Tasseomancy is a way of predicting the future by reading coffee grounds. This ancient oriental art only arrived in the West in the late 17th Century but it is still widely known and practised in Southern Italy, especially by elderly ladies who learned it during the 1950s.

It interprets the shapes left by coffee in the cup and saucer. The coffee used is Turkish coffee, obtained from a mixture of very fine coffee powder and water, boiled in a metal pan.

Once ready, the coffee is drunk (without any sugar) leaving just a little of it in the bottom of the cup. The "asker" then concentrates on the question and upturns the cup onto the saucer.

After waiting a couple of minutes to allow the coffee residues to settle on the edges of the cup, the response can be read. The reader will look into the cup and interpret the shapes left there. Those inside the cup represent the future, while the residues left in the saucer represent the present day.

It is important not to move the saucer, as the position of the shapes is crucial to the answer. The reader must concentrate and turn the cup around in their hands, in order to interpret the signs left on the inside of the cup.