The answers, in order, are: you mainly just listen because the conversation is so weird, and: guess we’re about to find out.

In Forster to promote her book The Coffee Oracle, celebrity witch Stacey Demarco claims to see destiny where most see a cup o’ joe.

“What do you see in the cup?” she asks, after the morning’s second cappuccino.

The billowing patterns are really just slops of milk on the ceramic. Except – wait a minute - that seahorse’s head, and that storm cloud.

“Ah, the seahorse is a symbol of masculinity, because the male looks after the young.”

To sum it up, the seahorse indicates the need to be a role-model to a certain brother next year, and the storm cloud means a turbulent next few months. Close inspection of the cup at the end of a witch’s fingernail reveals a tiny face that looks like the masked killer in Scream. It suggests the next little while could be scary but funny, like the movie.

Getting weird yet?

Demarco practices Wicca, a pagan religion rooted in the natural world. It’s had a bad rap, for the last century or eight.

“I was looking into spiritual practices, and I’m very much into the earth. I started reading [about Wicca] and realised I was doing a lot of that already,” she says.

“I was so nervous coming out of the broom closet; I nearly threw up before I told my boss. Witches have had a bad PR day for thousands of years. There were more people killed in the inquisitions than the holocaust.”

Since publishing There’s a Witch in the Boardroom in 2003, Demarco hasn’t won universal acclaim. There’s been hate mail, graffiti on her house and threats from people “very fundamental about their religion”.

Has she been tempted to reach for the wand?

“No. We never interfere with freewill when we cast forth. What you focus on comes back three times, so why would I want to focus on anything bad?”

The coffee reading was inherited from childhood visits to her aunt’s, where women would laugh in the living room as they gazed into delicate cups.

“Coffee reading is just one way of showing how everyone has intuition. Wouldn’t it be good if everyone developed their intuition enough to trust themselves?” Demarco says.

“You don’t need to believe there’s a spiritual aspect behind it if you don’t want to, but it’s something everyone can do. It’s more practical than pulling out a set of tarot cards in the workplace.”

There are rules. You can’t ask your coffee anything too specific, like what happens at the end of Lost, or who’ll win Race 1 at Wentworth Park.

You also can’t upset the barista.

“The barista is the priest or priestess to the coffee oracle, and most are cranky like chefs. They make a lot of coffees, and get into a rhythm. If you interrupt that, they’ll get the shits.”

And it doesn’t work with instant.

Apparently that stuff even wards off magic.