Tyromancy
Tyromancy is a method of divination or fortune-telling using cheese. Written accounts of the practice date from the 2nd century AD, with it reaching the height of its popularity in the Middle Ages and early modern period. In the 21st century, the practice draws on methods from dream interpretation and antique spell manuals.
History
The first recorded mention of tyromancy is believed to be in Oneirocritica, a 2nd-century AD treatise on dream-interpretation by Greek diviner Artemidorus of Daldis. Artemidorus claimed it to be one of the most unreliable forms of divination, writing that "the truth is spoken by sacrificers and bird-diviners and astrologers and observers of wonders and dream-diviners and liver-examiners alone". He counted tyromancers as "false diviners" along with dice-diviners, sieve-diviners, and necromancers. At the Second Council of Ephesus in 449, bishop Sophronius of Tella was accused of various forms of divination including tyromancy, and oomancy.In a piece for food magazine Saveur, 21st-century tyromancer Jennifer Billock claims that the practice of cheese fortune-telling reached peak popularity in agrarian England in the Middle Ages and early modern period. She claims that using cheese was more convenient than previous methods of divination like molybdomancy which used molten metal as most families had some sort of milk-producing livestock. According to Billock, tyromancy had all but disappeared by the 1920s. She speculates that this may in part be due to the popularity of the Rider–Waite tarot card-deck which was introduced in 1909. Billock, however, provides no sources for her claims, and the validity of her statements is unclear.
In 2023, Billock's own practice was covered by the CBC News in Canada and by ABC News in Australia. She described tyromancy as a fun method of divination because participants get to eat the cheese after their fortune has been told.