RITUAL AND METHOD OF USING THE TEA-CUP

The best kind of tea to use if tea-cup reading is to be followed is undoubtedly China tea, the original tea imported into this country and still the best for all purposes.  Indian tea and the cheaper mixtures contain so much dust and so many fragments of twigs and stems as often to be quite useless for the purposes of divination, as they will not combine to form pictures, or symbols clearly to be discerned.

The best shape of cup to employ is one with a wide opening at the top and a bottom not too small.  Cups with almost perpendicular sides are very difficult to read, as the symbols cannot be seen properly, and the same may be said of small cups.  A plain-surfaced breakfast-cup is perhaps the best to use; and the interior should be white and have no pattern printed upon it, as this confuses the clearness of the picture presented by the leaves, as does any fluting or eccentricity of shape.

The ritual to be observed is very simple.  The tea-drinker should drink the contents of his or her cup so as to leave only about half a teaspoonful of the beverage remaining.  He should next take the cup by the handle in his left hand, rim upwards, and turn it three times from left to right in one fairly rapid swinging movement.  He should then very slowly and carefully invert it over the saucer and leave it there for a minute, so as to permit of all moisture draining away.

If he approaches the oracle at all seriously he should during the whole of these proceedings concentrate his mind upon his future Destiny, and ‘will’ that the symbols forming under the guidance of his hand and arm (which in their turn are, of course, directed by his brain) shall correctly represent what is destined to happen to him in the future.

If, however, he or she is not in such deadly earnest, but merely indulging in a harmless pastime, such an effort of concentration need not be made.  The ‘willing’ is, of course, akin to ‘wishing’ when cutting the cards in another time-honoured form of fortune-telling.

The cup to be read should be held in the hand and turned about in order to read the symbols without disturbing them, which will not happen if the moisture has been properly drained away.  The handle of the cup represents the consultant and is akin to the ‘house’ in divination by the cards.  By this fixed point judgment is made as to events approaching the ‘house’ of the consultant, journeys away from home, messages or visitors to be expected, relative distance, and so forth.  The advantage of employing a cup instead of a saucer is here apparent.

’The bottom of the cup represents the remoter future foretold; the side events not so far distant; and matters symbolised near the rim those that may be expected to occur quickly.  The nearer the symbols approach the handle in all three cases the nearer to fulfilment will be the events prognosticated.