffee is consumed, a dark, muddy sediment forms at the cup's base. What no one knows is when, exactly, reading the shapes left at the bottom of a cup of Turkish coffee became customary as a sort of everyday, casual, communal, culturally reinforced fortune-telling. The most widely practiced traditional Turkish coffee cup reading is called fal, which literally means "fortunes."