Word of mouth counted then, it was possible not to advertise, as in reality, if you were any good people would beat a path to your door. The world of a psychic medium was still on the fringes of society which made it all the more compelling and development teachers were afforded a certain gravitas, a reverence and respect that urged you to emulate them.
Nowadays, with the advent of media mediumship, psychic commercialism and a way of life that has expanded into an industry where competition for a profitable spot in the cyber market place is paramount to business survival, memories of putting cards in a post office window are filed in the quaint compartment!
The new age industry is alive and well and worth £47.9 million pounds a year, little wonder that the Fraudulent Medium act was repealed in favour of consumer law. Marx predicted that all small businesses would be absorbed by the wider commercial enterprises and vocational lifestyles would also operate on an entirely commercial basis.
In the UK, our predominant industry is the Leisure industry and the Spiritual market is very much a part of that, in this age of capital crisis and entrepreneurialism , it is little wonder that we are constantly seeking to wheel out new maxims, jargons and approaches to something that man has explored since time immemorial, the intuitive self and prophecy.......and who could blame us..
My great Grandmother Lizzie was a miners wife in South Wales, kept lodgers and a pit pony, grew all her own vegetables, Chickens ran about in the yard and she read teal leaves. I imagine that she was a vital part of a community where marriages, birth, work and death were key factors in the health of that community, where a little inside knowledge could be a positive boon in an ever expanding world. Lizzie's role would have been a significant one. Looking at her life, one realises that the part played by a local psychic in those times is fundamental to understanding social history and the various means by which people came together and expressed their commonality.
My Father tells the story of how when a lady from the town would come to call for a reading, he was sent to the shop for a quarter of Mazawattee tea. Apparently this was the best tea to use as it's leaves were large and flat. Upon his return, a pot of mazawattee tea was brewed, the Ladies would adjourn to the sitting room and my Father was ushered out to play whilst the Women drank their tea and discussed their agenda, after the tea was drunk, Lizzie would perform her skills as a Tasseomancer and read the patterns of the leaves formed at the bottom of the cup, in those days of a tight economy, barter was an acceptable payment, she would be regularly offered, a pat of butter, a bag of sugar or a sack of vegetables in return for her insights.
What is interesting here is that a consultation appears to be a social event. It would have involved a certain amount of animation & discussion. It is unlikely that Lizzie would have been pressed to prove whether she was talking to Spirits or not. Another thing which occurred to me is that it is highly unlikely that Lizzie would have had any knowledge of Chakras, Meridians, Auras and indeed any of the modern day schemata that we take for granted today.
There is something heart warming about Lizzie and her tea cups, a real sense of tradition and a love of people that emerges from her story, something as comforting as drinking tea itself.
In medieval Europe, fortune tellers originally would have used lead or wax to read the patterns. The Dutch brought tea via trade routes from China in the C17; by the C19 the Densham family from Plymouth were importing Mazawattee tea, maza is taken from the Hindi word maza meaning pleasure or fun and vatta is sinhalese for garden.
We get an idea here that tea crossed all social divides and lifestyles, little wonder that it was at the centre of a welsh mining town, a bedrock for all that was great and good for it's inhabitants, a way of life for Lizzie the Tasseomancer.
One wonders if there could still be a part to be played for such simple yet socially special interactions between psychic and client. I hope that as a new era dawns on the world we do not lose our innate sense of altruism & loving consciousness for each other.
