Rochester's Mystic Tea Room

In 1930 some of the local Rochester Spiritualist Churches met at Plymouth Spiritualist Church to discuss the issue of Spiritualists who were reading tea leaves in local tea rooms. 

The conclusion reached was that activities such as tea leaf reading were acceptable only for private entertainment, and that no Spiritualist associated with the area Spiritualist Churches was to publicly read tea leaves for others as a representative of Spiritualism. 

This mandate is still in effect today for members of both the General Assembly of Spiritualists, as well as the National Spiritualist Association of Churches. 

The current bylaws of the National Spiritualist Association of Churches state, "NSAC members are prohibited from using fortune telling cards, crystals, crystal balls, Ouija board, tea leaves, palmistry, or other means that may be named by the NSAC Board while acting in their capacities as NSAC members as these practices do not prove the continuity of life." 

The current manual of the General Assembly of Spiritualists states, "A fortune teller is one who automatically predicts events for personal gain and without regard to spiritual upliftment. Tea-cup readers, card readers, crystal gazers, and elemental psychists are often in this class. The true psychic resorts to none of these these agencies for describing psychic events, either past or present, or in the future. Mediumship is a sacred and exalted gift of the spirit." 

In the same year as this convention there was a business operating in Rochester named the Mystic Tea Room. A common name for a tea-room in that decade, the Mystic Tea Room was a small cozy tea house that offered refreshments, light meals, and a tea leaf reading with the purchase of a pot of tea. 

The Mystic Tea Room hosted the first annual meeting of the Golden Rule Spiritualist Church, and also rented their space to the Spiritual Church of the Soul in 1933 for regular Sunday Services. 

Although this still an issue among Spiritualist Churches, most Spiritualists themselves are completely content to accept such practices as tea-leaf reading as a legitimate and evidential form of psychic message work. As Cicely Kent, the great master of tea-leaf reading, wrote, "Some are inclined to jeer at the fortune in the teacup, but if the language of symbolism is rightly understood, the medium through which it is seen matters little."