A recent event held in the tea room was dedicated to an Introduction to Tasseography, or tea leaf reading, under the guidance of Rissa Miller of Tea & Smoke. Rissa shared that tasseography is the interpretation of random symbols and telling a story of those symbols. Not only tea leaves, but coffee grounds, cacao, even fresh juice grounds can be used to tell a story.
For tea leaf reading, Rissa instructed that you need a tea cup, with a handle, low edges, curved bottom, and no patterns or color inside. You want to keep the cup simple so as not to distract from the symbols that are created by the tea leaves. The tea room was filled with budding tea leaf reading enthusiasts. Proper preparation of the cup, sipping tea, swirling the leaf, flipping the cup to reveal the symbols, and discovering the different designs found within the cup filled the afternoon. A little bit of imagination, perhaps some intuition, and attendees were seeing assorted animals, a dancing couple, ships and more. 
What do you see in the cup? Does it tell a story?
Wow! I see a couple animals in the cup.
ReplyDeleteWhat fun! I had a book the Norwood Pratt and John Harney wrote years ago on reading tea leaves. Last year I passed it along to a tea friend that is doing tea leaf reading at our tea festival. Last year she was kept busy all day long doing leaf readings.