Traditions and sources of coffee-grounds reading
This reference compares what several sources say about each symbol. The sources vary in quality, and this page says so plainly.
Western tea-leaf books
Two English-language books on tea-leaf reading are used: "Telling Fortunes by Tea Leaves" by Cicely Kent, and "Tea-Cup Reading and Fortune-Telling by Tea Leaves", credited to Highland Seer. Both are on Project Gutenberg, which distributes them as not protected by US copyright. The reference still retells them in its own words. They write about tea, not coffee, but they have the most detailed symbol lists among the sources collected here, and they also describe the zones of the cup, dots, lines and combinations of signs. The tone can be stern: in Kent, a dog is in a general way a sign of adverse conditions, and a cat is a sign of trickery and quarrels among relations.
Turkish tradition
The Turkish material comes from two yemek.com pages, a dictionary of 41 symbols and an article on the ritual, together with the overview in Wikipedia. These are popular texts, not scholarly work, but they show how the practice is described today. The ritual article is written with humor. Near its end it says "Sohbet tatlıdır, fal hep bahane": conversation is sweet, and the fortune is only a pretext. According to its author, the meanings of the symbols are almost the same from place to place, and the rest depends on the skill of the reader.
The dictionary's entries are short, and some are kind: the fish brings kısmet (fate, a share of luck) and good luck, the dog a wish that will come true, the rabbit good news soon. Others are not. The dragon means enmity and obstacles, the snake hidden enemies, and the rooster someone who wants to stir up nifak (discord). So the Turkish dictionary is sometimes as stern as the tea books. The two yemek.com pages even part ways on the rooster: the ritual article gives it one entry with the letter and the envelope, said to mean müjde (glad news).
Russian-language sites
These are popular articles on woman.ru, kp.ru, riamo.ru and fb.ru. Of these, woman.ru, kp.ru and riamo.ru disagree, for example on the cat: woman.ru gives poverty and ruin, kp.ru cunning and women's gossip, and riamo.ru a liar who pretends to be a friend. The zones of the cup are read differently as well: on woman.ru the rim speaks of the present and the bottom of the future, while on kp.ru a mark at the bottom speaks of family and home, marks near the handle of love, and marks on the opposite side of money. On the saucer the three agree: woman.ru, kp.ru and riamo.ru all read it as the past. The reference treats these pages as a picture of what is read in Russian-language media today, not as an old tradition.
Armenian oral tradition
The research for this site found no Armenian-language list of symbol meanings. The USC archive entry points to an essay on Armenian rituals of tasseography (Carina Karapetian Giorgi, Armenian Review, 2018), which has not been read yet. The accounts found are two: the story of a student in Los Angeles in the USC archive (2020), which describes a ritual, several omens and one symbol, a bird, and an Armenian Weekly article of 27 May 2026 about a reader in Texas; the part of the article that could be read gives no symbol meanings.
So the symbol meanings on this site are not presented as Armenian tradition. The ritual, as the student describes it, is set out on the How to read page.
Where the sources disagree
Where each disagreement comes from is not known, but examples are easy to see. Kent and Highland Seer tie the bottom of the cup to the far future, the Wikipedia description of the Turkish halves to the past. The cat means wisdom in the Turkish dictionary and trickery in Kent. Kent calls the dog, in a general way, an unfavorable sign; Highland Seer calls it favorable and makes the reading depend on where it lies in the cup; the Turkish dictionary links it to a wish coming true. One guess, which no source confirms, is that meanings changed with each retelling. Kent and the yemek.com article both say the reader's own gift or skill shapes the reading.
The reference does not choose a single meaning. A symbol page puts what the sources that mention that symbol say side by side, so it is visible where they agree and where they do not.
