From tarot cards to crystals, spirituality is on the rise, especially among Gen Z. So will our three writers find their psychic sessions enlightening?
Sarah Vine: ‘I’m told things I have never even written about’
Sarah Vine says her psychic spoke about aspects of her family with startling accuracy
In the so-called modern world, what place is there for tarot cards and crystals? Surely cold, hard science has all the answers?
Apparently not. In spite of – or perhaps because of – all our technology, spirituality is on the rise, especially among Gen Z, who are shifting away from traditional religion towards more esoteric belief systems. Platforms like TikTok are alive with astrologers and tarot card readers, angel numbers are everywhere, manifesting is now mainstream. It’s easy to see why: the world seems so uncertain.
I’ve never had a professional reading. I’ve dabbled: a couple of friends of mine take an interest in the spiritual and one even makes a living from it. Over the years they’ve offered me their insights, sometimes with startling accuracy (although, of course, they know me well, so that might be a factor). I did once have a palm reading from a total stranger, and it was spookily accurate.
In general, then, I am not a sceptic – nor am I a fervent believer. I suspect like most people I’m intrigued and curious to know more. With that in mind, I book an appointment – under a false name – with Psychic Sisters. Based in Selfridges in London’s Oxford Street, the concession occupies a small, slightly shabby corner on the lower ground floor, just in between the Nespresso franchise and Timpson.
I am met by Jayne Wallace, founder of this crystalline coven, and let into a small, windowless room with two chairs and a table. Wallace has been in the psychic business for over 30 years, and has a roster of celebrity clients, including Kim Kardashian, Kylie Jenner and Kate Hudson. She’s appeared on ITV’s This Morning, and Loose Women, and even secured investment via Dragons’ Den.
There is nothing theatrical or staged about Wallace. Her demeanour is more friendly landlady than fearsome Lilith, and straightaway she puts me at ease. She chats away as I shuffle and cut the cards, before dealing swiftly and confidently.
The reading comes thick and fast. I had expected generalisations, but she is quite specific. In particular, she talks about aspects of my family with startling accuracy. I’m trying to work out how she might know these things – they are very private – but I can’t fathom it. The speed with which she speaks is remarkable: the information just comes pouring out of her. I barely get a word in edgeways.
It’s more like a session with a shrink than a psychic – only the cards are doing the talking, not me. Wallace is not telling me anything I don’t already know about myself; what she is doing is pinpointing certain events and interactions and setting out their wider significance.
The effect is reassuring: I begin to feel that if she can know this much about things that I have never written about (not even, for example, in my recent memoir, which I suppose she could have theoretically read) then it follows that any predictions or guidance she gives me might, too, be relevant.
Wallace proceeds to offer several future scenarios, including that old chestnut that I am soon to meet someone tall, dark and possibly handsome. I tell her that is extremely unlikely, and she just tells me to ‘look up’. A roofer, perhaps, or a tree surgeon? Only time will tell.
I suppose the question is, how much of what she is saying is my brain finding connections and how much is actual divination? If her predictions do come to pass, will that be because they were my destiny or because she has sowed the seed of possibility in my mind? We can never know. But it was a fascinating and very enjoyable half hour.
Liz Jones: ‘I ask if I’m cursed. She says: “Not quite”’
Liz Jones went to see Estelle Bingham, who is known as ‘The Heat Whisperer’ and counts Charlotte Tilbury and Fearne Cotton as fans
Estelle Bingham, 53, is known by people who have seen her as ‘The Heart Whisperer’. She describes herself as an empath. She has been supporting others to find love, purpose and connection for over 20 years. Famous fans include Charlotte Tilbury and Fearne Cotton.
When I arrive at Estelle’s house in West London, I’m in a bad mood. I’ve travelled 300 miles and now she doesn’t answer the door! I go into default mode: panic. I triple check the address. I email her PA. By the time she answers her door (I’d arrived 45 minutes early), I’m in meltdown.
Her home smells amazing: unlike me, Bingham lights her candles. She offers tea but I refuse: I never eat or drink when working. She gives me a long, hard stare and I feel as though she’s looking into my soul.
‘You have extra energy,’ she says. ‘You are intuitive, sensitive and quite psychic. I see up to seven people a day and I don’t say that often. I could sense your anxiety through the front door. You turned down tea, which tells me you don’t care about your own wellbeing. This session is about the healing you need to move forward.’
Bingham is big on manifesting, which I’ve tried but it never works: I really wanted to win the Yorkshire Omaze house. ‘You’re manifesting from your head but don’t feel you deserve it in your heart. You’ve never felt worthy. You have PTSD, do you know where that’s from?’
I was made bankrupt and I’ve never recovered from learning the world isn’t safe.
Bingham starts our session with breath work (which I hate; I pant, shallow and fast) and a meditation, but my mind is swirling: will I get a taxi to the hotel OK, what will I say during my talk this evening? She places crystals on my chest and solar plexus. I have crystals at home, all the good they’ve done me. ‘Are you clearing them? You must put them outside once a month, under a full moon.’
As a child, Bingham saw dead people; her mother and great-grandmother were also psychic, so she didn’t find the spiritual world unusual. She started to meditate aged six: her mother had learned Transcendental Meditation in the 1960s, so it was a normal progression. She now clears ghosts from spaces.
She works energetically, reading the unconscious stories held in our bodies. She then says something surprising (she wasn’t allowed to google me before meeting). ‘Was there violence at home growing up? Alcoholism? I’m getting something about your father.’ My parents were both gentle; my dad, who fought the Nazis, had a Welsh temper, but it was never directed at me. Mum never raised her voice or complained, despite being disabled. But a sister was physically and emotionally violent, with uncontrollable rages: she would kick me in a shared bed, pummel my legs with her fists and sometimes throw things and scream to get her own way. Two of my sisters, both now dead, were alcoholics. Of the difficult sister, and my ex-husband, who has somehow joined my pity party, Bingham says, ‘You survived some very heavy people.’
She says my childhood was abusive. ‘You have mother hunger. You haven’t felt safe, ever. Your needs weren’t met.’
She says I also have a ‘shame wound’: deep down, I believe I’m not lovable enough to protect. I’ve always believed the lack of hugs, the fact that my mum never spoke about puberty or boys and didn’t notice I was anorexic from age 11, was because it was the 60s and 70s: parents were like that then, weren’t they? Bingham says, ‘I think your mother disengaged, perhaps too busy as she had seven children, but she checked out. It’s emotional neglect. Your parents should have protected you.’
It’s the reason I’m hyper vigilant, can’t eat as my solar plexus is in turmoil. I always think I’m about to be run over. I wake each day and think, ‘Oh, no…’
‘You can bet Charlotte Tilbury doesn’t wake each morning thinking that!’ Bingham first met her when the future make-up mogul was a waitress and told her, ‘You are going to be the next Estée Lauder.’ Which she is.
With the meditation not working, it’s time for a more hands-on approach.
I feel like Linda Blair in The Exorcist as Bingham cries, ‘I release you! I release you!’ metaphorically pulling fear from my belly: I’m to imagine it as sticky black tar.
I ask if I’m cursed. ‘Not quite. You’re carrying negative energy from your family. You trust no one. You’ve been in survival mode for years.’
And the future? For this she uses tarot. I shuffle and she turns the chosen cards. ‘There is a lot of grief, a lot of darkness. The devil card means fear. I see a man coming in to help you, could be an agent. Something is going to move in 2026.’ There is also an upside-down hanged man: ‘You have light around you, but you’re not moving forward.’ She tells me to lose the idea of safety, as that only conjures up fear. That I should think about bringing joy to others instead.
I think the grief is mourning, not for people but for my old London life, before everything fell apart. And for the animals I’ve lost, will lose.
Am I going to be financially stable? ‘You are going to write a big book: I see the story of your life being successful.’ I’ve already written a memoir, but my unpublished novel is semi-autobiographical, with my trademark dark humour.
‘You will write three novels. Charlotte always knew she was destined for great things. You, too, are extraordinary.’
I tell her that, deep down, I know that. Which is why I’ve never given up.
She asks if we can hug. I’m someone who recoils, stiff as a board, from physical contact but she thaws me, her heart beating against mine. That night, I deliver my talk without notes and, incredibly, not a smidgen of stage fright.
Estellebingham.com. Estelle’s book, Manifest Your True Essence, is published by Hay House, £14.99.
Simon Mills: ‘He gives me the name John twice. I confess I don’t know a single John’
Simon Mills visited Chris Riley, a self-styled ‘celebrity psychic to the stars’ who is popular with reality stars including Gemma Collins
Self-styled ‘Celebrity Psychic to the Stars’ Chris Riley arrives at our meeting in a blaze of designer labels. The 31-year-old, Essex-based seer who counts Gemma Collins, Jacqueline Jossa, Kat Graham and Keeping Up With The Kardashians’ Scott Disick as his clients, is wearing a Louis Vuitton knitted polo top with matching LV sneakers and a mini LV trunk manbag. Around his neck, costume jewellery by Van Cleef & Arpels.
I feel old, poor and underdressed. In my plain, unbranded, sensible clothes perhaps Riley senses the defensive, non-believing cynic in me and wants to prove him wrong. He gets into my psychic reading even before he sits down and removes his Balenciaga hoodie.
‘I need to give you the name John. I want to give it to you twice. A few Johns. Two maybe. Dad? Grandad? Uncles, perhaps?’ The thinking here being that someone of my corduroy vintage is obviously going to be in close contact with a lot of Johns, rather than Jadens, Joshes and Jermaines, right? Except not me. I confess that I don’t know a single John. My grandfathers were Alfred and Joseph, I had an uncle Derek and an uncle Peter.
No matter. Riley is also getting a Betty ‘Or a Liz. Did your mum have a sister called Elizabeth? Your aunt perhaps?’
She did not. We move on to a roll call of old-people names: Stephen, Gary, Tony, Bill, William. All delivered with a sense of absolute certainty and spiritually informed exactitude.
Which is impressive but, unfortunately, all these people are unknown to my kith, kin and me. Ditto Cathy and Katherine. And Joyce. No third sibling, either – I am one of two. I start to feel guilty for every apologetic head shake.
Riley isn’t fazed by these early failures. This is normal.
We change the subject to… me. And where I am at. Not spiritually but geographically. He places me in a Chelsea townhouse – which is nice. It’s actually a small flat in a Notting Hill townhouse – in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, but close enough. However, Riley is feeling that I am more… America.
‘A connection in New York. I feel like you should be in New York.’ Me too! I love New York. No plans to go there, what with all the Trump madness etc. But maybe Riley, or his spirit informer, has mixed up New York with York-shire, where I was born? ‘I see you living in South Carolina.’ Now we are in France: ‘Did you have a house in France? Or your parents did?’ Wish they had/wish I had. Mais non. ‘I feel there is a lot of golf in your family.’ Golf? How dare you! No horses, either. (Perhaps he has me down as some sort of Surrey Sloane.)
Riley perseveres. He has a process. He can’t describe quite how it works – it started when he was a child, when he woke up one morning and found the spirit of his recently deceased grandfather lying next to him – but stuff just kinda comes to him, in words, feelings and pictures, in a scattershot, random format.
‘I sense things about your past, present and future. People, places, situations. Love life, home life, career, family.’
And illnesses! Which is quite a pivot because when our reading began, Riley informed me that there would be no news about health problems nor any predictions about my death date or the nasty diseases that I was going to contract. ‘I wouldn’t be telling you anything bad. Readings should be a positive thing.’
That said, he does seem keen to make a rather specific diagnosis of my parents’ ailments. Why? Well, the man sitting in front of him is 62 years old – Riley nails that in one, btw; well played, although I kind of wish he’d guessed a decade younger – and he’s thinking, quite correctly, obviously, at this fella’s advanced age he must be around a lot of sickness and death, right?
‘Did your uncle have thyroid problems?’ Not to my knowledge. ‘Are you coeliac?’ I am not. ‘You are very similar to your dad. Personality wise. The way you dress. When I look into your eyes I see your dad.’ This is true. Then… ‘Was your dad diabetic? Did he have blood-sugar problems? Did he die of a heart attack?’ No, no and no.
I show Riley a picture of my mother, now ‘in spirit’ as the psychics term ‘dead’. He may be on to someone more open and receptive here – Patricia Mills was a believer who sought the services of a psychic many times in her late 50s and even kept a journal. (‘Simon will write humour. He will make a lot of money from this’ – so, a half-truth in there.) My mum ‘passed’ at just 62 – same age as me now. This had a profound effect on my young self and Riley seems to have grasped something. ‘I am getting… Ann. Is there an Ann there?’
YES! Ann was my mother’s sister.
No air punching, no smug triumphant smile. Riley goes deeper. ‘She wasn’t happy. She felt alone and different from her siblings.’ She did! And then doomy Dr Psychic is back. ‘Your mum. She passed very suddenly.’ This is true. ‘Did they find cancer in her?’ Nope.
I feel like my own spirit is weak and ungenerous, my aura dimmed, unable to emanate anything significant or surprising or exciting. ‘Actually,’ says Riley. ‘I believe you are psychic yourself.
I think you are entering a calmer, more accepting stage of your life. Things don’t anger and affect you like they used to. Now I’m getting… Scotland?’
Go on.
‘You have two daughters, right?’ Right. ‘And one of them is in a relationship with someone in Scotland?’
This is bang on. Finally, I am a little bit amazed.
‘She will move to Scotland,’ says Riley, now on a spiritual roll. ‘And you… you are going to be…’
Rich? Famous? Successful? A best-selling author, perhaps?
‘You are going to be… a grandfather.’
