GRAZIA A AGEND

‘YOU’RE GOING TO MEET THE ONE THIS YEAR,’ says the stranger sitting opposite me, flipping over cards on the table. ‘Are you online dating? You won’t meet him online... Do you want children?’ She doesn’t wait for my answer. ‘Sit back, you’re blocking off energy – you Scorpios do that,’ she scolds, before asking whether there’s an ‘Anne’ in my life. (My mum’s name is Anne.) It’s a Monday afternoon and I’m sitting in psychic Jacqui Cosham’s central London office not entirely sure what I’m doing here.

Think ‘psychic’ and you might imagine an old woman hunched theatrically over a crystal ball, clutching your dearly departed grandmother’s necklace in a bid to make contact. That’s what I thought too, until a friend who’d visited Jacqui told me about her own eerily spot-on reading (‘She knew everything, Soph’). My curiosity piqued, I figured, ‘What’s 

In the face of a troubling year, more women than ever are finding solace in the supernatural. An understandable reaction or a dangerous game, asks Sophie Goddard

Everyman Wodehouse prize.

According to a recent Yougov Poll, more than a third of British women have sought the services of psychics at some point during their lives. But while previously we turned to them after, say, losing loved ones, today we’re seeking guidance on all aspects of our lives. And it’s busy, career-minded women booking up in our droves. Interestingly, Joylina Goodings, president of the British Astrological and Psychic Society, tells me she’s personally noticed a marked increase in women seeking career advice over relationship advice of late.

But what’s behind the sudden interest? Are we really so open-minded in 2016 that we’re willing to put our futures in the hands of unqualified strangers? Or could other factors – like increasing political uncertainty (here’s looking at you, Brexit…) be to blame, too? Perhaps. Last year, the number of Russians consulting psychics rose considerably – with experts attributing it to the

saying we’d marry in my 32nd year. Just a few months later, I met the love of my life – Billy – on Tinder, and our wedding is booked for the week after my 32nd birthday. It would be easy to say I went out searching for a man based on her predictions, but I genuinely didn’t realise she’d said his name until I played the recording back months later. I don’t know if it was coincidence or not, but she gave me hope when I was fed up.’

Yet does such specifific advice mean we’re closing ourselves off to other options? I mention to Jo that being told I’d meet ‘The One’ IRL, rather than online, left me uneasy. ‘That kind of specifific advice is unhelpful because it closes a path, and that’s demotivating and confusing. A better idea would be to encourage you to try dating off-line too.’

But then again, would we feel satisfified with a wishy-washy line of advice from a psychic? Isn’t getting that specifific, ‘other-wordly’ direction exactly why we’re there?

In any case, the ‘success’ of any reading is tough to measure. How much have we inflfluenced the outcome? How much is luck versus fate, or trickery even? ‘It’s important to remember a lot of these seemingly jaw-dropping “revelations” are actually suggestive trigger mechanisms – people don’t realise they’re working towards making these things happen themselves,’ says Jo. ‘Our minds might remember the one thing they got right, and conveniently forget the nine things they didn’t.’ Illusionist Derren Brown calls the world of psychics ‘a nasty business’, saying, ‘As for how they do it, a quick Google on cold-reading and hot-reading [unearthing information beforehand, or gleaning information from things like hairstyles, race, speech and body language] will explain their n