Seeing the Signs

Reading Tea Leaves

My grandmother, my mother’s mother, read tea leaves.  She was a devout Roman Catholic, but she knew all kinds of ways of telling the future, from tasseography to nature’s omens to playing cards.  Gramma was also a wealth of common-sense sayings.

Tea-leaf reading was a kitchen event; a woman activity.  She would make a pot of tea, and pour out cups for each of us and tell us each to think of a question – something that we might have been praying for.  She explained that the tea leaves often told us what Jesus and Mary and the holy saints had in store for us.  She said to sip carefully, so as not to drink the tea leaves down.  I was always drinking my tea leaves when I was little.  I still do.  I often don’t have enough leaves to tell me what I need to know.  But maybe that’s what the way it’s supposed to be.

I have both my grandmother’s collections of tea cups, as well as two lovely tea pots, but they have been packed away in the attic for several years.  One of these days, I’m going to buy a china cabinet so I can display these beautiful heirlooms.  I would love to be able to use the mauve tea pot to brew tea and use one of the delicate cups in a tasseography ritual.

Generally, though, I use my everyday apple mug and a matching saucer.  As a solitary practitioner, I wouldn’t make an entire pot of tea even if I had a tea pot at my disposal.  I used to use a tea bag with a hole cut in the bottom to allow the tea leaves to float free, but  the website tasseography.com (http://www.tasseography.com/stepone.htm) has a better idea.  They suggest pouring boiling water into your cup and then pouring the tea leaves from your tea bag into the cup.  I use a spoon to stir the leaves, and I chant a chant which reflects what I want to learn.  Then I sit and sip and meditate on what the answer might be.

I have a handy little book called The Fortune-Telling Book, by Gillian Kemp, which has a chapter on tasseography.  It has a small section of meanings, which is fine as far as it goes.  There is also

http://www.tasseography.com/stepone.htm, as well as hundreds of other internet sites to explore.  The main thing to consider is what the pattern of the tea leaves mean to you.

You may see one pattern or picture, or you may see several patterns.  The last two times I consulted the tea leaves, I saw the pattern of a bearded man quite distinctly.  Like all divination systems, the more you do it, the better you get at it.  So go brew some tea and see what the leaves have to say to you!

Blessings!