actually today, in 1839, the first tea from Assam arrived in the United Kingdom.
This is a most curious card, one of nineteen, measuring 89m/m x 63m/m. If you look at the card, it looks a bit boring, but there is a hidden secret as the brown "tea" in the cup is actually magic, and if it is heated (by laying the card over a steaming cup of tea) the brown fades away and reveals images, which are listed on the reverse, along with their meaning, making this a kind of fortune telling, in a way. It does have faults for fortune telling though, mainly because each card has three images, and though there are different images on each card, there is no way to change them. It would have been a better idea to have one symbol hidden beneath the tea on every card, then make the "reader" pick any three cards to do the divination, for in that way every time you picked cards at random from the fan shape deck you would get a different reading and more of the truth.
Fortune telling with tea leaves has been done for centuries, it is known as tasseomancy or tasseography, and you can also do it with coffee grounds. Some people might think it is hokum, that we make our own luck in the world without searching for signs into our future and pinning everything on them. Others believe that our paths through this lifetime are set before we even become an atom, and that only by following the clues that are revealed in chance and instinct can we ever hope to come together with the life and love that we need to find.
I will let you ponder on which camp I am in...