Tasseography… the art of reading tea leaves. It all sounds so Harry Potter- with Professor Trelawney turning and turning that china tea cup seeing haunting image after haunting image. Real or not, fantasy or honest to goodness fate – it seems like it would be amazing to try. Filling your cup with hot water and intermingling the tea leaves with the steam, seeing the dark tendrils of the tea stretch out into the water, taking it over and finally pouring that cup, now filled with more than the comfort of tea, but the promise of some knowledge. Even if it really isn’t the future – it’s fun.
The Tea Association of the USA has an article on their website on how to read tea leaves. Essentially you have loose leaf tea in your cup, you put a little pinch in and you let it steep. When it is ready, you drink the tea and leave a little liquid at the bottom. You then take the cup by the handle and spin it three times in a circle. Some leaves will cling to the side, others to the bottom. Then you put the cup face down on the saucer so that the rest of the liquid can drain. Now you can pick it back up and make a reading of the tea leaves.
Here is an example
Turning around the tea cup you can identify images and try to discern meaning from them. As the article says,
The “sitter” should approach the oracle in all seriousness and during the ritual should concentrate on his or her future destiny and “wish” that the symbol shall correctly represent happenings to come. The handle of the cup represents the “sitter” in his or her own “sphere” or “residence” and is the “south” point of the compass. This fixed point designates “letters to” the consultant or “journeys away from”, “visitors to be expected”, distance “to and from”, etc.The cup is divided into three parts. The rim designates the present; the side, events not far distant; and the bottom the distant future. The nearer the symbols appear to the handle the nearer to fulfillment will be the events foretold.
For example the “anchor” symbol means success in business or in love and “palm trees” mean success in whatever you take on. There are more symbols defined on the website as well as how to more specifically do tea leave readings. So explore. Drink some loose leaf tea and read those fuzzy images on the size of your cup. Maybe you’ll be able to see your future or maybe it’ll be another awesome thing to do with your tea. It could be an awesome theme party.
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