"If you want to improve your understanding, drink coffee."
-Sydney Smith, 1771-1845

Reading Coffee Grounds
The most well-known coffee divination technique is the reading of coffee grounds. The method is virtually identical to tea leaf divination, and both are known collectively by the term Tasseography. To read coffee grounds, you will of course need to prepare your coffee in such a way that there are grounds to read. If you are at a coffee house, the residue from a cappuccino will work nicely as well-just make sure that the cup is not so tall that you can't see clearly all the way to the bottom.

Ask yourself the following question: "What do I need to know about my present situation?"

What do you now see in the cup? The grounds will arrange themselves in random patterns. Interpreting the patterns is a little like a Rorschach test or laying on your back reading cloud formations. What you see and what it means to you will be very individual-two people reading the same cup can come up with very different interpretations, and both can be equally true.

Now, take out a piece of paper and pen, and in a stream-of-consciousness style, begin jotting down your thoughts as you casually meditate on the shapes you see there. Above all, don't edit yourself. If the first thing that comes to mind has nothing to do with the coffee, jot it down anyway. For example, the first thing that enters your thoughts might be the dry-cleaning you need to pick up that afternoon. Write it down, all the while continuing to stare at your cup as if you were lying face up on your lawn staring at the clouds above. As much as possible, don't even look at the paper you are writing upon-keep your eyes on the grounds in your cup. It doesn't matter if your writing is illegible-it will be legible enough to you when you go back to it, if only enough so as to jar your memory to recall what your thoughts were at that moment.

Continue writing for at least ten minutes. This will be long enough for you to enter the first stages of a meditative state, both by the exercise of looking at one thing and by the rhythmic pattern of your free association and the motion of your hand upon the paper. If your mind keeps wandering back to your dry-cleaning let it. Observe the thought, jot it down, and let it pass, moving onward to whatever comes next as you continue to stare at the cup.

When you do readings yourself, you needn't feel you need to read every cluster of grounds in your cup (remember-you can also read the remains of foam at the bottom of your cappuccino cup instead of grounds). If you are drinking Turkish coffee, there are so many grounds this would take you forever! Interpret only what speaks to you. In fact, some of what may come to mind as you do the reading might not seem to have anything to do with what is in the cup at all. There is no right or wrong here. Each of your interpretations are "correct." You really do have all the answers within you. Most of the time we just don't want to hear the real answer. Trust yourself.

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