Ladies, gents, non-binary individuals and various entities - gather around, and witness the summit of sorcery, the crown of conjuring, the tower of thaumaturgy!

Tea leaves. I’m talking about tea leaves.

Listen, we all want to know the future and what it will bring us. And while that’s impossible - wink wink - we can at least pretend to know what the hell is going on. And if you’re vague enough with your predictions, you’ll probably get something right. That’s right, we gonna learn to read our tea leaves today.

Now, if you’re not a tea kinda dude you can also use coffee grinds! This is what I use, to be honest, because I’m not going to waste a chance to inject even more caffeine into my body.

There’s a lot of fancy hand-waving and cup-turning in your dominant hand and a bunch of other fun nonsense you can choose to follow, but here’s my preferred method, which is short, simple and easy to remember, because I am a child with the attention span to match.

Make some tea/coffee. The only difference to your usual routine of this is to actually get some coffee grinds in there, or rip open the tea bag and just shake that in there. You need something to settle at the bottom, even though yeah, it will get stuck in your teeth and it is super gritty. I know, suffer through it. Don’t add milk or anything! You just need the tea/coffee.

Drink your drink while thinking about your question. You should have a question in mind! It can be anything from specifics such as, “What obstacles are keeping me from a) getting a dog literally right now, b) texting that guy back who I think I kind of like but I can’t seem to muster up the energy to even respond to, or c) really enjoying "Star Wars"?” to something vague like “Anything exciting happening in the future for me?”

So - seriously, you don’t enjoy Star Wars? - drink your drink, think your thoughts. You don’t have to drink of all of it, by the way, but choke some of it down. Now, drain whatever’s left of the liquid out of the cup, so you’ve just got grinds. There should be like some liquid left in it, I’ve found, enough so that the grounds move around somewhat easily and everything.

Fold up a paper towel and put it on top of a saucer, or paper plate, whatever. Flip the cup upside pretty fast so that you don’t lose grinds. At this point you may want to reiterate your question, even if it’s just to remind yourself what you’re asking.

Et voila! Your tea leaves/grinds are all laid out, just waiting to be read. This is the tricky part. You’re basically going to look for patterns and shapes in the grinds, and then make shit up about them to answer your question. I’d recommend opening this page on your phone and using it as a reference - if you see a foot, scroll to F and look at that. Ooh! An important decision! That could apply to literally everything, so it means it’s true! You’re so good at this fortune-telling thing!

This is honestly super fun to do for your friends as you can act very authoritative and at the same time very in-tune-with-the-cosmos, sort of like an authentic version of whatever Free People is selling you.

Here are some common tea leave patterns to get you started - just please don’t market yourself as some sort of “gypsy”. That’s pretty racist, and you probably shouldn’t use that word. Happy prophesying!

Circles - Great success, completion

Arc - An unfinished project

Lines - Straight or curvy indicate directions or a course to be taken

Triangles - Good luck

Numbers - Indicate time

Animals- Specific animals mean different things, i.e. a cat for caution.

Hearts - Domestic and social affairs

Diamonds - Financial affairs

Clubs - business, such as contracts

Spades - hindrances, sorrows