FORGET THE horoscope column. The new, new thing is Psychic Astrology. This doesn’t mean getting a bus to the suburbs for a surreptitious reading with a motherly lady who offers you a tea bag and a Red Indian guide. There is no ectoplasm, visitations, or vague predictions about a “long journey”. All you have to do is pick up the phone. Even sceptics will be in for a surprise. But be warned, there is nothing fluffy here; if you ask a question, you will get an answer, and it might not be what you expect.

I met Henrietta Llewelyn Davies years ago, when I wanted to learn about astrology for a book I intended to write. The book wasn’t written (she said it wouldn’t be), but lessons with Henri convinced me that while astrology wasn’t science or God, it was more than hocus-pocus.

When we met, Henri was the TV Times astrologer, and had made a successful career writing columns for Women’s Own and Cosmopolitan, as well as running a private client list. I went to her because she is not your average mystic.

For a start, she was educated at Queen’s College, Harley Street, and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. She’s a posh mix of the Du Mauriers and the Llewelyn Davieses. Her grandfather,Jack Llewelyn Davies, was one of the five “lost boys” adopted by J. M. Barrie, who of course wrote Peter Pan for them. Pop round to Henri’s flat in Kensington, and there’s Barrie’s copper kettle sitting on the hearth.

Spiritual matters run in the family — her great-great grandfather was chaplain to Queen Victoria, who fired him for giving too much money to the poor, but money matters run in the family too — her mother was hugely successful in advertising, and the woman we have to thank for “Cheese Please, Louise”.

“My father was in the Guinness Book of Records,” says Henri. “He was Britain’s Most Married Man. He married seven times but he never married my mother. She came between numbers three and four.” This may explain why Henri has never married. When Henri was 15, her mother died, and she was left with enough money to do as she liked. After Oxford, she went to work for the publishers Hamish Hamilton, but “they fired me”. Soon after, she found an out-of-print book on astrology by the Irish poet Louis MacNeice. “It was my calling,” she says. “I knew that’s what I had to do.” She began studying and travelling, learning in India and England, but it was only after the endless stints on the horoscope columns and the premium phone lines that she felt she could develop a very different style of advice and interpretation.

“I would often hear voices, very clearly, telling me what to say to a client about their particular circumstances. I found that I could use the birth chart as a basic tool, something for us both to focus on, but that the most extraordinary advice was just coming through. Over and again, clients would tell me how right the advice had been. And I would suddenly know things I couldn’t know in normal life.”

So why not give up the astrology and just use her psychic powers?

“Properly drawn up and interpreted, the birth chart is a powerful document that really can help people to understand themselves. Sun-sign astrology is very limited and too general. Computer charts are very mechanistic. But I have not met anyone, even scientists, who are not intrigued by their chart when it is fully presented to them.”

But who is running the show up there? Are we talking about God, or are we saying that these remote planets are actually influencing us? Henri laughs.

“Everyone has different beliefs, different explanations. What I am sure of is that it works.”

She is very keen on things working. “Coming to me is not like going to a therapist. If you say to me — ‘Should I take this job?’ I will answer yes or no. Life’s too short to get it wrong, and we can save ourselves a lot of time and effort with a bit of good advice.”

But shouldn’t we be working all this out for ourselves, not looking to stars or spirits to guide us? Henri is very clear about this. She believes that when people come to her for help, they are already focusing on their lives. She asks them to think very carefully about their questions, and to avoid being vague. “People often know the answer already, but they have to work through a process to get there. The concentration I ask for is part of that process.”