Have you ever heard of tyromancy? I hadn’t until recently, so I wanted to hop in and share this interesting form of divination with you! So, buckle up, because unless you know what it is, I am sure you are in for a surprise! Trust me, it is not one I expected to learn about and that is why I am sharing it with you!
So, what exactly is Tyromancy?
First, let’s break down the word itself. We know -mancy is one of the suffixes for a form of divination. The prefix, though, is tyro- – can you guess what it means? It comes from the word tyrosine. Now, you might be wondering why tyrosine is connected to any form of divination at all. I know I was!
[image from Etymology Online]
Have you guessed it yet?
The suffix, tyro-, relates back to CHEESE! Yes, you read that right – divination by way of cheese. Tyro- comes from Tyrosine because tyrosine is an amino acid necessary in the cheese-making process. But now that we know what it is, where does it come from and, more importantly, how the heck do you do it?
History Of Tyromancy
I’m not gonna lie. When I first heard of this, I thought someone just decided to put the two words together and come up with some silly new divination method just to be funny. However, Tyromancy dates back to the 2nd century CE! The first written account of Tyromancy comes from Oneirocritica, a piece of writing by Greek diviner Artemidorus of Daldis. In this writing, he says that people who use tyromancy are not real diviners, along with people who use dice or who speak with the dead.
He 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.
A 21st-century Tyromancer named Jennifer Billock said that the practice of using cheese as a fortune-telling method likely came out of convenience and ease of access. Most people back then had access to livestock or dairy products. It was an easier method of foretelling the future for those who did not have access to other methods such as molybdomancy, which uses molten metal. It makes sense that people would use what they had to them, and it then makes sense that Tyromancy would become less and less used as different forms of divination became widely available; remember, the Rider-Waite Smith deck came out in 1909.
How To Perform Tyromancy
Tyromancy uses symbols along with smell, patterns, and textures to foretell the future. This is common among other practices such as tasseomancy and dream interpretation. With that, though, there are multiple ways to read the cheese!
ABC News created a video describing tyromancy in 2023. In their video, they say that tyromancy is “the observation of cheese, especially as it coagulates”, with areas of focus including smell, patterns, and texture of the cheese.
In a magazine called Saveur, modern tyromancy Jennifer Billock gave some examples of how she has read cheese for people.
In the years I’ve been tyromancing, I’ve figured out ways to read just about any type of cheese. Those with patterns on the surface are best, but you can always break a chunk in half and analyze the variations along the break. You can also use crumbles by dumping them out on a plate. I’ve even read a fortune from a Kraft Singles slice—but the person for whom I was reading had to tear it up and drop it onto a plate first. Vegan cheese? No problem.
So, it seems like all you need is some cheese and a mind for symbols!
Modern Examples Of Tyromancy
Tyromancy is very much a symbol interpretation form of divination. This means that it will be highly subjective – the image of an arrow for you might mean something different to someone else. If you are interested in doing some cheese divination, grab some cheese and give it a shot!
If you need help with some symbols, try these posts and let us know how your Tyromancy session goes!
