How to Read Tea Leaves for Self Love

“Our society doesn’t talk about wounds of consciousness.

We don’t even have a common language for it.”

It’s that Samhain season, when the veil is thin, and if you live in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, as I do, our world is cooling. Leaves are beginning to fall. Each night touched with an ever-sharpening crisp. Perhaps my sensitivity to the cold has led me to this download’s unique tool—tea leaf reading.

I started with my Sapphomanteion. It’s Sappho of Lesbos’ poetry broken down into numbered lines. You roll a die three times, and the three numbers correspond to that line of poetry. I asked my Sapphomanteion, “What shall be our topic today?” And she said, “As honey: desire is poured upon your lovely face.” I found my eyes glancing upward at my mug of tea, and I felt, intrinsically, it had something to say. I also intuited from this line of poetry that there was something about catalyzing self-acceptance, a transformation tied to our beauty or self-love. Because honey does not simply occur. Honey is nectar churned by enzymes. And my teacup agreed.

First, the tea. I wasn’t just sipping for flavor; I had brewed a large health tea. With the coming cold comes, well, colds.

My health teas vary, but this one contained: fresh and dried ginger, fresh garlic, marshmallow root and leaf (also called balloon flower), turmeric, black pepper, dandelion root, Indian sarsaparilla root, licorice root, burdock root, cardamom pods, juniper berry extract, clove bud, red clover leaf, and cinnamon. If there was ever a tea to care for me enough to give me a message, it would be this one.

As I sipped, using my lips as a filter, I set my intention and asked for wisdom about transformation, self-acceptance, self-love, and beauty. This intention-setting was also about my placement within the cup. The bottom of the cup would mean deep wisdom—your roots and emotional depth. The middle would mean social wisdom—what you learn from others or do with others. Finally, the top represents surface wisdom—how you project into the world, or what gets projected onto you.

I flipped it over, and the images that stuck out to me were:

A bold circle directly in the center bottom of the cup. The smaller particles also formed two half-circles of negative space around the center circle of leaves. The top half-circle had an almost “y”-shaped group of leaves, and the bottom contained an almost straight “I” shape. From the bottom, many triangles parallel to each other wrapped around the cup toward the top. A small cluster of completely dried leaves sat close but barely touching, curling over the lip of the cup.

My reading of the cup, wisdom about self-acceptance, beauty, and transformation from a cup of health tea, is as follows:

It starts in the pit of you, the self-doubt, a deep early wound from childhood. A wound that split you when you recognized you were separate from those around you. That others will live their lives in their own thoughts, and that you do not share a mind and an experience. There’s a pain in this conscious separation, one we don’t realize affects us into adulthood. Our society doesn’t talk about wounds of consciousness. We don’t even have a common language for it. But that ego wound resides at the core of you. It makes you feel lonely and like you’re not enough.

As we grow, we forget this wound because we make friends. This is neither good nor bad, as they can equally distract from pain, aggregate pain, or balm the wound. Whatever they may be or have been, they always create momentum for growth. We learn the societal rules from each other; we engage or reject trends together; we become a generation.

If you don’t make space to halt this continuous motion, this rat race, this swirling dance, you may end up spinning forever, never taking the time to truly regard who you are. Have you taken the time to question everything? Truly question what has made you what you are and why you need to be that way?

When we get to the top of the cup, the tea is dry and in pieces; this is what can happen if you don’t release from the collective motion. You can no longer feel how you connect with others, or how you connect with yourself. The surface world sees this vulnerability and takes advantage of you, making you feel less than, and if you feel less than you will succumb to the products that will make you feel good.

You are many in one. You are all of your experiences, cells, and memories made whole in one being. You are never truly alone. Have you ever taken the time to look at all of the parts of yourself and acknowledge what they’ve been through? Have you said thank you? Have you asked yourself what would happen if you questioned how your family, community, and society want you to move? You can ask the big picture, but start in pieces. Start sustainable and small. What would happen if I questioned right this moment and followed this one moment of questioning to its action or conclusion?

There’s a wound in the bottom of your cup. A split has occurred between you and the whole world.

You’ve found comfort in life’s swirling expectations. But where does all that movement lead? And what would happen if you questioned it? And what would you learn, what would you love about yourself, if you stepped away from the race?

Malachi Lily, also known as The Magick Artist, is Inglenook’s Transformation Features Writer, with over a decade of experience in the art of divination.