The Mystic Tea Room

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[[File:Spanish-Court-Tea-Room-Madame-Evelyn-Advertisement.jpg|right|300px|thumb|Madame Evelyn reads tea leaves at the Spanish Court Tea Room, location unknown, newspaper advertisement. Tea Leaf readings free with meal.]]
[[File:Spanish-Court-Tea-Room-Madame-Evelyn-Advertisement.jpg|right|300px|thumb|Madame Evelyn reads tea leaves at the Spanish Court Tea Room, location unknown, newspaper advertisement. Tea Leaf readings free with meal.]]
[[File:From-the-Land-of-Tea-Cat-Yronwode.jpg|right|300px|thumb|Support me on Patreon! Beginning on January 1st, 2021, i will be hosting a Patreon account. "From the Land of Tea" is a project that my Patrons will be able to access for a  small monthly donation, It will host bonus articles and scans about tea leaf reading and tea room culture will be available. Details Coming Soon!]]
[[File:From-the-Land-of-Tea-Cat-Yronwode.jpg|right|300px|thumb|Support me on Patreon! Beginning on January 1st, 2021, i will be hosting a Patreon account. "From the Land of Tea" is a project that my Patrons will be able to access for a  small monthly donation, It will host bonus articles and scans about tea leaf reading and tea room culture will be available. Details Coming Soon!]]
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[[File:American-Scale-Company-Your-Wate-and-Fate-Logo.jpg|right|300px|thumb|Beyond the Valley of the Tea-Cups! Coming in January, 2021, on my Patreon account -- "Your Wate and Fate: The Material Culture of Fortune-Telling." With a small monthly donation you will be able to support the digitization and annotation of my collection of off-beat, unusual, and downright strange fortune telling devices of the 19th and 20th centuries. Look for details are in your future! ]]
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[[File:American-Scale-Company-Your-Wate-and-Fate-Logo.jpg|right|300px|thumb|Beyond the Valley of the Tea-Cups! Coming in January, 2021, on my Patreon account -- "Your Wate and Fate: The Material Culture of Fortune-Telling." With a small monthly donation you will be able to support the digitization and annotation of my collection of off-beat, unusual, and downright strange fortune telling devices of the 19th and 20th centuries. Look for details in your future! ]]
== Greetings ==
== Greetings ==

Revision as of 23:30, 21 December 2020

The Mystic Tea Room is dedicated to the traditional art of fortune telling by tea leaves, also known as tea leaf reading, cup reading, cup tossing, divination by tea leaves, tasseomancy, and tasseography.

The Mystic Tea Room is entirely funded by sales of fortune telling tea cups and the tasseomancy instruction book "The Stranger in the Cup: How to Read Your Luck and Fate in the Tea Leaves" by Gregory Lee White and catherine yronwode, published in 2020. Nine dollars (plus shipping) will help support this project and get you a copy of "The Stranger in the Cup." Read all about the book, and order it here: https://luckymojo.com/thestrangerinthecup.html
Sheet Music: In a Little Gypsy Tea Room.
1950s-era Cup of Knowledge by Aynsley featuring a design of buttercups.
Evangeline Day was a well-known syndicated radio and newspaper astrologer of the 20th century who patented two different astrology tea cups and saucers. This design dates from 1936.
"Reading Tea Leaves" by Harry Roseland, 1910.
According to this 1907 Fred Lounsbury postcard, when tea leaves form an image of a Tree, it is an omen of good health.
Blue Parrot Tea Room, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, interior, postcard front, linen era
Madame Evelyn reads tea leaves at the Spanish Court Tea Room, location unknown, newspaper advertisement. Tea Leaf readings free with meal.
Support me on Patreon! Beginning on January 1st, 2021, i will be hosting a Patreon account. "From the Land of Tea" is a project that my Patrons will be able to access for a small monthly donation, It will host bonus articles and scans about tea leaf reading and tea room culture will be available. Details Coming Soon!
Beyond the Valley of the Tea-Cups! Coming in January, 2021, on my Patreon account -- "Your Wate and Fate: The Material Culture of Fortune-Telling." With a small monthly donation you will be able to support the digitization and annotation of my collection of off-beat, unusual, and downright strange fortune telling devices of the 19th and 20th centuries. Look for details in your future!

Contents

Greetings

Hello, and welcome to The Mystic Tea Room.

This tasseomancy site has been online since 2007. It was converted from html to media-wiki in 2011 for increased ease of image categorization, and it now hosts about 400 illustrated pages on the history and material culture of tea, tea rooms, and fortune telling by tea leaves. When built out, it will be home to at least 1,000 pages of curated tea and divination imagery.

Support for The Mystic Tea Room comes from

  • The Mystic Tea Room Gift Shop: Here you can purchase "The Stranger in the Cup: How to Read Your Luck and Fate in the Tea Leaves" by Gregory Lee White and catherine yronwode, as well as an array of antique fortune telling tea cups. Read all about the book, and order it online here.
  • From the Land of Tea: Beginning on January 1st, 2021, i will be hosting a Patreon account. "From the Land of Tea" is one of several projects which my Patrons will be able to access for a small monthly donation. Details Coming Soon.

The Museum of Fortune Telling Tea Cups and Saucers

The Museum of Fortune Telling Tea Cups and Saucers is dedicated to preserving and popularizing images of fortune telling cups and the traditional divinatory art of reading tea leaves (and coffee grounds) through the presentation of a virtual gallery in which are displayed and interpreted the many beautiful fortune telling teacups and saucers that have been created for the purpose of aiding tea leaf readers and fortune tellers in the practice of the tasseomantic art.

In the Museum, you will find detailed images of dozens of fortune teller's tea cups and saucers, patent drawings for a number of divination cups, brief historical overviews of the designers and manufacturers of fortune telling cups, and a selected bibliography of books and pamphlets about the occult and magical art of tea leaf reading.

Browse the Tea Cup Index by Name or the Tea Cup Index by Maker and click on the image of any tea cup and saucer set to see more pictures of that cup and saucer and read more about the set's history and how it was used for fortune telling.

Instruction in Tasseomancy

Divination by means of tea leaf reading is a long-cherished form of domestic fortune telling. It may be performed at home for oneself, family, or friends, and there are also professional tea leaf readers who will brew a cup for you, allow you to drink it, and read your leaves for you. The information in my article on How To Read Tea Leaves will help you get started.

Tea Leaf Reading in Art

The image of a female fortune teller reading tea leaves has, since the 19th century, been a subject of gallery art, popular commercial art, and cartooning. One prominent 19th and 20th century painter who produced many variations on this theme was Harry Roseland. If you like art, you may enjoy my essay on Roseland's art and the Cuban spirit known as La Madama -- it covers several types of African American divination in addition to cup reading.

While you're here, take a look at the artwork on some of the tea leaf reading and tea company ephemera i have come across in my own research on the subject of fortune telling by tea cups. Here you will find tea leaf reading as idealized and glorified in art.

The Material Culture of Tea Leaf Reading

Reading tea leaves is a form of divination that is known for its many female practitioners, and therefore its history is also the history of women in society. One way to study history is to examine the material culture -- the objects and artifacts associated with a time or a place.

Here you can learn about the tea room movement and view a world-wide gallery of strange and curious tea rooms of the past, many of which were woman-run and quite a few of which offered a "free reading with every meal."

Bibliography of Books about Tasseomancy

If collecting books is your passion, you may enjoy our Bibliography of Books about Tasseomancy. It will never be complete -- and we look forward to suggestions and contributions of information from our readers.

The bibliography is accompanied by cover images of rare books and pamphlets on tea leaf reading from times gone by, as well as by my own annotations about the contents of the books and their authors.

The Mystic Tea Room Gift Shop

In addition to our function as an online archive of tasseography and tea room culture, The Mystic Tea Room also maintains a small Gift Shop, where unusual, antique, vintage, modern, contemporary, and one-of-a-kind fortune telling tea cups and saucers -- and their accompanying tasseomancy booklets, pamphlets, and instruction sheets -- are for sale.

The revenue generated from the sale of these fortune telling cups supports the 300-plus pages of free instruction material provided here to all.

Surprise!

And, finally, some off-topic pages are here:

Thanks

Thank you for seeking us out,

catherine yronwode
curator, historian, and docent
The Mystic Tea Room

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