Finding Symbols in a Teacup

It doesn't help that finding a tea leaf reader is much harder than finding someone to read your cards, your palm, or even your aura these days. Walking around Salem, Massachusetts I could easily get at least 10 tarot card readings in one day along with palm readings, aura, spirit and angel readings, but tea leaf readings aren't advertised as existing in the same space. Ask around, as I have, and you'll find two stores with tea leaf reading as an option. One happens to be an herbal store that sells, you guessed it, tea.

Why is this? Well, for starters, it costs more money to read tea leaves as you have to buy loose leaf tea that gets used up with each reading. And loose leaf tea is not cheap! Compare that to just about any other kind of reading where you may make one purchase upfront (like a deck of tarot cards) that doesn't need to be replenished with each reading. The other reason, I suspect, is that the symbols are less obvious, as they need to be found before they can be interpreted. The palm has lines that already have meanings attached to each, not to mention things like the shape of your fingernails, and tarot cards have symbols embedded right in the artwork.

Finding symbols in objects is not new. There was a time when emissaries to the gods would read intestines in much the same way. How do you find these symbols and how do you know what they mean?

For me, I can only find symbols that already have meaning for me. For example, if I see a bird, I can only interpret what that bird means based on the birds I am familiar with already. And let me tell you - there aren't many. As a history buff and an American an eagle is an easily recognizable bird with meaning, but what if the bird looks generic to me? A bird watcher might say, "Oh that's such and such and they're known for their blah de blah," but without that knowledge all I see is a bird. Which, by the way, I might interpret as freedom since birds can fly away. 

Of course, I am oversimplifying this whole thing. The tea leaves that are left in a cup are just that - leaves. You need to have a little bit of an imagination to find symbols. Imagine looking up at the clouds. Sometimes, without having to put any thought into it you clearly see that a cloud looks like something, let's say a cat. Other times, the clouds just look like clouds, even though your friend standing right next to you swears that the cloud looks just like Oprah.

And so, reading tea leaves takes 4 skills: imagination, patience, perspective, and trusting your gut. The first of these is simple - if you don't engage in fantasy, if everything for you is black and white and clouds never look like anything, it's going to be hard to find the shapes and symbols left in a teacup.

Sometimes, even if you are someone who takes the time to daydream, nothing pops out at you and a leaf is just a leaf. That's where patience comes in. You have to give your brain some time to adjust to the leaves and to let your imagination flourish. That leaf that looks like a stick doesn't feel imaginative, but if you continue to really look at it you might realize that it's a falling branch, a ruler, or part of a bigger whole entirely. Sometimes, patience also means waiting until you are absolutely sure that the particular leaf you are looking at is just a leaf. And the knowing of that falls into the 4th skill, which I will get to soon.

It's also important to think about perspective. And there are two different types of perspectives to consider here. One has to do with the angle of the teacup and the other with whomever is sitting for a reading. For the former, if you can't find symbols or shapes, move the teacup, look at the leaf in question from a new perspective. Sometimes I stare at the same leaf from across the teacup, sometimes I look down on it, and I carefully move the teacup around as the leaves really do change depending on how you look at them. For the latter, remember that you are not the only person who is capable of finding symbols in a teacup. You can ask the sitter if they see anything in the leaves. And actually, even if you are able to find all the symbols, sometimes it's good to ask for the sitter's input anyways. How they see a snake might not be how you would interpret one (is it a good force of nature or the devil in the Garden of Eden?).

And finally, trust your gut, otherwise known as your intuition. We are so used to second guessing ourselves that we often ignore the gut feelings or voices in our heads telling us what's what. If you think the tea leaves might be something, then go with that. I took a refresher tea leaf class several years ago from The Fairy Tale Witch and I was reading the tea leaves of the person across from me and I saw a symbol that I couldn't tell if it was a carrot or a flashlight. Two completely different things, but the more I talked through it, the more I realized that it didn't matter which one I went with because for me, both of those symbolize better sight. I should have just picked one and stuck with it and saved myself the trouble of having to figure out the meaning of both the carrot and the flashlight in order to read the leaves the "right way." There is no "right way," by the way, there's only your way. 

There have been times when I've done a reading and one symbol can have two meanings and for whatever reason, one meaning is really pulling me towards it, so I go with that one and I trust my instincts and move on. I also find really weird symbols sometimes. Like a dinosaur hatching from an egg. That's weird right? But it felt right once I landed on that image. From there I interpreted it as a rebirth (hatching from an egg) of some older wisdom (dinosaurs are ancient!). That's my way of reading the symbols, but that's okay if you would never see that in the leaves. 

The great thing about tea leaf reading is that anyone can do it with a little practice. All of us are used to interpreting everyday symbols, so it's just a matter of taking that skill and transferring it to a place where you also have to find the symbols. I mean you might find a stop sign in the teacup, but it probably won't be red and actually say "STOP" on it.