In our society, once the lesser issues of food, sex and relationships are sorted out, death is a prime influence over what we do in life. But we’re too scared to talk about it.

Halfway through my first undergraduate year at university, a pupil in my religious studies’ class asked about the Anglican Church’s views on spirit.

The Head of the Religious Department (a prominent figure in the Anglican Church) said, "It doesn't exist."

I was shocked by the implications of his atheistic approach to the fundamentals of religious teaching. Death was lit up starkly. This became the central moment of my short sojourn at university.

Having long since abandoned the Presbyterian religion of youth because of the hypocrisy I saw there, and having been influenced by a long spell working with the Japanese Embassy, this particular moment kicked off a decade or two of major disenchantment with Western religion.

Not one to leave stones unturned, I invited my Eastern Religions’ tutor from the university home for dinner, and his visits became a regular institution. I learned to cook vegetarian food, and listened a lot while my tutor and my husband hotly debated Eastern religious ideas and practice.

My other subject was psychology, and my interest lay with Jung. The combination of Jung’s thinking and Eastern religious ideas gradually gave my studies in astrology a new slant.

I could see where astrology fitted into Eastern religion, and how it provided practical guidelines for living in many Eastern countries.

To leap into the present, I now tend to view most religious faiths as “fragments of a mosaic” (to borrow my late husband’s imagery) from a once ‘living’ teaching; all of it based on the human urge to make sense of living and dying.

Political interests often conspire to obscure those remnants of 'truth' that have come down to us from the past. No matter where or what a religion is based upon, the bone is buried too deeply for most people sniff it out (unless you’re a ‘fire dog’).

That’s where psychic advisors come in. They ask more questions about life and death than the average person; they usually avoid religious dogma; and they perform a hugely unrecognized service to society.

The doctors, the priests and even new age 'cooks' and 'curers' of all kinds still skirt the question of death in our society.

Unlike most Western practitioners, who have plenty of academic and material knowledge but not much experience in dealing openly with human emotions - particularly with skeletons in dark closets - psychics do their best to deal with these questions.

Psychics might not always succeed completely in helping people to get life and death into perspective but they do have the courage to look Death in the face.

For instance, they do this every time they pick up Card 13 of the Major Arcana in the Tarot. And the most amazing thing is that Death really means a ‘new start’. So what does that tell us?

Death is not the end of everything. It is just another corner, and we need to learn how to walk with a friend round that corner. Try talking to a psychic.