Did you know that over the last 20 years at least one third of people in the USA believe in clairvoyance 1? This is really amazing when many folk don’t actually realize that there is also clairaudience, clairsentience, clairalience, claircognizance and clairgustance. But let’s focus on clairvoyance first before we get too carried away. 

Clairvoyance comes from French spoken during the 1600’s and means clear (clair) and visibility (voyance). In other words, if someone is a clairvoyant, they have an ability for clear sight that others may not have. In our current lifetime, clairvoyance is much more associated with people who are generally able to gain information or an understanding about people, events or activities that might not normally be available through usual channels. Genuine clairvoyants the world over have an innate but trained skill that enables them to tap into a wisdom and knowledge source many people don’t have the same keys for. Technically speaking though, folk who have clairvoyant skills can see, literally visually, pictures and scenes of events and people and places in the future, in the past and across different continents. They have an ability to reach into portals and view different life movies that most people simply can’t register. 

Clairaudience by contrast refers to that skill whereby people can hear information about people or events or places. They report that the sounds are either ‘in their head’ or all around them and in listening they’re able to connect with untapped wisdom and provide that to others. 

Clairesentience is the ability to feel or touch and receive otherwise unknown information. More usually clairsentients feel a sensation like cold or warmth, or the touch of a spiritual hand, or the feel the spray of the ocean or another event that provides information and wisdom. They’re then able to interpret that and understand the messages provided. 

Then we have clairalience which is the more unusual skill of receiving information through aromas and smells and scents. A practitioner may be able to smell the lavender that Great Aunt Josephine used to wear, or perhaps they can smell the scent of newly mown grass. Maybe they can smell the famous cakes that their neighbour used to bake before the passed on, or perhaps smell the hospital room that their friend or client Susan passed over in. Aromatherapy tells us that smells are powerful tools for changing our moods but they also bring back old memories or generate new ones for the practitioner smelling the relevant aromas of their client. 

Claircognizance is a skill many of us have but that we mistake for the more general term of clairvoyance. To be claircogizant is to ‘know’. How often has something happened to you and you ‘just know’ that it’s your Mum on the phone before you answer it, or that your friend needs your help, or that one of the kids is unwell even though their 50 miles away. That’s claircognizance. Probably one of the most prevalent forms of this skill set and yet almost always mislabelled. 

Finally clairgustance is the much more rare skill of gaining information, wisdom and insight from taste. Very often we remember special events by familiar and well loved tastes. When you indulge on that gorgeous trifle, does it not remind you of Sunday family lunches when Mum used to always make trifle? Remember how you used to poke your tongue at your brother at the table while Dad wasn’t looking and how he used to kick your shins under the table? That’s clairgustance when you can taste the foods of other people’s events that perhaps you were never present at. 

But would you want one or more of these gifts? Most of us actually do have one or more but we’ve lost the use of them and if we wanted to rekindle them, we’d need training in them. The key is to be able to use the gifts ‘on demand’ rather than have them thrown at you at the whim of the spirit and universal world. They can be destructive when not controlled and thus that training is very important. That’s usually part of your second and subsequent degree studies in Wicca although you can find local specialists who can help you develop those skills outside the religious framework. Just trust your instincts when choosing a teacher and then enjoy the sensations of your extra perceptions. 

Smiles and blessings, Amethyst

1 Carrol, Robert (2003), "Clairvoyance" - Skeptics Dictionary, Wiley, ISBN 0471272426