Illustration © Kaitlynn Copithorne
The history of tasseomancy—the art of reading tea leaves—is inextricably linked to the history of tea itself. Tea drinking can be traced back to China’s middle and lower Yellow River Valley during the Shang dynasty (1500 - 1046 BC), yet it’s encounter with Europe is a relatively recent story. Whilst explorers to the East brought back tales of this medicinal tonic, it wasn’t until the 17th century that trade routes enabled the import of tea into Europe—first to Amsterdam, and eventually to Britain, where it appeared in the 1650s. First enjoyed by the nobility, the official trade of tea in Britain began in 1664 with the import of 2 pounds 2 ounces of tea leaves for King Charles II. In the years to follow, as well as spreading to the British colonies and America, the beverage became available in coffee houses, tea shops and tea rooms in London. By the turn of the century, black tea was the ‘national drink’ we know it as today, demonstrated by the sheer scale of imports as the price of tea dropped—from that small package for the King, to 24 million pounds by 1801.
Just as the consumption of tea was initially limited to the upper classes and then seeped into mass society as prices fell, tea leaf reading followed a similar trajectory. In the 1800s Romani tasseomancers were invited into parlours and tea rooms to read for the host’s guests—affluent Victorians with a predilection for the occult. In less moneyed circles, tasseomancy gained popularity as an accessible form of divination requiring minimal tools.
However, the 18th century volume Tea Cup-Reading and Fortune-Telling by Tea Leaves (composed by an unnamed ‘Highland Seer’) suggests an alternative history. To date the oldest book about tea in the English language, it claims that tasseomancy was “one of the most common forms of divination practiced by the peasants of Scotland”, said to go back through generations of Scottish fortune tellers, or spae wives.
Amy Taylor - founder of the Tasseomancy Museum in Hamilton, Canada - has been reading tea leaves for over thirty years and teaching tasseomancy for twenty. She tells me that no two tasseomancers will work in the same way:
“Over 30 years ago I looked into my family’s tea bowls at a Chinese restaurant and was intrigued by what I saw. I went to occult shops, bought some good books, then sought out psychics who had tea leaf reading as part of their repertoire, got some tips and then began to create my own method. After all, no tea leaf reader does it exactly like another.”
Amy uses Rooibos, a herbal tisane, as its leaves are small and don’t expand a great deal in water. When it comes to reading the leaves, she invites us to cultivate our imaginative capacities:
“Tradition for tea reading has established a generally accepted canon of symbols and their definitions which have been duplicated in other divinatory modalities. I believe reading leaves is among the more imaginative and intuitive of the divinatory arts and discovering the patterns and their deeper meanings in the bottom of a cup is much like seeing shapes revealed in cloud formations.”
Rissa Miller, a Maryland-based tasseomancer, author and poetess, uses Darjeeling teabags for her divinatory brews:
“I've used full leaf, loose tea, but I don't think it gives me enough information. The bigger leaves tell a much shorter story. I like the huge number of shapes that a loose tea bag leaves in a cup—I can get a big picture of the seeker's emotional and material world.”
Rissa’s Guide to Reading the Leaves
Always start by grounding yourself and space clearing (I like to do a smoke cleanse of the reading space and my cups). As the reading starts, I like to see the full cup of tea. How is the tea acting in the cup? Is it bubbly? Floating? Clumpy? Sinking? All those reactions will begin the reading, set the mood. Then, once the seeker empties the cup and turns it, I read the cup from the handle, counter-clockwise. Since the seeker usually holds the cup by its handle, I consider that the person's strongest energy signature. Symbols closest to the handle are closest in time and energy to the seeker. Any tea on the outside of the cup I consider to be very strong messages from Spirit.
Practise, practise, practise looking at the patterns and pictures in the tea leaves. Soon enough, you will be able to intuit a full storyline! Also, if you want some help interpreting symbols, take a course in symbology or study a dream dictionary—but be flexible. A cat, for example, doesn't mean the same thing in every cup. Study the cat's body language, where it's looking—all of that matters in the story of the cup!