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.
When the word clairvoyant is used to describe a person, it means that this person has exhibited some form of psychic ability. This is a rather broad reading of the word; more specifically, a clairvoyant is someone with the ability to perceive or know things without the use of their five physical senses � the terms clairvoyance and ESP are largely interchangeable.
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.
There are many different ways that a clairvoyant may gain their knowledge, but there are six in particular which are the most common. Five of these are analogous to our physical senses and one is unique to clairvoyants. Remote viewing is the most well known of these methods, where the clairvoyant has a visual perception of something out of reach of their physical vision.
The second form of clairvoyance is call clairaudience. A clairvoyant receives their information by sound. Hearing noises or voices which cannot be heard by other people or recording devices. The clairvoyant, in some cases, may hear voices of the dead. In this case the clairvoyant may cross the line into that of a medium.
Clairsentience is analogous to our sense of touch. Also called psychometry, clairsentience refers to information which comes as tactile extrasensory input. The clairvoyant may feel vibrations from people, places, events and things or even be able to feel objects which cannot be perceived by anyone else present.
A fourth type is clairalience. In this form an individual gets the knowledge of places and events through their sense of smell. An example, they smell flowers and grass of a meadow in the spring, scent of blood or gun powder and no one around them can detect these smells and there is no apparent source to account for these smells.
Clairgustance is analogous to our sense of taste. Clairvoyants may sometimes taste flavors at a distance or those which come from no apparent source.
The last and sixth type of clairvoyance is claricognizance. This type is perhaps the hardest one to explain and define. With claircognizance an individual somehow knows something about a location, person, event, or object and they are unable to explain how they got the knowledge. They jut know it. To some degree, claircongnizance is known as the catch-all category 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.
In Buddhism for example, clairvoyance is considered of the six special senses humans are capable of at advanced levels of meditation. In this case, it refers to being able to feel vibrations put out by other people.
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.'
Many, of course, are skeptical of clairvoyance, but it is a part of human nature to deny something�s existence because they have no understanding of it. Not long ago, in our earlier history there were skeptical scientist who had even denied the existence of electricity and magnetism.
No matter what is said by the skeptics, no one can disprove clairvoyance and there are increasing amounts of evidence to show that there are many clairvoyants among us. In general parapsychologists, scientists and the general public are becoming increasingly open-minded and are ready to accept the reality of clairvoyance.
Just because we don't understand how it works, there is no reason to deny 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.
