Tasseography is a rather technical term for what is more commonly called tea leaf reading. Of all forms of divination, this is often considered the most basic, probably because it was and is still performed mainly by women at the kitchen or dining table. In modern times you will often find readers doing this in the back rooms of metaphysical shops. A reading can reveal everything from major events in a seeker’s life to a month-long event involving areas such as work, relationships, family, health and everything else ‘under the sun’.
Seekers
After 22 years of reading tea leaves, I can divide those who seek guidance from me into two categories. Those who have never heard of this divination modality and those who insist that it is at the top of their list of preference when it comes to psychic guidance. How the reading unfolds is the same regardless of the seeker’s motivation.
Technique for reading tea leaves
The client arrives at the tea room, metaphysical shop, or home where the tea leaf reader offers her or his services. A tea cup and saucer are selected from a number of exhibits. The reader pours black, green or herbal tea with loose leaves into the cup. The liquid from the cup is drunk through the viewfinder, leaving tea leaf patterns behind. The psychic instructs the client to place the cup upside down on the saucer. After three spins with the non-dominant hand (presumably the intuitive side), the cup is returned to the reader. He or she examines the clumps of leaves scattered on the sides and bottom of the cup. The psychic’s intuition influences her eyes to see images in the leaves. This gives the searcher information about highlights for approximately the coming year.
Absolutely ‘everything under the sun’ is a guess. Work, love life, travel, school, family, health, spiritual situations, death, crime, hobbies, finances – what can be revealed by the images in the cup is infinite.
History
Where did this unique form of fortune telling, along with reading ground coffee as ‘cousin’, begin? It started hundreds of years ago, so the details of its beginnings are vague. Perhaps it was first done in India and other Asian countries as an offshoot of where tea was first grown. From there, Gypsies or Roma developed their practice in Romania and, because they are nomadic, throughout Europe. They offered their tea leaf and tarot card readings wherever they went, as an enjoyable and interesting way to make a living.
A British woman once told me that when she was a child in the early 20th century, gypsies knocked on their door while the family was having afternoon tea. They asked if the family would like to have their teacups read to them.
The woman suspected that her mother always let the gypsy in because she was afraid to say ‘No’. The fear probably arose from the fear of people with different psychological appearances, habits and lifestyles.
Learning the modality
I first started reading tea leaves when a friend asked me to help her plan a tea party. We thought inviting a tea leaf reader to attend the event would be the ‘icing on the cake’ that would make the event a success. When we couldn’t find one, it dawned on me that I could give tea leaf readings at the party. Reading a book on how to do it – which I had bought years earlier – would guide me. At the party, one of the first readings I did was for a woman whose son had attention deficit disorder (ADHD) and was struggling in grade school. Out of nowhere, I spontaneously came up with several ideas that could help the child navigate the obstacles ahead. To me it meant that reading tea leaves could help people do things that really mattered. It wasn’t just a trivial matter of ‘getting a letter from a friend’. People can be helped with very important issues that challenge them. To this day I am still happy and uplifted by making fortune telling my career.
A reading
The most shocking lecture I have given was to a woman who came into the back room where I was lecturing at a New Age store on Salt Spring Island, BC, Canada. She impatiently sat across from me until I noticed a bunch of leaves in the cup that looked somehow watery. In the same intuitive flash I saw her spouse. “It seems you’re not getting along with your husband,” I said as tactfully as possible. “Now you’re getting somewhere,” she said, one hand pounding the air in front of her.
It turned out that her husband had tried to kill her. The woman’s question was, “Did he intend to kill me or was it in a fit of rage that I almost died? “I saw a boat in the cup and shared it with her. She confirmed that they left on their boat the day before he tried to kill her by pushing her head underwater in their bathtub. I relayed the message I picked up intuitively: he was planning to throw his wife over the side of the boat, but the harbor was very busy with many people in boats nearby. Someone would have seen him do it. She shook my hand vigorously and thanked me. “I met a wonderful new man and now I feel like I can move on and build a life with him,” she said.
Diversity
Reading tea leaves has given me a rich cornucopia of experiences: reading in a tent at an outdoor wedding near the ocean on a Canadian island on the west coast; giving a speech to an international women’s group in an extremely posh hotel, giving a talk to Goldie Hawn’s son at an open-air Saturday market while she stands by disguised as a hippie; giving talks to people at various First Nations “mental wealth” days; and offering my readings in an Icelandic bar, a New Zealand night market, a Scottish metaphysical shop; teaching the art of tea leaf reading in colleges and universities.
Conclusion
But probably the best experience of all is when I finish a talk with someone saying, “It’s more than you’ll ever know how much you helped me.” “I was a few years into reading when I was told that my great-grandmother on the Lebanese side of my father’s family read tea leaves. What a great confirmation for me. Reading tea leaves is in my blood.
