Clairvoyance is a paranormal term originating in the French language. In French, ‘clair’ means ‘clear’, and ‘voyance’ means ‘vision’, so a ‘voyant’ is a visionary. Therefore, ‘clairvoyance’ means ‘clear vision’ and a ‘clairvoyant‘ is someone who is a ‘clear visionary.’ Unfortunately, this literal translation is neither helpful nor really accurate.
Further complicating the definition is that the term ‘clairvoyant’ has been used to refer to different things over the years. ‘Clairvoyant’ gradually emerged as a term applying to someone who displayed a range of paranormal, or psychic, abilities. The only all-encompassing definition that really fits is that a clairvoyant is someone with the ability to know things about a location, object, person, or event by means others than the five physical senses. In other words, clairvoyance refers to a form of extra-sensory perception (ESP).
Clairvoyance usually involves a clairvoyant person knowing about something that is happening right then, but far away or otherwise out of range of their physical senses. However, there have also been documented cases of a clairvoyant knowing of something that happened in either the past or the future. Because of this, clairvoyance is considered by some to be a form of precognition, or prophecy.
The means a clairvoyant individual learns this ability varies and can generally be broken down to one of six categories. The first form or category is ‘remote viewing’ and perhaps is the most associated with clairvoyance. A clairvoyant views a location, event, person or object hidden from them through remote viewing. And occasionally takes the form of visual hallucination and at other times the clairvoyant views things with their ‘minds eye.’
The second form is clairaudience. In this form the clairvoyant receives information remotely by sound of the event. Hearing noises or voices which other people and recording equipment cannot. Such as hearing voices of the dead and this phenomenon may cross over into the realm of mediums.
The third type of clairvoyance is clairsentience. In clairsentience, the person gains knowledge though touch and feeling. In some cases this may take the form of feeling actual object that are not there. In other cases, it is more a feeling or ‘vibe’ that the clairvoyant feels from particular remote people, locations, or events.
The fourth form or type is called clairalience and in this form an individual receives knowledge of distant places and events. As an example, a variety of flowers or grass in a meadow, the tang of blood or gunpowder. Since there are no apparent sauces for these scents, no one else around the clairvoyant can smell them.
Clairgustance is the fifth form or type of clairvoyance. In this form an individual can taste the different flavors, despite the fact there is no apparent sauce and since they have not eaten anything. They are able to describe the flavor that they are tasting even though they are a distance from any source.
Claircognizance is the sixth and the last form of clairvoyance and the most difficult to explain or to define. In this form of clairvoyance the individual has knowledge of a object, location, person or event that is out of their viewing range. They cannot explain where they have gained this knowledge. They just know it. Claircognizance, to some extent, is a catch-all description of clairvoyance.
The occurrences of individuals who are clairvoyant have been documented throughout history, by different cultures worldwide. Clairvoyance has been accepted into some of the worlds most widespread religions.
In Buddhism, for instance is it believed that clairvoyance is capable for humans to achieve in an advanced level of meditation. It is referenced to the ability to feel vibrations projected by others.
More than five hundred years ago, a disciple of Saint Francis named Saint Clair, had a vision where she witnessed the death of Saint Francis even though she was many miles away at the time. The Catholic Church, interestingly enough, had made Saint Clair the patron saint of television. Literally translated television means seeing over a distance.
There are skeptics of clairvoyance. It is a part of human nature to doubt and deny the existence of something that they do not understand. The existence of electricity and magnetism had been denied by scientist not so long ago in our history.
Whatever is said by skeptics say, no one has as yet disproved clairvoyance and the evidence is increasing that many genuine clairvoyants exist around the world. Generally parapsychologists, scientists and the public have become more open minded and are accepting clairvoyance is real.
Despite the fact that we do not quite understand how it works, this is no reason to ignore its existence. It has been suggested that in the distant past, all humans used to be clairvoyant but for some reason lost their powers. It is thought that everybody could again become clairvoyant if they make the effort and choose to develop these powers.