Tea-Cup Reading

Fortune-Telling by Tea Leaves

By A Highland Seer

With Ten Illustrations

"Tasseography, also known as tasseomancy or tassology, is a divination or fortune-telling method that interprets patterns in tea leaves, coffee grounds, or wine sediments."

"The terms derive from the French word tasse (cup), which in turn derives from the Arabic loan-word into French tassa, and the Greek suffixes -graph (writing), -logy (study of), and -mancy (divination)."

Divination attempts to gain insight into the natural world through intuitive interpretation of synchronistic events.

It is somewhat curious that among the great number of books on occult science and all forms of divination which have been published in the English language there should be none dealing exclusively with the Tea-cup Reading and the Art of Telling Fortunes by the Tea-leaves: notwithstanding that it is one of the most common forms of divination practised by the peasants of Scotland and by village fortune-tellers in all parts of this country. In many of the cheaper handbooks to Fortune-telling by Cards or in other ways only brief references to the Tea-cup method are given; but only too evidently by writers who are merely acquainted with it by hearsay and have not made a study of it for themselves.

This is probably because the Reading of the Tea-cups affords but little opportunity to the Seer of extracting money from credulous folk; a reason why it was never adopted by the gypsy soothsayers, who preferred the more obviously lucrative methods of crossing the palm with gold or silver, or of charging a fee for manipulating a pack of playing-cards.

CONTENTS

1. Introduction to the Art of Divination from Tea-Leaves
2. Ritual and Method of Using the Teacup
3. General Principles To Be Observed in Reading the Cup
4. An Alphabetical List of Symbols with Their Significations
5. Specimen Cups, with Interpretations
6. Omens