Lipstick Mystic Tea

Unfortunately, this was another very tough week with other family members dealing with urgent medical stuff.

I’ve decided to keep posting here about giving readings, the many benefits of different types of tea, plus information about how to specifically do tea leaf readings. Instead of doing free daily readings here I think I will just occasionally do tea leaf readings on certain topics or people in the news, like my earlier reading which looked into whether Obama will be re-elected or not. You can see that reading here: Reading the Tea Leaves for Obama and His Republican Opponent: Will Obama be Re-elected?

I’ve been working hard on so many of my other websites within my expanding Lipstick Mystic® network that I don’t think it’s realistic to update this site every day. I am updating my LipstickMysticMoney.com site every day, though, and some of my other sites will also be frequently updated as they relaunch.

So thanks for bearing with me as this site continues to evolve, and please do check out my free report which outlines my five favorite herbal tea remedies — these teas really WORK to banish colds and boost immunity, as well as addressing other health problems. Just grab the report here: Free Tea Reports.

Check back here soon as more goodies are posted! And as always, thanks for visiting this site.

A dearly beloved kitty cat of ours, Roman, had been very ill for just a couple of weeks and in and out of the vet’s getting more and more dire diagnoses. We were still trying to figure out the best way to help him and learn exactly what was going on in his frail little body. Then the other night he had what was likely a series of strokes and became suddenly blind and very, very ill. We made the heartbreaking decision after a discussion with our vet to put him to sleep. He was suffering from advanced lymphatic cancer and was really at a stage where intrusive treatments like chemotherapy would be more painful than helpful.

Whenever I lose a loved one, animal or human, I have a lot of shamanic work to tend to. The spirit of someone who has died remains tied to this world for exactly three days after death and during that time it’s very helpful to have dialogue with the spirit, exchange any last communications and expressions of love, and it’s also a good idea to do healing work and put up protective shields around that spirit to help the person or animal find their way to a higher dimension of healing and well-being. Then, when the three days are up, I do special shamanic drumming work to help them make that final transition.

Whenever I’m called into “death duty” or death bed vigil duty, I’m not in the right mental space to do regular readings for people. My attention is very focused on helping the spirit make its transition and to come to grips with its movement out of this physical plane.

I wrote a little article about the financial side of things and how, in taking Roman in for various tests with the vets, it’s amazing how quickly the vet bills pile up. And at my LipstickMysticMoney.com site I give people information and ideas to overcome conditioning that too often keeps them financially helpless instead of prosperous (with multiple streams of income.) Anyway, I wrote about the situation with Roman and how it made me feel very sad for people who are struggling right now with money and who aren’t able to pay for vet bills or their own healthcare bills when a medical emergency comes up. We were very grateful that at least that wasn’t going on here with us and we had more options for Roman’s care and treatment than those who only have $100 in their bank account, like too many people do.

You can read the article here:

Money Can’t Buy Everything, But It Can Buy Peace of Mind.

Meanwhile, I’ll be posting new tea leaf readings and articles about giving readings here soon, probably by Monday or Tuesday next week.

A culmination of cataclysmic events — well, a power outage, a family member’s illness, and me just generally feeling out of sorts — prevented me from posting daily readings the last few days. Look for a new one to go up tomorrow. Thanks!

Someone who stumbled upon this blog while she was looking for information about how to do tea leaf readings emailed to ask me, “How do you see the symbols in a tea leaf reading?”

This is one of those questions that seems really simple to answer, except it’s not!

Have you ever seen one of those inkblot tests which psychologists or mental health people sometimes use with their patients? A person is shown an image created by ink running down a paper and is asked what they see in the blobs. A German doctor who worked with mentally ill patients is credited with first coming up with the inkblots around 1921. This is why these inkblot tests are called Rorschach tests, after Hermann Rorschach.

The basic idea was to use these inkblots to assess a person’s state of mental health. If you looked at an inkblot and, say, saw it as an image of you taking an axe to your mother, then your psychiatrist might go, “Hmmm, VERY INTERESTING — Helga, bring the straitjacket!”

But if you looked at an inkblot and said, “I see blue butterflies in the summertime and it’s that summer I spent with my family before they all drowned on the Titanic,” your doctor might say, “Okay, I vill give you some medicine to take away your depression.”

Or something.

Anyway, looking at tea leaves to try to find shapes and symbols in them is very subjective. And it’s also very personal. I tend to see images in the leaves which are from nature (mountains, birds, animals, trees) or I see manmade objects (tools, clothing, modes of transportation like cars, etc.) Once in a while I will see a number in the leaves, like the number seven or whatever. Or I’ll see an occasional letter, which could be the initial of a person who is somehow significant to the person I’m reading for.

The images are sometimes VERY fully formed, just like somebody drew them with a pen. (Admittedly, a pen with somewhat blobby and chunky ink, since the leaves have a lot of texture and dimension to them sometimes and don’t always form as a flat image.)

Other times, I have to use my intuition to fill in the missing pieces of an image. But it only takes me about five seconds to “see” the image after I cast the leaves.

If you’re familiar with graphic design and the idea of pixelation, sometimes the image consists of individual leaves (acting as pixels) which have lots of little spaces between them. So it’s kind of a pixelated image and your brain has to fill in the missing pieces.

So instead of seeing a nice series of clear circles, like this:

I might see something much more diffuse and broken up, but with the SUGGESTION of that more complete image:

Sometimes an image will sit on its side and look very lopsided, and I have to turn the leaves around to see the complete image.

I encourage you to experiment. Drink some tea and lay out four or five different cups with the leaves at the bottom. (Or you can turn the cup over and dump the leaves onto a flat saucer. Some tea readers prefer to read the leaves that way. I usually like to drink the tea down until almost all of the water is drained out and then read the leaves in the very bottom of the cup.)

See if you can see images in the leaves. With a little practice, you can train your eyes to see symbols, shapes, faces, and more!

And hopefully you won’t see ANY images of taking an axe to your poor mother!

A scepter is one of those pretty looking wand-like thingies which royals carry in ceremonies. It’s different from a thin “magic” wand because it has a long stick plus something rounded on the end, or sometimes the thing on the end is big and pointy. It’s almost always fancy, bejeweled, and possibly made of gold.

I saw a scepter when I cast the leaves for you today. So it’s time to get a little fancy!

Positive Meanings of the Scepter

1) People of power like royalty or religious leaders are the main people who have traditionally carried scepters. The scepter is definitely a sign of someone who is used to wielding authority and power over others.

You could find yourself playing the role of “king” or “queen” or “Pope” today, holding court over your subjects. Perhaps you will be giving a presentation, teaching a workshop, doing training at work, or guiding a group of children as they learn about something or find a new game to play. Others will definitely be looking up to you in some way. Use your power wisely!

2) Sometimes the person who wields a scepter has the power to transfer a title, grant a position of honor, or bestow other positive things upon others.

Although you probably won’t be granting anybody a knighthood, you could be promoting someone who works under you, assisting someone to rise to new heights, or just generally facilitating advancement for somebody else. Make sure this is someone you trust, someone you believe in, and someone who is qualified to get the job done.

Negative Meanings of the Scepter

1) Too often, authority figures like royalty and religious leaders claimed to literally be mouthpieces for god or the living embodiment of gods.

If you’re thinking about yourself this way today, get over yourself, honey! You’re not REALLY a living god or goddess. You’re still mortal like everybody else.

2) When you’re admired by others, it’s tempting to indulge your ego in all kinds of silliness.

One minute people around you could be offering genuine compliments and praise, which are good things. But if you’re not careful, their attention could go to your head and you might think yourself perfect, without flaws.

Again, get over yourself, honey!

As long as you can graciously accept any credit or applause that comes your way without losing your head, you’ll be making use of the energies of the scepter in a positive way today.

I like the symbol that came up in the tea leaves today. When I sat down to do your reading today, (for all my readers who visit here through time and space) I knew that something with a theme of inspiration and creativity was going to come up in the leaves.

And it did! I saw the image of a light bulb in the leaves. It was a regular incandescent type of light bulb – not one of those horrid fluorescent ones.

Positive Meanings of the Light Bulb

1) We’ve all heard that saying, “It was like a light bulb went off in my head.” This usually means you’re coming up with a great idea or you’ve found the solution to a pressing problem.

I love those “light bulb moments,” when you go from being in a funk about something to suddenly, FINALLY, coming up with the answer. It can seem like this inspiration is coming from a source outside of you, from a Higher Self or guardian angel or muse. Because there you are, sitting in the dark, and suddenly somebody turns on the light bulb, and you can find your way out of the dark at last.

In a similar way, expect your own “light bulb moment” today. You might want to spend a little time meditating on a problem that’s been bothering you or focusing on a creative project you need to complete. Just let your mind be blank for a while. Allow inspiration to flow TO you. Don’t work too hard for it. Relax, breathe, and when the time is right, the answer will be there.

2) There are many very interesting facts about the light bulb. For one thing, Thomas Edison worked VERY hard and diligently to invent a type of bulb that would work. It took him something like 10,000 tries before he finally came up with a working design for the famous incandescent light bulb. As a result, Edison’s name will always be associated with ingenuity, with a uniquely American type of “stick to it” attitude, and what he did is very inspiring to all of us. Also, the invention of the light bulb created massive changes in society, finally allowing basic things like moms being able to leave their children alone for a few minutes to play in a room without worrying that they might knock a candle or gaslight around and hurt themselves. The convenience and safety, plus the beautiful quality of that yellow incandescent light, enabled humanity to grow and evolve in wonderful ways which simply weren’t possible before the advent of the light bulb.

Today you might subconsciously be picking up on some “Edison” themes — working hard on a project like he did, through 10 tries or 10,000 attempts to get it right — and finding yourself vastly rewarded for all your hard work. Or you could pick up on that spirit of change and ease and evolution which the light bulb brought us, doing something that vastly expands your own personal or professional horizons. It’s all good!

Negative Meanings of the Light Bulb

1) A light bulb, while powerful in the sense that it casts a wonderful light, is physically a fragile little thing. One shake or knock and the bulb will easily crack and stop working.

Just like you need to use caution when you’re carrying a light bulb around because it can be easily damaged, so might you need to create space in a careful way so you can capture those “light bulb moments” and not lose that “light.” Maybe you need to turn off the phones, the Internet, and the TV and spend extended quiet time by yourself so you can not only tap into those innovative ideas (brought to you in a moment of illumination) but also so you can hold, nurture, and ground those ideas. Give yourself some cushion, just like the cardboard cushioning that comes around a light bulb when you buy one at the store. Your form of “cushioning” could be privacy, silence, or time. Grant yourself an abundance of all three if you can, and you’ll be creating the space for illumination to shine and grow in your life.

2) Sometimes when you decide to cast a light out into the darkness, there can be some resistance.

If you’ve ever attempted to “enlighten” someone who had a piss poor view of the world, or an ignorant way of thinking about race, religion, politics, relationships, sex, or any other hot button topic, you know that there are times when no matter how much insight and information you share with that person, that person might resist all attempts to become illuminated.

This is frustrating!

But sometimes the act of shining your light out into the darkness is simply an act of bravery, a personal statement which says, “No matter what darkness surrounds me, I resolve to remain a creature of love and wisdom and truth.”

Dare to be a strong, brave, light bulb and keep casting your life out into the world — no matter what darkness is out there.

Because this world needs more light! And so do its gentle creatures, who will gather around you and appreciate your efforts.

Today when I cast the leaves for all of you, I saw a rectangular shape and it appeared to have writing or scribbles within it.

So the symbol was of a sign, or perhaps a business card.

Positive Meanings of the Sign or Business Card

1) A sign is usually something that a business establishment posts outside when it is open for business. And a business card is very much the same; you order business cards when you decide to promote yourself, your services, or your own business.

You don’t reach the point where you’re ready to put a sign out unless you’re crystal clear about doing something. Either you’ve decided to promote a business, or you’re deciding to sell your home, or maybe you’re even just having a garage sale — but you’re sending a definite message to the world that you are “open for business” in one form or another.

This is always an exciting time, when a new business gets going or you’ve just listed a house for sale. So keep up your energy, remain positive, and be courageous. The message here is to see things through.

2) A sign can also be more like a billboard or poster which might have an inspiring or quirky message on it.

Most of the billboards I pass on my way to nearby cities like Philadelphia or Trenton have promotional material on them, but once in a while, I find an intriguing “message” type of sign. Some of these are religious in nature and paid for by well-funded religious groups or non-profits. And sometimes you’ll find a sign with fun artwork on it promoting a personal blog or website.

Be open to either broadcasting (creating it yourself) or receiving (reading a message put out by somebody else) an interesting or intriguing “sign” as you go about your day. You might see an advertisement, a movie poster, or an illustration that catches your eye and inspires you in some way.

Some Negative Meanings of the Sign or Business Card

1) When you open up for business, this can be a tenuous time, fraught with potential obstacles.

As anyone who has opened an actual, physical, brick and mortar type of store can tell you, the process can be downright terrifying. No matter how much you’ve prepared and how much promotion you’ve been doing, you never know if you’ll receive a huge flow of business or if people passing by will just shrug their shoulders and go, “Meh, so what. Another store opened.”

The same is true with other types of businesses like restaurants, salons, boutiques, art galleries, and even online businesses. I know every time I launch a new website I sort of feel like I’m giving birth alone in the dark, hoping that someone will find my new “baby” and nurture it and appreciate it!

If you have a venture you’re contemplating or a project you’re about to launch, do as much preparation and advance work as possible, but don’t OVERTHINK it. At some point, you just have to launch. You’ll never get everything perfect, so just do it!

2) When you attach your name to something like a business card, you’re exposing yourself to others. This can be nerve wracking.

People who have never been self-employed or had their own business don’t always understand this, but when you’re putting YOUR name and YOUR business together on a business card and you hand your cards out to people, you can feel very vulnerable. You don’t want to be rejected. You don’t want people to make cruel comments or jokes about what you do or what type of business you’re in. And yet such comments are inevitable, especially when you’re at a party and people have had a few drinks.

“EWWW! You own your own law firm? A lawyer is responsible for me owing my wife huge amounts of alimony and child support.”

“Cool, you’re a massage therapist? Maybe you can, um, give me a massage in the back bedroom later.”

You get the idea. Even if you try to present yourself with self-respect and professionalism, you’re always going to encounter idiots and critics.

The trick is not to let ignorant people drag you down. If you can get through the initial marketing period when you’re putting yourself or your business out there and push and be brave, eventually the right type of clients and customers will start to flow your way.

You may have to ignore a few losers in the beginning, but eventually, you’ll be on the path of greater financial and personal autonomy as you start doing your own thing.

No matter what new project you’re involved with, don’t be afraid to promote it and to be proud about it. And just ignore your critics. Critics are people who make their living or gather energy by parasitically commenting on or feeding off of other people’s work.

But YOU’RE the one who is creating and bringing good things into the world. And that’s a noble and wonderful thing!

A lot of times you might stop by this blog and just land on my free daily tea leaf reading, which I do for my readers each day.

But every few days I’m also posting interesting articles on subjects like how to read tea leaves, how to awaken your own psychic gifts, how to avoid gypsy scam artists, understanding the metaphysics of why readings work, and more. I’ll also be posting articles about the health benefits of my fave teas, plus I’ll be doing tea leaf readings about various people and things in the news.

Here’s a recap of the articles I’ve posted so far that you might find fun to read:

Divination and How It Works Through Synchronicity

Readers Sound Off: Tell the Tea Lady What You’d Like to See Here

Essiac or Caisse Tea for Powerful Immune Boosting and Detoxification

Reading the Tea Leaves for Obama and His Republican Opponent: Will Obama Be Re-elected?

Tales of a Tea Leaf Reader: When Giving Readings Turns Into a Horror Show

How Psychic Abilities Work

Understanding the Dynamics of a Psychic Reading

Ask the Tea Lady: Which Tea is Best to Use for a Tea Leaf Reading?

How to Spot a Gypsy Scam Artist

Why Real Tea Leaf Readers Are So Rare

How a Tea Leaf Reading Works

The Lipstick Mystic’s® Tea Room is Open!

To find all my articles, just visit the Categories section at the right and click on the categories which aren’t “The Daily Cup.” The Daily Cup area is where I archive all my past daily tea leaf readings.

And don’t forget to check out the free report I’ve written for you about my five favorite herbal remedies! Just click on the tab at the top of the page that says “Free Tea Reports” to get the link for the direct download. No need to sign up for anything. (Although you’re also welcome to join my free newsletter, Lipstick Mystic® News. Newsletter subscribers get free book excerpts, more free reports, and discounts on my products.)

I saw something unusual in the tea leaves today. I sat down to do my daily tea leaf reading for you, my readers, and I saw what looked like a square that was dissolving or melting. Then I realized it was an ice block – and the ice block was melting! Weird.

Positive Meanings of the Ice Block

1) Back in the days before refrigerators, many people had iceboxes in their homes. An icebox had an area in the top where blocks of ice could be stored and an area below where people could store perishable foods. This was very handy for storing things like milk and butter and meat, which spoiled very quickly, especially in the summertime. But it was also a lot of work for people to arrange to have ice blocks delivered, and in rural areas, people would actually have to venture as far north as possible where there was still ice in the streams and rivers to cut off a section of ice. Then they had to deliver it via wagon to the houses where people were waiting for ice. People who did this work professionally were “ice men.”

An ice block was marvelous because it made storing food much more convenient. You didn’t have to always buy or harvest your food fresh that day because you could store it for a few days in the ice box.

In a similar way, you might be finding a more optimal way to manage something in your life. This could be coming up with a better schedule, hiring better people to work for you, or coming up with a better route to travel when you’re going to work each morning.

The fact that I saw a MELTING ice block in the tea leaves, though, shows that this solution might prove temporary, and it might need further “tweaking” up ahead.

2) Ice is also wonderful when you simply want to keep cool. Nothing is better during a hot summer than a cold glass of lemonade or iced tea with some wonderful ice in it.

The physically comforting COOLNESS of ice is so fabulous when it’s beastly hot out. You could be taking comfort from something in your physical environment that brings your body a greater sense of ease.

This might not have anything to do with cooling off, but it could have to do with finding a nice blanket to snuggle in with on a cold winter’s night or purchasing a heat pad to warm your chilly joints or finding a wonderful herbal tea to drink before you go to bed at night. (One of my favorite herbal sleep aids is valerian root. You can either take it as an herbal tincture or drink it as a tea: Valerian Root. It’s bitter tasting, so be sure to add honey to it!)

Negative Meanings of the Ice Block

1) Because I saw the ice block as being in the process of melting, your comfort or ease might be short-lived.

Don’t let your guard down, in other words. If you’re working at solving a problem or addressing a physical ailment or some type of physical discomfort, you might need to dig deeper to find a more permanent solution. The melting ice block shows that you’re having some success, but something is still incomplete or unfinished about what you’re trying to do.

2) When ice melts off chilly lakes in the spring, a torrent of water flows outward. This marks the changes of the seasons.

In a similar way, you could be going through a “season change” of your own. For women, this could indicate feeling symptoms of menopause coming on. For men, this could mark a transition stage of your life from bachelor to husband, student to working professional, childless guy to father. When the ice melts it can be scary at first because it’s such a pronounced change and things are definitely moving from one stage to another.

But it’s GOOD and NATURAL for seasons to change, too. With a little adjustment, you’ll soon find yourself thriving under these new conditions.

Also, the symbol of the melting ice might be talking about people here in the Northern hemisphere having an early thaw or an early springtime. This is fine by me! I’m always ready for spring, which is my favorite season.

Divination is a fancy word for using various systems or tools to connect with higher wisdom or spiritual understanding. Some people like to characterize this higher wisdom as God, Goddess, a god, Great Spirit, Cosmic Consciousness, etc. And Eastern traditions tend to see it more as connecting with the essence of Tao, or the Way, or the Path – with the underlying idea that there is an ideal path for us, and for humanity, and divination can help us see this spiritual roadmap.

Popular forms of divination you’ve probably heard of include tarot cards, dice, runes, the I Ching, and tea leaves. They all involve a person throwing or manipulating some type of object which then comes up in a seemingly random way. But this “randomness” is seen as being a sort of divine synchronicity, a moment in which the person giving a reading surrenders their will to something higher and attempts to allow greater truth or higher energy to come in and affect that moment of randomness. This is done so that a reading can be done for a person, or for a group. Or sometimes a reading is done on a certain global issue which affects all of us, like I sometimes do here when I cast the tea leaves to find out more about something that’s going on in the news.

I find that to give an accurate reading, I have to meditate and invoke higher, healing energies beforehand. And I need to get my own ego and my own WILL out of the equation. The more humble, altruistic, and gentle I am as I sit down to do a reading, the more I’m able to pick up on those subtle undercurrents having to do with healing and helping someone connect with their Higher Self or their Greater Good or their Ideal Path in life. I always try to bring through information that’s for the highest good of the person I’m reading for. In this way, most people who use divination tools are working to try to attain guidance from something smarter, more balanced, and more whole than our own ego. And you have to still that little “monkey mind” which is always trying to force an outcome or push things in a certain direction.

There are a lot of different traditions, approaches, and superstitions around divination, and I personally am not a fan of approaches in which someone tries to “channel” and bring through an intelligence from outside, inviting outside entities into their body. I don’t find that this generally produces good results! Don’t ever invite something into your body because it’s YOU who is supposed to be there!

But the Universe is an amazing, awesome place, and there is a loving intelligence or Great Spirit that moves through all things. And there are also countless “friends” and spiritual allies who are trying to help humanity evolve into something more peaceful, creative, expansive, productive, and loving. Some would call these allies angels or spiritual guides. I just think of them as a variety of intelligences, smarter than me, who are kind enough to help me from time to time.

Some people say how can something like reading cards or runes or casting the tea leaves DO anything? Why would these activities, in themselves, allow anybody to connect with spiritual energy or spiritual guidance?

I say, why not? See, I’m not one of those people to say that only certain things are sacred and other things are not. To me, it’s either ALL sacred, or none of it is. Either cosmic intelligence moves through all things, and that funky energy that jumps around inside of every atom has some kind of strength and power to it, or it’s all just a void.

I see the sacredness in everything. As a psychic person, I can “read” using any tool you give me – by just looking at your eyes, by just tuning into your name and your birthdate, by looking at the lines in your palm, or just connecting heart to heart with you long distance with loving, joint intent to experience something good together.

It’s either ALL sacred, all teaming with life and connection, or none of it is.

I believe it ALL is. That energy moves between people, places, and things, and that we’re constantly firing off intentions to either remain connected or to enter a void of nothingness, of disconnect.

And I’ll choose connection every time.