fortune-telling

The urge to know one's future takes many forms. Children count cherry stones or daisy petals, adults observe omens and interpret dreams; formerly, young women performed love divinations on set nights such as Halloween or St Agnes' Eve to find out who they would marry. Fortune-telling, however, involves more complicated systems which require interpretation, either by a paid professional, or by learning from handbooks. Astrology, palmistry, and numerology were known in the Middle Ages; cheap booklets explaining them were readily available from the 16th to the 20th centuries. The 18th century saw the beginnings of fortune-telling by playing-cards, and by reading tea leaves and coffee grounds; the late 19th century brought Tarot and crystal-gazing, and the 20th century the I Ching and various newly invented systems using fanciful cards, runic symbols, and so forth. Since the 1960s, interest in such things has greatly increased (Davies, 1999a: 130-42, 246-70).