The first thing I think when I arrive at astrologer Susan Miller’s 2016 Year Ahead Talk is that the press corps has turned out in force. Everywhere I look, women — and it is mostly women — are frantically rummaging in their purses for pens and notebooks, ears pricked and eyes narrowed with rapt attention. About 150 of them in total, all ages and races. Not journalists, I soon realise, but attendees, all nibbling on fruit salad, sipping coffee from the breakfast spread (included with the $99 (£70)ticket fee) and breathless with excitement. Devoted, rapt, they are the lesser moons surrounding the saturnine gravitas of Susan Miller, who, walking onstage to a seat flanked by a pair of Victorian palms amid a backdrop of vintage wallpaper blooming with faded constellations of daffodils, promptly thanks everyone for coming, inquires as to which zodiac sign audience members are by a show of hands, and implores her attendees to try the pastries.Astrologer Susan Miller is the internet’s original matriarch. Once a month, for the past 20 years, she has published a detailed horoscope for each of the 12 zodiac signs on her website, Astrology Zone, which receives 6.5 million unique visits per month and 100 million pageviews per year. The level of detail in her forecasts is legendary — from predicting engagements to ideal dates for a short vacation and even opportune moments to buy a lotto ticket. Now, she is holding an in-person, all-day talk, including a lunch and Q&A session, for a small group of her most ardent fans. Armed with her encyclopaedic knowledge of the cosmos' inner workings, she has promised to reveal what lies ahead for every star sign in 2016.We're at The Harmonie Club in Manhattan, one of those old-fashioned member’s clubs that somehow still exists, where one imagines giant finance deals are made over very small coffees on the daily. The kind of joint which, Miller specifies in the event’s invite, has a no-jeans-allowed dress code. Therefore, she advises ladies to wear “business casual, including elegant trousers or pants with a blouse, pretty sweater, and cardigan.”It’s a place where, for eight hours, we will sit, craning our heads in our grand, outmoded chairs; stargazing heathens in our Sunday best, politely circling Miller as she conjures galaxies between her delicate fluttering fingers, unable to resist her peculiar brand of gravity. Throughout the day, the sound of pencils frantically scratching at notebooks will be the soft-dinned orchestra to Miller’s sing-song libretto. The attendees, we will later find out, have all been born under equally vast, separate, and seemingly uncaring skies — from Turkey to England to Australia — representing just a tiny cluster of the millions of visitors each month to Astrology Zone. But if there is one thing that unites all of Miller and her devotees, it is the belief that the fleeting, essential business of the stars must not go unnoticed.Miller, who is petite, impeccably blowdried, and dressed like the born-and-bred Upper East Side lady that she is, gets right to it. Scorpios need to socialize this year. Geminis should look out for new business partners. Tauruses are likely to find love.The atmosphere is part church, part girls-night-out, part group therapy session. Miller speaks entirely without notes, only occasionally pausing, eyes fluttering closed in concentration, to make a complex astrological calculation here and there. She personifies planets — “Saturn is like Balanchine with his stick” — and addresses each sign of the zodiac in cooing, affectionate terms — “How many Capricorns do we have here? Oh, look at all those little goats!” Whenever she mentions a sign, there’s an audible “yesss,” as if someone’s number just came up at the bingo hall. At the mention of an upcoming Mercury retrograde, the crowd audibly groans.But, occasional pantomime aside, the science that is picking apart the cosmos is sacrosanct. When Miller remarks that an attendee’s fortune may be suffering due to “a square Uranus,” there isn’t so much as a snicker (for the record, in an odd slip-up, Miller pronounces said planet’s name as Ur-AR-nus). And as well as guidance, there are warnings. Under no circumstance should anyone get Botox during a Venus retrograde, Miller warns sternly.Turning to her take on the presidential election, she states that she chooses to read Neptune over the newspapers. On election day, “Neptune is looking busy,” she adds. This means that “we won’t likely know who has won for two days.” (Miller later explains that "We each have to vote to avoid such a close election that we will be counting votes to find the winner — it will be that close an election.") It’s this entirely winning approach, pogoing seamlessly from the stars down to hard earth in a single sentence (not to mention the level of detail she’s able to cover), which endears Miller so much to her fans, to whom she is so much more than a monthly stop on the internet.