This is a word I just learned, but the meaning I have known about for as long as I can remember. Tasseography is the act of fortune-telling through tea leaves. An individual drinks (or pours out) a cup of tea and the tea leaves are then interpreted and you are given your “fortune” as told by the practitioner. (than you wikipedia for supplying me with a word for this!).
My Great Aunt Bessie was a tasseographer. We just called her Aunt Bessie though. We would sit in my great grandmother’s kitchen after supper, or in the afternoon and drink tea (sometimes as a kid I didn’t like the tea so I just poured it out) and Bessie would go around giving us all of our fortunes. It never seemed odd to me that someone in our family could predict the future. It was just what happened. We all believed it. We heard stories of her telling people not to go on trips and having disasters happen exactly where they would have been had they not listened to her. She had people come visit her just to read their tea leaves- but to my knowledge she never charged, not like those psychics on tv (remember those ads for Miss Cleo?!). For that reason- she seemed legitimate. She was the real deal.
I don’t remember a lot of my fortunes- I was quite young- but the last time she read my fortune I was 17 years old. About to graduate high school. I loved that she was over (we didn’t get to see her as often as we liked) because Bessie was the type of woman who lit up a room. Was the life of the party. Laughed easily, and loudly. We loved her. She read our fortunes after Christmas dinner. She told me about a boy named “C”. How there were going to be tears shed. At the time, I was 17 and a bit skeptical. Of course my Mom could have easily told her about my boyfriend at the time, C., and sure enough we broke up a few weeks later. I thought nothing of it because it was not a secret who I was dating at the time. However, the other thing I remember her telling me was about three letters I was going to receive in the mail. They were going to be offering me something and I was going to take the deal in the third letter.
Fast forward a couple of months during university-acceptance letter time. I had forgotten all about my Christmas reading with Bessie. The day I received my letters, I got all of them on the same day (I had applied to three universities). I held them in front of me and decided in which order to open my letters. I decided to open the one I was most excited for first, and then the one I wasn’t sure about last (I was slightly impatient). With opening them all I read each acceptance and about the scholarships I had the potential at each university. I was disappointed at my number one choice, my number two choice had me still living at home- but the third one had me drawn in. They offered me a great deal. It had me being able to move out. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to go to this school. It was decided. I was going to MTA- the third letter that I had opened.
After sending in my deposit, deciding on a major to choose for my first year and receiving my “welcome to mta” letter in the mail I was reminded of Aunt Bessie and my fortune. I was stunned. Had I subconsciously all along remembered her fortune and made it true? Or had she really predicted my future?
I can’t really tell you the answer to that because if anyone were to come up to me on the street and tell me they can predict the future- I would probably laugh and say, “yeah, right”. But there was something special about Great Aunt Bessie. I heard stories how up until the week she passed away she was telling fortunes in her room in the nursing home to the nurses, entertaining them and being the social butterfly she was. She was obviously special to a lot of other people as well.
I really don’t know if Aunt Bessie predicted my future that year, or ever for that matter, but I do know that we loved those afternoons having our tea leaves read with Bessie, the laughs we had and that’s really all I need to know for certain. Thank you Aunt Bessie, for opening my mind to things that seem entirely impossible.
(photo via)
