Understand the Tea Leaves

Fortune telling by reading tea leaves has been practiced ever since tea was first brewed five thousand years ago. The art of fortune-telling is a very intuitive practice, and one must first be in tune with their instincts in order to read tea leaves effectively and correctly. The main concept that must be realized is that every reading will be different, every fortune will be unique, and you must follow your intuition and emotions when doing a reading, especially your own.

First, you must choose an appropriate tea cup. A light-colored wide-mouth cup or even a small bowl is best. The greater the surface area that the tea is exposed to, the easier it will be to read the leaves. Do not use a plastic cup or bowl. Ceramic, clay, wood, metal, or another natural material works best.

Next, you must select the tea. You can use any kind of loose leaf tea; however the best tea to use would be the one that your subject feels they will enjoy the most at the moment. Ideally, you would use organic or biodynamic tea, as the use of synthetic pesticides or fertilizers can interfere with the energetic properties of the tea, resulting in an inaccurate reading. If your subject is unsure of what tea they would like, then you can pick one yourself that you feel would best suit the occasion.

Next, you must boil distilled water in a kettle and bring in to a rolling boil. Place no more than one teaspoon of the tea in the cup. For black tea, pour the boiling water immediately over the tea leaves. For green or white tea, allow the water to cool for a couple of minutes before pouring over the tea. Serve the tea immediately, and do not strain out the tea leaves.

Ask your subject to contemplate the question they want to ask or the topic they are interested in, while drinking all but a very small amount of the tea, leaving a small amount of liquid in the bottom of the cup. When they are done, they must ask you the question that is on their mind at that moment, and then hand you the cup.

Now the interesting part begins. You must swirl the tea around the bottom of the cup, trying to get the leaves to spread out and stick to the edges of the cup. Ideally, you will get the tea leaves to spread out over a large surface of the inside of the cup. This will make reading the tea leaves much easier. While doing this you must contemplate the question that was asked, and continue swirling the tea leaves for a moment before setting down the cup and staring profoundly at the tea leaves. Just as continued staring at the clouds will begin to form cloud-shapes in your mind, you must stare at the tea leaves until you begin to see shapes, letters, numbers, images, or movement.

If the subject asked a simple yes or no question, and you begin to see the letter 'Y' in the tea leaves, then the answer would be yes. Perhaps they asked you to describe their true love, in which case you would try to find in the tea leaves certain human characteristics, such as long flowing hair, or perhaps you might see large eyes, or letters that could be associated with other characteristics.

You must follow your instincts as they will usually be right, and you must not expect a literal answer. The art of reading tea leaves takes a long time to perfect because it is very difficult for us to listen to and understand what our instinct is telling us; however with some practice you will be able to read tea leaves effectively and with a high degree of success. If you are not able to see anything, try again at a later time. It often helps if you perform the reading in a comfortable setting, without distractions - a place where you can lose yourself in the images brought to you by the tea leaves. If you are constantly getting unreliable results, try switching to another type of tea, or tea cup.

The best teas for fortune-telling are ones that have been grown naturally, such as organic and biodynamic teas. Quality tea that has been grown with care in a natural ecosystem retains more of the energetic properties that would be conducive for a reading.

In all cases, you must approach the reading with honesty and faith - attempting to read tea leaves with a large amount of skepticism will only result in unreliable readings and hinder your ability to hear your instincts. You do not need to have a "belief" in the fortune-telling abilities of tea leaf reading, but you do need to open yourself to the experience.