Tasseography, the art of reading tea leaves, became massively popular in 17th-century Europe simply because the Dutch and British East India Companies started importing massive quantities of cheap tea from Asia.

A closer look

Tasseography, the art of reading tea leaves, became massively popular in 17th-century Europe simply because the Dutch and British East India Companies started importing massive quantities of cheap tea from Asia. Without tea bags, cups were left with a bunch of soggy, bitter debris at the bottom, which bored aristocrats quickly decided held mystical secrets regarding their impending marriages and financial windfalls. Instead of admitting they just did not know how to strain their beverages properly, these high-society psychics convinced an entire generation that a clump of wet leaves looking vaguely like a dog meant they were going to come into a large inheritance. It is a brilliant example of human pareidolia, where the brain desperately searches for recognizable patterns in completely random noise. The next time you forget to clean your dishes, you can just tell your roommates you are engaged in high-level divination to figure out if the economy is going to crash