Clairvoyance

The word "Clairvoyance" relates to a persons ability to use a sense other than the five known senses (Sight, Hearing, Taste, Touch, Smell) to obtain information about a person, event or object. The subject of clairvoyance is very controversial amongst religious groups and is not believed as real by the majority of the population. Studies have shown that on average 30% of the US believe in these psychic abilities.

In the past, government organisations and police have used clairvoyants to determine the whereabouts of missing people, and find new leads in unsolved crimes. Recently this has been poularised with television shows such as "Medium", which is the story of Alison Dubois, a psychic that helps Phoenix's District Attorney to solve murders using her unique abilities.

Unfortunately, clairvoyance has created for itself a bad reputation through history, as the number of charlatans who are only after some easy money far outweighs the number of "true" psychics. This fraudsters prey on people who have lost loved ones and are unstable in their life in order to pander to their worries and empty their wallets.

Although clairvoyant phenomena is generally thought of as being a "sixth sense", many clairvoyants use their other five senses to acquire psychic knowledge. For this reason, clairvoyance can be broken into 5 subsets...

Clairsentience - This involves touching and feeling in order to acquire psychic knowledge

Clairaudience - This involves using hearing to to perceive paranormal impressions

Clairalience - The person acquires psychic knowledge using their sense of smell

Claircognizance - This term is used to describe the obtaining of psychic knowledge without any physical explanation of where that knowledge came from. In other words, none of the five senses were used to obtain the knowledge.

Clairgustance - Using the sense of taste, the clairvoyant can perceive the essence of a substance not of this world