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A Cup of Tea

Reading Tea Leaves

Reading tea leaves is a form of divination: the art of discovering the unknown or predicting the future. Some people call it tasseomancy or tasseology or tasseography, which makes it sound more scientific. It's related to other forms of divination, such as reading the shapes of melted wax (ceroscopy) or molten lead or tin (molybdomancy) dropped in water, which were practised during the Middle Ages.

36 Tea leaf reading- divining the future by means of random patterns made by tea-leaves.
Reading tea leaves is as old as drinking tea itself
© TopFoto.co.uk
When you are "reading" the tea leaves you are interpreting the shapes formed by the loose, black leaves left in the bottom of the cup after drinking to tell the future. If you use tea bags you have to cut them open and swirl the contents with a small amount of water. You can also read coffee (especially popular in Italy) and the symbols left behind in wine dregs!

Reading tea leaves is as old as drinking tea itself. It sprang up in Ancient Asia and Ancient Greece, travelling to Europe with the introduction of tea. The craft was spread by nomadic gypsy tribes during the 18th century who specialised in various forms of fortune telling as a way of earning a living. Reading tea leaves became a popular parlour game in Victorian times.

You don't need lots of knowledge and special powers, just imagination and openness it is largely based on psychic intuition. You can read for yourself or a friend the person involved must drink the tea, think of a question and swirl the cup three times (the reading will only be valid in answering the question you thought of while swirling and will only cover the next 24 hours, unless you specify a longer time frame).

Identifying shapes in tea leaves is a little like spotting shapes in the clouds: they are not always obvious at first and it helps if you clear your mind and relax. Apparently, reading tea leaves will not provide you with quick solutions to life's problems, but it can help you to focus on plans for the future and bring to the surface subconscious thoughts and fears in order to act on them.

Although there are as many suggestions for how to go about reading tea leaves as there are people who practise it, there are three basic steps to creating a reading:

  • Preparing the tea, the cup and yourself for the reading.

  • Identifying particular symbols and noticing where in the cup they are (the position affects the meaning of the symbol and the time frame it relates to).

  • Putting the information from the symbols and placement together into a coherent interpretation: "the reading". There are dictionaries of shapes you might find and suggested meanings that can help you but, once again, they vary widely from source to source. There is also debate about whether the cup is swirled clockwise or anti-clockwise.


Are you ready to have a go?