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.

To complicate the meaning further the word clairvoyant has be used in reference to other different things during the years. The term clairvoyant has emerged gradually and applied to an individual displaying a range of abilities in the psychic or the paranormal. An all around definition which fit’s a clairvoyant is and individual who has the ability to know information about places, events, objects or people without using the five physical senses. Clairvoyance, however, does refer to a form of extra-sensory perception, also known as ESP.

Clairvoyance involves, usually, a clairvoyant. A clairvoyant has the ability of knowing about what is happening at the moment, but that is far away from their physical senses. There are documented cases of clairvoyants viewing events that happen either in the future or in the past. It has been considered that clairvoyance is a form of prophecy or precognition because of this ability.

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 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 next and third type is clairsentience. In the form an individual receives knowledge through feeling and touching. In feeling the clairvoyant may feel actual objects that are not within his/her vision. Other cases may be more of a feeling or vibration that the individual feels from a particular event, person or place.

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 analogous to our sense of taste. Clairvoyants may sometimes taste flavors at a distance or those which come from no apparent 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.

Clairvoyance is something which is known in every part of the world and has a place in every single one of the world’s cultures. The phenomena also figures into most of the world’s major religions.

In the Buddhist tradition, clairvoyance (specifically in the form of clairsentience) is thought of as one of the six types of extrasensory abilities which are granted to people through advanced study of meditation. Buddhists believe that these people are able to perceive the vibrations given off by other people.

Clairvoyance, in Buddhism for instances, is considered to permit humans capable to achieve advanced levels of meditation. However, in this case, the clairvoyant feels the vibrations of others.

Clairvoyance in Catholicism, for instance, has been considered miraculous. More than five hundred years ago, a disciple of Saint Francis, Saint Claire, had a vision of the death of Saint Francis despite that Saint Claire was miles away when she had the vision. Saint Claire, interestingly enough, was sainted the ‘patron saint of television.’ Televisions literal meaning is ’seeing over a distance.’

There are many who are skeptical of clairvoyance and it is human nature to deny the existence of anything only for the reason they did not understand anything about it. It wasn’t that far back in our history that even scientists denied the existence of electricity and magnetism.

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.