I know we’re not doing the Friday Afternoon Tea any more, because it’s not really part of the “new” MoF. But I’m logging this under spirituality, so there (don’t expect one next week)

Regular readers should have discovered by now that I am, among many many other things, a dualist. I have a yin-yang tattooed to my back & it surfaces in many other places, too (my car, AIM, keychains…). I try to keep myself in balance with the many conflicting forces within me and around me. I am a woman, but have many interests and personality traits that are typically associated with men. My husband, luckily, has many personality traits typically associated with women. This is one way that I seek balance in my life.

My favorite tea place has a jasmine-scented tea they call “Jasmine Phoenix Pearls”. I love the scent of jasmine. It smells like gardenias, warm nights, and death. But the tea is so strongly scented that it tastes, to me, like perfume. You know when you walk through a department store’s perfume section & accidentally breathe through your mouth and get perfume on your tongue? Like that. Not very pleasant.

It also has a tea they call “Dragonwell”. It’s simply green tea, but processed in a way that differs from some of their other green teas (I’m not sure how). Dragonwell tastes like green tea: a little bitter, but very earthy. It is straight & thin, the Phoenix Pearls spherical & fat. I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this…

In Asian mythology, the dragon symbolizes the male principle: the yang, the active, the good, heaven. The phoenix, alternately, symbolizes the female principle: yin, passivity, darkness, and earth. I always drink the two teas combined. Generally at a ratio of 1:1 (I mix in the container I keep them in, rather than try to keep them separate until steeping) and when I sip my tea, I feel as though I’m sipping balance. The resulting brew is lightly perfumed, not at all bitter, and a wonderful meditative infusion.

the image above was taken from Wikipedia and is in the public domain