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    Tea Cup Reading: A Quick and Easy Guide to Tasseography
    Tea Cup Reading: A Quick and Easy Guide to Tasseography
    Tea Cup Reading: A Quick and Easy Guide to Tasseography
    Ebook152 pages1 hour

    Tea Cup Reading: A Quick and Easy Guide to Tasseography

    By Sasha Fenton

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    About this ebook

    The art of reading tea leaves has been practiced for centuries by everyone from Buddhist monks to Bedouins to Gypsies. Once very popular in Britain and Ireland and all the countries they settled, including our own, the practice has all but faded away. Now, this concise book provides quick, easy, and fun instructions for practicing tasseography today.

    The book includes everything needed to become an accomplished practitioner:
    a brief history of tea and coffeeadvice on brewing and servingbasic rules of tea leaf and cup readinghandy tips for instant readingsan illustrated dictionary of 361 symbols with precise definitions

    Tea Cup Reading is an essential reference for this fascinating interpretive art.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRed Wheel Weiser
    Release dateMar 1, 2002
    ISBN9781609256845
    Tea Cup Reading: A Quick and Easy Guide to Tasseography
    Author

    Sasha Fenton

    Sasha Fenton is a best-selling astrologer whose books have sold over half a million copies world-wide. She is well known for her chatty, accessible style, and is the astrology columnist for ‘Woman’s Own’. Her other books include ‘Tarot in Action’, ‘Fortune-Telling by Leaves’, and ‘Understanding Astrology’. Fenton has presented her own radio show on LBC and appeared on national television programmes in the UK such as ‘This Morning’ She has been professionally consulting since 1973.

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      Book preview

      Tea Cup Reading - Sasha Fenton

      Symbols

      Reading Tea leaves or Coffee grounds

      Can anybody read tea leaves and coffee grounds?

      The answer to this is that you can if you want to, because all it takes is the ability to see shapes made by tea and coffee leavings. My book shows you how to go about it and it contains a dictionary of symbols for interpretation purposes.

      Tea leaf reading was once very popular in Britain, Ireland and the countries that were settled by Irish and British people. It has gone out of fashion in latter years, partly due to the invention of the teabag, but probably much more due to the invention of the television, which brought an end to so many home-based pastimes. Once upon a time, everyone had an aunt or grandma who read the leaves and the skill was passed down from one generation to the next. Anyone who had a touch of psychic ability learned to give readings to their friends and relatives and this ability was so prevalent that it remained an amateur skill rather than a professional matter. This form of reading is not difficult and it doesn't depend upon special calculations or even basic literacy, so cup reading has always been open to anyone who wanted to learn it.

      Coffee ground reading is practically unheard of in the UK or Ireland but it is well known in the Middle East, Mediterranean countries, Latin America and in countries to which Latin or Middle Eastern people gravitated. Coffee-ground reading is still going strong in less developed and industrialized countries and it still works very well, so there is no reason why you shouldn't learn to do it for yourself.

      The fancy name for this kind of reading is tasseography. This comes from the French tasse meaning cup and the ancient Greek root graphos, which relates to writing or drawing. Therefore, tasseography means being able to read the pictures that form in a cup.

      If you are interested in the dramatically fascinating story of how the cultivation and sale of tea and coffee spread around the world, take a look at the next two short chapters that outline the history of these heartwarming beverages.

      The History of Tea

      Tea-leaves and the birth of nations

      The tea plant is native to China and it has been known there for around 5,000 years but it took a windy day and a hygiene conscious Emperor to bring the drink into existence. Legend tells us that tea as a drink was accidentally discovered in 2737 B.C. by a Chinese Emperor called Shen Nong. This was said to have occurred when some tea leaves accidentally fell into a pot of boiling water. It is known that Shen Nong was interested in science and hygiene and that it was he who determined that drinking water should be boiled as a safety precaution. When the Emperor tried the boiled water with the tea leaves infused in it, he realized that he had discovered a refreshing new drink.

      A Buddhist monk called Lu Yu wrote the first book on tea, and it was he who defined the different types of tea cultivation and preparation. In addition to its more prosaic form as a drink, Chinese tea preparation took on a mystical form. It was this strange practice that eventually transferred itself to Japan and developed into the famous Japanese tea ceremony.

      Tea-leaf reading certainly originated in China and it spread throughout neighboring countries as each in turn took up the cultivation of tea.

      The first traders to bring tea to Europe were the Portuguese. They carried cargoes of tea to Lisbon and from there the tea-drinking habit spread to France, Holland and the Baltic countries. The Dutch became confirmed tea-drinkers and it was the export of tea that helped to found Holland as a major trading country. Only when England settled down after the Civil War and was able to concentrate once again on overseas trade did tea start to arrive in the British Isles, this being around 1653. The price was kept artificially high which meant that only the wealthy and privileged classes could afford to buy tea, but by 1708 tea began to come into the country in sufficient quantities and at a price that made it accessible to ordinary people.

      The Chinese wisely tried to keep the secrets of tea growing to themselves in order to maintain their monopoly on the trade. However, a Scottish botanist called Robert Fortune who actually spoke Chinese was able to sneak into China and with the help of a Chinese friend, he managed

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