T: it's not only very very simple but like she said it's like crystals it's so popular for other reasons that you're going to be able to find it pretty much anywhere. and a lot of things can be made into tea that you don't always think of when your first drinking tea you like a black tea green tea white tea or maybe you're just like tea comes in a bag. but there's so many ways to make tea and serve tea. For specific recipes for tea, I think I'm gonna save that for either a blog post so I don't bore you all for the people that don't wanna make their own tea but there are so many ways to use and make tea. and it can't be magical or can just be comforting.
When steph used to visit me and I lived in a small little apartment in Chicago I had I think eight cupboards and one entire one was about to tea. and I'm being generous on it because I'm talking like one of those at least would like a small one next to the oven.
S: Let's get into the magic lore behind tea. Tea has a very long history. Legend has it that Chinese emporer Shen Yon discovered The herb in 2737 BC when leaves accidentally fell into the hot water he was drinking and amazed by the Tea magic he dedicated his life to the invention of different tea brews nd magic that comes out of each one so that's very long history.
T: very long history.
S: Since then witches and alchemists have tried very hard to find the perfect tea brewed to heal various Illnesses and sicknesses or to achieve their various intentions. and it is a very powerful form of witchcraft because it's both magic and divination. that's where the tasseography part comes in so the tea witches are considered very Zen but was very powerful at the same time. They are herbalist which is why we did the herb podcast last week. So most of the types of tea come from the leaves of the Camillia senensis plant. but different parts of the plant are used to make different teas and there's also many varieties of the same plant so that gives all the different teas their distinctive taste and of course the different magical properties and health benefits that come with each one.
so like Tara said you can craft your own tea blends. there are premade tea ones those usually have taste in mind and you can purchase these and they can be used magically based on their ingredients, that's why they give a list of all the different things you can go back to our podcast or one of the books that we recommended and see what different medical properties are in. or you can craft your own tea, but it might not taste as good but that's kind of the fun part of diving in and sorting out your magical intentions and combining things together to see what works for you.
T: I like making my own, I like what, knowing what's going on in them I grow my own herbs specifically for teas but you don't need a specific herb for every tea. like I actually use dandelion leaves to make dandelion tea. it's really good to detox and if fights diabetes it's good for your digestion it does not taste the most pleasing but it's super easy to make and dandelions are everywhere if you're in the Midwest. like I'm not saying just pick them off the ground as it could be pesticides. But I have a little dandelion plant that I grow indoors and I know it's clean I know it goes into it and sometimes if you just need like a nice detox you just let some of the leaves you pour boiling water over them for 15 minutes and then you sieve it. you technically don't have to put it through sieve if you like the leaves but I don't and you have a tea. There are a lot of things around That are good for different things having said that make sure you don't just pick something off the ground and boil water and drink it. do a little bit of research before you just like this plant looks like a big tea. they will not taste like a commercial one if you are making your own and it takes a lot of experience to get to that level. I am not saying you can't get there I'm not saying it's impossible to DIY really magical delicious teas because it's completely possible. and it's fairly simple once you get into a groove, but when you first get started just don't expect it to taste like Sleepytime tea. there's a reason that the commercial brands are but once you start making teas you can make a really really great delicious teas and you know exactly what's going into the tea.
S: maybe Tara will make a blog post about her favorite blends and things that she uses.
T: I make some standard ones that I just keep on hand and once you start making tea and you find how easy it is you might stop even by most commercial. I do have a couple of commercial brands that I still get from local places but so much it's so easy once you get into a groove and can figure it out but again you don't need a specific plant to make tea but don't just pick some berries and boil them and call it good because if they red they might deadly. That's my little disclaimer and example of there are seasonal things you can make and there are so many good properties in the different seasonal herbs you can get.
S: there are a lot of ways you can use tea in your witchcraft. So tea can be used as a base for a lot of different recipes. You can add tea to your bath if you're doing sort of a self love glamour spell or something like that or just that you know relaxing bath. you can use tea on your altar and it can even go in your loose incense. you can leave it to you as an offering if you're working with any particular spirits or deities. and the one of the main ways are the way to use it in the form of divination is scrying with the tea which is tasseography so that's what we are going to get into now.
T well another quick disclaimer if you're going to use in your bath some tees will stain your skin slightly so again do you a little little research or go very very light on the tea for the first bath you do. Just do a little basic research. Some will die your hair, skin. You can use teas also die cloth my altar cloth
S: so if you would like to try scrying with tea as a form of divination, it is probably one of the most difficult ones. we talked about tarot oracle cards pendulums all the other different ways crystal balls. I would say that reading tea leaves is one of the most difficult because it relies so much more on interpretation and gut instinct. Tarot is a set deck. we talked about the rider Waite deck and how the general cards mean generally the same thing and then you apply it to your own readings. In scrying in a cup of tea there is books and general overviews where you know if you see a bird in those tea leaves, it tells you what a bird means. However, seeing that bird is completely up to you in your mind. you might see a bird and Tara might see a dolphin.
so it can be incredibly difficult but the basis of this is that you or someone else thinks about the issues at hand and then puts their energy into the tea as they are drinking it. and then you take this tea, itdoes it need to be loose tea, and it does have to be a certain size of this isn't a particular tree where you would go out and just collect ingredients from the yard it's something you know like an Earl Grey is a good one because you need the pieces to be small enough to sort of make these shapes. and then what you really do is take the tea cup once it's close to empty and flip it upside down into the saucer to drain out the rest of the tea. then there will be remaining tea leaves within the cup as well as on the saucer and you read those symbols and shapes you see to get the meaning of those as they corresponds to different areas of the cup. so the I'm really not good but the handle is a certain part that represents life and it goes around from there representing like past and present future things like that there's like different sections in love career and all those things are there around the area of the cup so that is one way to predict the future.
there are a lot of great resources on this and it really good website is auntyflo.com which sounds like it sounds yeah yes it sounds it would be related that time of the month it is not it is a AUNTYFLO.com and it's actually related to divination. But they have a whole resource on tea leaf reading, And another good one that I want to recommend but it is kind of pricey I think $50 on Amazon there is something called a cup of destiny by Jane Lyle and this is not just a book but you also get a cup and saucer with it and inside the cup is actually the entire diagram entire.
T: which is very helpful.
S: super helpful for beginners I understand not wanting to spend 50 bucks on some thing if you're a beginner witch and you don't even know if you're going to like tea reading and tasseography but if it's like something that you are really interested interested in and want to learn more about really know how to do it the correct way, I think getting that cup and saucer could be really helpful because it will show you like exactly what portion of the cup relates to what area of your life. and then it also has the book to show you what the things mean like skulls, dolphins, numbers and lines and things like that so that is a really helpful one.
And there is also a section, we talked about Llewellyn. there is a book in their line called called the complete book of divination by Richard Webster and they have a very good tasseography section in there. and there are also a lot of good YouTube videos that will show you exactly how to read it how are generally how to do the practice maybe not how to read the cup with specific examples, but they just show that method of exactly how you drink, infuse your energy into it, how do you turn it upside down and spin it around three times, tap at three times there's a whole system to it so if you want a visual representation of how you do that YouTube is a great source for that. I will, I think harmony nice I've mentioned her before as being a great wiccan Youtubers she has a very good video on how to do a tea leaf reading.
T: and if you get a chance as a beginner or as more experience, to have your tea leaves read. It is amazing If it's done well. I just don't have the intuitive leaps necessary to read my own I wish I was better that I life goal is to be able to, but I just have trouble with the intuitive leaps, but I've had my tea leaves read a number of times and it is very illuminating like if it's done well it's an amazing experience. and it's a whole process so if you had your Tarot cards read they like talk to you and there's a system in place and there's like a beautiful pattern they lay out. in the tea leaves if it's done correctly is very similar there's gonna be a whole ritual and pouring the Tea and discussing the issue and drinking the tea and how to flip the cup and there's a whole bunch of different things that go into it, so it's not just slug back some tea and look at the bottom. like I know a lot of people think they started like oh I have leaves I can read them. Like learning the spread you can do a simple just pull a card I'm not saying that's wrong in anyway but to get the full experience in the full spread, tea reading is also like that like you get more out of it if you put more into the whole experience and I highly recommend. I've had mine read and it's it was amazing.
S: yes there's definitely a lot more information that you can get from it and but again there's a lot more ways to interpret that information. so it's not something that I excel at. in in Tarot cards, I can because the imagery is very straightforward it looks like what it looks like when you look at a Tarot card no matter who is does the drawing, the imagery like a snake is a snake and you can tell that it's a skull or dagger or the number four, anything you're looking at on a tarot card is very clear, whereas in the tea leaves, you have to decide you know which shape it looks like to you and I'm not I'm not good at that. I do not but that's just a creative bone that I do not have in my body and I'm just not comfortable making that those are leaps.
T: it's if you think back to when you were a kid and you were cloud watching with a friend or sibling and you got into a fight about what you were seeing think about that but with tea leaves.
S: it's a very very good example because I hated cloud watching.
T: I remember like having drag out fight with my brother about what did you see I saw a freaking cloud. anyway but it's very similar to that like, part of the Tea reading process is like having a discussion with the reader so you're both more comfortable and they know what interpretation to go with and to see, Like it helps them tune into what your leaves are telling them. so that's why part of the process should be a discussion and more than just slug back some tea pop it down and give them no.
S: but it is a very interesting form of divination so if it sounds like it might be interesting to you're definitely recommend looking into it if you have any other resources to share to help people that we did not mention here we will make a corresponding blog post witchWednesdays.com and we will link the three resources that we mentioned. and I will also try to find that harmony nice YouTube video link that as well and there will be a comments section so if you would like to help out your fellow witches and you have something to recommend either a related to tasseography or books on teas in general any sort of resources please feel free to share them there.
T: and we will either have another episode or I will try and get a blog post will see how that goes on different types of tea you can make and for different reasons. like for good digestion or certain spell work or I will go more into that because a lot of what I do in the kitchen is more infusing things and then using them in my daily life. just to make my daily life better so and tea is something that is very easy to infuse with intent while you're making it and then every time you make a cup. I'm trying to get to overenthusiastic because I do have a lot to say.
S: I know we do not wanna overwhelm you with a super long episode so we are going to leave it at that and direct you to the blog and hopefully we will have more recess resources for you there so come check us out. And otherwise we will see you next week for episode 28.
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