How Does Turkish Coffee Fortune-Telling Work?

Turkish coffee fortune-telling traces back to the 16th-century Ottoman palace, where concubines read each other's fortunes from coffee grounds. The practice spread with coffee culture through the Turkish region, where Shamanism and later Sufi sects both used divination and coffee in religious rituals. Today, a Turkish café called JoJo's in Shenzhen's Nanshan District has gone viral on social media for offering the same service, drawing young customers curious about their futures.

Reading grounds at home is not complicated. Brew a strong cup with a Turkish coffee pot, drink to the bottom, flip the saucer over the cup's rim, shake, invert, and let it sit. Patterns left on the cup walls and saucer are then interpreted. Turkish coffee itself is rich and full-bodied, though hardly mainstream, and the divination tradition behind it has a long history in the region.

Young people today claim not to believe in the occult, yet they can't get enough of various forms of divination. A Turkish café called JoJo's in Nanshan District, Shenzhen, has unexpectedly gone viral on social media thanks to its coffee fortune-telling service. The history of Turkish coffee fortune-telling dates back to the 16th-century Ottoman palace, where concubines, with time on their hands, would read each other's fortunes from coffee grounds. Experiencing this kind of divination at home isn't complicated—all you need is a Turkish coffee pot to brew a strong cup of coffee. After drinking down to the bottom, flip the saucer over the cup's rim, shake, invert, and let it sit. Then you can search for answers in the patterns of coffee grounds on the cup's walls and the saucer. This article will walk you through the origins of Turkish coffee, the roots of its divination culture, and how to interpret the bizarre coffee-ground patterns in the cup and saucer.

Contemporary young people loudly proclaim they don't believe in the occult, yet their actions are quite honest. Praying for blessings, tarot readings, online fortune-telling—they try them all, simply wanting to know ahead of time where their fortunes are headed: when they'll find a partner, when they'll strike it rich overnight. And there's one activity that happens to satisfy both a love of coffee and a curiosity about divination at the same time.

In Nanshan District, Shenzhen, there's a Turkish café called JoJo's that rapidly went viral on social media for offering coffee fortune-telling. Who would have thought—while the older generation flocks to temples to draw lots, young people are crowding into cafés to ask about their futures.

Though Turkish coffee is rich and full-bodied, it's hardly a mainstream category—yet that doesn't stop young people from making special trips to Turkish cafés to check in, all for the sake of fortune-telling. Divination culture has a long history in the Turkish region. Even before the arrival of Islam, local inhabitants practiced Shamanism, and divination customs infiltrated Turkish society through Shamanism.

The origins of Turkish coffee are likewise inseparable from religion. Sufi sects of Islam drank coffee during night prayers to ward off drowsiness. When people discovered that coffee really could refresh the mind and sharpen alertness, the practice of coffee-drinking spread rapidly. Later, as the Arab Empire gradually declined, the Ottoman Empire to the north rose to power and became the overlord of the Arab world. In the course of conquering Egypt and vast territories in East Africa, the coffee-drinking habit was also introduced to the Ottoman Empire.

Around 1555, Istanbul opened the first coffeehouse in history, and before long, coffeehouses and coffee culture became an undeniable part of social life in that era. With its unique geographical position, Istanbul attracted a steady stream of merchants and travelers, through whom Europeans came to know coffee as a beverage and then spread it around the globe.

With such a long-standing divination tradition and such a flourishing coffee culture, coffee fortune-telling was bound to emerge. This form of divination is popular in regions once ruled by the Ottoman Empire, and can be traced back to the 16th-century Ottoman palace, where concubines, bored with their daily routines, would drink coffee, read each other's fortunes, and gossip.

The way coffee is consumed evolved from boiling whole beans in water or simply chewing them, to grinding them into powder and brewing, to today's filtered brewing methods. Coffee grounds are now seen as worthless waste that everyone disdains—little do people know they were once the "sands of time" for predicting good and ill fortune. Recreating Turkish coffee fortune-telling at home isn't actually difficult; all you need is a Turkish coffee pot to enjoy a cup of rich, aromatic Turkish coffee.

Pour an appropriate amount of cold water and coffee grounds into a copper pot, place the pot on a heat source, and wait for the liquid to come to a boil again. The coffee will produce a thick layer of foam and keep rising. Just as it's about to overflow the pot's rim, first pour some of the coffee into the cup, then put the pot back to continue heating. Repeat this several times.

Turkish coffee's flavor is extremely intense, and not everyone can accept it. When you drink down to near the bottom of the cup, you can clearly feel the presence of coffee grounds. At this point, cover the cup's rim with the saucer, shake horizontally three times, then flip it upside down and place a ring or coin on top. Let it sit for five to ten minutes until the cup is completely cool, then pick up the cup to examine the patterns that have formed.

Coffee fortune-telling requires interpreting two parts: the saucer and the cup.

[The Saucer]

If you see a large clump of coffee grounds on the saucer, it means troubles are about to dissipate; if the grounds on the saucer form a strip shape like a passage, it foretells that you're about to come into money; if, when you pick up the cup, you find the grounds on the cup's walls connect with those on the saucer into one continuous mass, it means your wishes will come true.

[The Cup]

There are several ways to divide the cup into zones. Some divide it by height into bottom, middle, and top, corresponding to the past, present, and future respectively. More commonly, it's divided into five areas: the handle side, the front side, the upper side, the lower side, and the bottom. The handle side relates to love life, the front side relates to financial matters, the bottom relates to family life and daily affairs, the upper side corresponds to your current life, and the lower side corresponds to your future life.

Then, in each zone, observe the specific patterns left by coffee grounds as they slid down the cup's walls, and use them to predict what you want to know. Different patterns carry different meanings. For example, an angel symbolizes good news, an arrow symbolizes bad news, a heart shape represents love, a cat or fox represents betrayal by someone close to you, an apple represents longevity, a snake is an ill omen, and so on.

Many young people hope to use Turkish coffee fortune-telling to peek into their futures, and in many cases, it brings nothing more than spiritual comfort. The very people who once urged their elders not to get hooked on feudal superstitions are now especially enthusiastic about Turkish coffee fortune-telling—truly, the wheel of fortune turns.

Image source: Internet

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The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.