Fun with arithmancy and divination

[justcarol67]

Carol earlier:
> >
> > I was trying to remember the fancy word for tea-leaf reading last
night and a Google search led me to this site:
> > 
> > http://phrontistery.info/divine.html
> > 
> > which gives the names of all sorts of divination, from fortune- 
telling using playing cards (which I remembered was cartomancy) to
coscinomancy (divination using a sieve and a pair of shears). 
Tea-leaf reading, I discovered, was phyllomancy. 

Catlady responded: 
> I thought tea-leaf reading was tassomancy ... (click click click)
<www.onelook.com> says "Sorry, no dictionaries indexed in the selected
category contain the word tassomancy. Perhaps you meant: tasseomancy
found in 1 dictionary)"
> 
> That '1 dictionary' is <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasseomancy>
which says: "Tasseography From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
> (Redirected from Tasseomancy)
> Tasseography (also known as tasseomancy or tassology) is a
divination or fortune-telling method that in western traditions
interprets patterns in tea leaves. The term also refers to the reading
of coffee grounds, especially in the Middle Eastern tradition, or the
reading of wine sediments."
>
Carol again:
Thanks. I think that's the word I was looking for. But I decided to
find out if "phyllomancy" was also an acceptable term for teal-leaf
reading and found this:

http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/wftwarch.pl?121406

"Topic: Nostradamus

"Pat yourself on the back if you knew we were going to be discussing
predictions today. Today we honor the work of French physician Michel
de Nostredame—Latinized Nostradamus—who was born on this date in 1503
and who is remembered, centuries later, for his Prophecies,
collections of quatrains still cited as foretellings of specific events.

"Nostradamus was an astrologer who turned to the heavens for guidance.
Give yourself a star if you anticipated his history would set us
checking out other methods of divination.

"We'll begin with phyllomancy, "divination by means of leaves."
"Divination by tea leaves," however, is known as tasseomancy. Less
familiar than these modes of divination are belomancy, "divination by
drawing arrows at random from a container;" and alectryomancy,
"foretelling the future that begins by placing a rooster in the center
of a circle of grains of corn covering letters of the alphabet;" a
would-be diviner predicts the future by reading the letters according
to the bird's pecking order.

"We'll close by pointing out the importance of keeping straight
coscinomancy, ceromancy, and cleromancy. Followers of coscinomancy
rely on a sieve and shears to tell the future; believers in ceromancy
turn to melted wax in water; while those who trust in cleromancy cast
lots to tell the future."  

So "phyllomancy" (the Phrontistery site to the contrary) is divination
using leaves (in general), whereas "tasseomancy" is divination using
tea leaves (specifically.) But I included the whole Nostradamus
"definition," along with the other forms of divination listed, just
because it was fun. No doubt totally useless, but maybe it will come
up in a trivia game some time.

Carol, momentarily escaping the darkish tone of the posts on the main site