Tasseography, tea leaf reading, reads the shapes left in a drained cup for their traditional meanings. This report item works from a photograph rather than a description, so the reading follows what is actually in the cup: where a form sits relative to the handle and the rim, how the traditional symbol dictionaries treat it, and where those dictionaries disagree.

History

Tasseography is documented in Europe from the seventeenth century onward, following directly on tea's own arrival and spread as a trade commodity from China across that same period. It became a widely practiced parlor divination especially in Britain and Ireland through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and printed symbol dictionaries assigning fixed meanings to particular leaf shapes proliferated during that era, several of which disagree with one another about a given shape's meaning, which this report item names rather than resolves into a single answer.

How A Reading Is Constructed

A reading works from a photograph of the actual cup rather than a written description, noting where each shape sits relative to the handle and the rim, positions the tradition reads as meaningful in their own right, and matching the shapes present against the traditional printed symbol dictionaries, naming where those dictionaries disagree about a given shape rather than picking one silently.