Well... for one thing means that you have a not-so careful baker .... but believe it or not, some formats of this area of divinations have lasted to the 1990's!! But I will also be describing a bit of the lesser known aspects as well in this mini-article.
Now the theory behind the concept of messages being written on slips of paper then slipped into the cookies or whatever prior to baking is that when offered to the querent (questioner), the answer would come from the unseen forces that guided him or her to select a specific portion.
This form of divination is said to have begun in ancient China, as a game among the nobility where essays based upon philosophical tenets were baked into tea cakes. Yet it was not the Chinese thought that lead to fortune cookies of today ... rather it was the Ancient Greeks. They baked round, hard cakes in which predictive phrases were written on paper and inserted prior to baking, thus the person wishing a future-based answer to their question had to select one of the cakes. A European custom that is off shoot of this is baking a silver coin into a cake ...whoever found the coin in their slice of cake would have good luck in the course of that year -- or if the was the case of having a cake-party and those sharing a cake each making a wish, then the person who finds the coin will have their wish come true.
One method I found listed under this heading, though, doesn't use baked materials. It is described by A. E. Waite as follows:
oracular sentences are written onto strips of paper that are wadded into small pellets then placed in a basin of flour and stirred 9 times.The flour was then divided among the number of people in the search for information participating ...and each recipient applied the oracle message they received in their portion of flour to his/her matter of inquiry.
| Here are some thoughts associated to aleuromancy that has survived the years: |
| A single person sleeping with a piece of wedding cake under the pillow to aid in inducing dreams of their future spouse. | Use of egg white in a glass then water added to it... divining of the congealed shapes and stuff in a manner similar to tasseography, or other rough, distinctive shapes interpretative styling. | When you dropped an egg ... have you ever recalled someone saying "if it breaks, it will bring bad luck"? Of course vice versa applies here as well. | Ragged edges on a slice of bread when freshly cut signals of misfortune for the person who did the slicing (of the loaf used for divinational purposes). |
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© Secretive aka Carol 1998
Divining The Future by Eva Shaw, 1995; Facts On File, Inc., New York, NY