author

Cicely Kent

Best known for early 20th-century guides to tea-leaf reading and card divination, this elusive writer left behind practical occult manuals that have outlived their era. Very little is firmly documented about the person behind the name, which only adds to the curiosity around these books.

1 Audiobook

Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves: How to Read Your Fate in a Teacup

Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves: How to Read Your Fate in a Teacup

by Cicely Kent

About the author

Cicely Kent is credited as the author of Telling Fortunes by Tea Leaves and Telling Fortunes by Cards, fortune-telling manuals first published in the early 1920s. Surviving editions and catalog records consistently connect the name with popular guides to tasseomancy and cartomancy, and Telling Fortunes by Tea Leaves has remained widely available through public-domain and reprint editions.

The books present divination in a clear, instructional style, mixing symbolic interpretation with a practical, how-to approach for readers who wanted to try these traditions for themselves. That straightforward tone is a big part of why the works have continued to circulate long after their original publication.

Reliable biographical details about the author are scarce. Some book-history sources note inconsistent spellings such as "Cecily Kent" alongside "Cicely Kent" and suggest the name may have been a pseudonym, but this does not appear to be firmly confirmed.