The paranormal term of clairvoyance originated in French language. The French word clair means clear, voyance means vision and voyant the word for visionary. Clairvoyance therefore means clear vision. An individual who is clairvoyant has is a clear visionary. The term, unfortunately, is only a literal translation that is not accurate nor helpful.

Clairvoyant has been used to describe people in terms of different phenomena over the years. It has now come to be used as a generally term describing anyone who exhibits psychic abilities. This is an overly broad definition, but generally speaking when this word is used it refers to someone who is able to sense and know things without perceiving them with the five senses of the physical body. You could refer to clairvoyance as ESP.

For the most part, clairvoyants only perceive extrasensory knowledge about current events. However, there have been clairvoyants who have received information about the past or the future. These cases fall more into the category of precognition or post-cognition, however.

The means by which a clairvoyant learns this information varies, but as a general rule can be broken down into one of six forms or types. It is clairvoyance that is most associated with this first type or form, the remote viewing phenomenon. The clairvoyant, in remote viewing, sees an object, location, event or person hidden from them. Sometimes this is in the form of visual hallucination, other times the clairvoyant viewing something using their minds eye.

The second type is call clairaudience. In this particular for a clairvoyant receives their information by remote event by sound. The individual may hear noises or voices that other people or recording equipment cannot. The clairvoyant may sometimes hear the voices of the dead and in this case that phenomenon may cross the line and be the form of a medium.

The third type is called clairsentience and in this form the individual receives knowledge by touching or feeling. This may be the act of touching an object which is not present and in other cases it may be a feeling or vibration the clairvoyant may feel from another person or event or place.

Clairalience is an extrasensory ability to perceive smells. A clairvoyant will smell the scents of another place (for instance, grass and flowers in a field). These scents cannot be smelled by anyone else and come from no apparent source.

The fifth form of clairvoyance is called clairgustance. With this form an individual who has no food within their mouth can taste various flavors, even though there is no apparent sauce. The clairvoyant can also identify the flavors from a distance.

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.

Clairvoyance is part of the religious traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam as well. In the Abrahamic religions clairvoyance is believed to be a miraculous experience granted to the clairvoyant by divine intervention. In Catholic tradition, St. Clare is believed to have had a vision of the death of St. Francis of Assisi, even though she was many miles removed from the event. In honor of this vision, the Catholic Church named St. Clare the patron saint of television. It’s a fitting assignment; after all, the word television literally means to see at a distance.

Clairvoyance also makes appearances in Christian and Islamic literature, with the visions being considered to be divinely inspired miracles. St. Clare described a vision of St. Francis’ death, though she was many miles distant. The Catholic Church later named St. Clare as the patron saint of TV (which happens to literally mean ’seeing at a distance’).

As with other psychic phenomena, there are many skeptics about clairvoyance. Skepticism is natural; it’s hard to believe in something without seeing it in action. After all, even magnetism was once thought to be non-existent.

However, no one has been able to definitely prove the non-existence of clairvoyance and the evidence in favor of its existence is mounting. Overall, the public is becoming more accepting of the idea that clairvoyance is a real phenomenon.

No matter what the skeptics say or do not believe, no one has been able disprove clairvoyance. The increasing evidence of the existence of many genuine clairvoyants worldwide has opened the minds of many. Scientists, parapsychologists and even the general public are ready to accept clairvoyance as real.