Clairvoyance

Clairvoyance is knowledge of information that may not be known to anyone else and that is not gained through the ordinary senses or by reasoning. It is counted as a form of extrasensory perception (ESP). The word means "clear-sightedness". Spiritualists also use it to mean seeing the spirits of the dead, and in a Spiritualist church it is practised as a form of mediumship.

Description

Kinds of clairvoyance

The Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology describes clairvoyance as a supposed ability to see people and events that are distant in time or place, including past and future events and present events happening out of sight. It may include psychometry, second sight and crystal gazing. The experience may come spontaneously, or be prompted by hypnotic suggestion or by methods such as crystal gazing.

The same work names four traditional kinds:

• seeing into closed spaces such as boxes, envelopes and rooms
• "medical" clairvoyance: seeing inside the human body and diagnosing disease
• "travelling" clairvoyance: a mental journey to a distant place, followed by a description of it
• "platform" clairvoyance: seeing spirits.

How Spiritualists use the word

In his study of Sydney Spiritualists, Paul Gillen found that they used the word most broadly for experience of Spirit, and more narrowly for a kind of "seeing", as distinct from clairaudience and clairsentience; the psychical researchers' sense of non-telepathic ESP was not common among them. Clairaudience is the "hearing" of spirit voices; clairsentience usually means sensing a spirit's presence without any picture or sound. Gillen also noted that clairvoyant impressions may concern the present, the past or the future, and range from faint, fragmentary intuitions to vivid visions. Seeing a person's aura was regarded as a special and advanced kind of clairvoyance, and psychometry, reading an object, as another kind.

Clairvoyance in a Spiritualist service

In a Spiritualist demonstration, the medium describes what he or she is shown and asks who in the audience can recognise the person being described. Tomlinson recorded one such message at a Canberra service in 2017. The medium said she could hear church bells and was being shown gum trees, a favourite dish and a goat, and asked whether anyone knew this man. A woman answered, and further details were offered and either accepted or rejected until, in under nine minutes, both agreed that the man was the woman's father.

Specific detail matters because the aim is to show who is communicating. The Spiritualists' National Union gives examples of identifying information, such as a name, relationship, appearance, home, work, character and shared memories.

Developing clairvoyance

Spiritualists usually develop clairvoyance in a circle. One Canberra medium told Tomlinson that his clairvoyance grew while he attended a Spiritualist church in England, and that a home circle drawn from that church helped him develop it further. Gillen also recorded a "closing down" exercise, described by a British Spiritualist columnist, by which a person whose clairvoyance is causing discomfort can learn to shut it off until they are ready to use it. See Development circles.

Terms used in research

Researchers group clairvoyance with telepathy and precognition (knowledge of the future) under the heading of extrasensory perception. In a 1995 review for a United States government evaluation, the statistician Jessica Utts explained the distinction used in the research she examined: information that seems to come from another person is called telepathy; information that seems to arrive in real time but not from another person is called clairvoyance; and information that could only have come from knowledge of the future is called precognition.

Scope

What it includes

• Perceiving distant or hidden objects, people or events
• Perceiving past or future events
• For Spiritualists, seeing or hearing spirits of the dead

What it is not

• Clairvoyance has not been scientifically established. Britannica says that parapsychology research, such as tests of whether a person can predict the order of cards in a shuffled pack, has yet to give conclusive support for it.
• The Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology notes that many reported cases have ordinary explanations; for example, it is almost impossible to blindfold someone so completely that they can make no use of normal sight.

Research

Scientific study of ESP dates from the late nineteenth century, and most of the evidence offered for it has come from card-guessing experiments, in which people try to name the symbols on cards they can't see. A rate of correct guesses above chance over a large number of trials is taken as evidence of ESP. Many scientists still doubt that ESP exists, although people who claim it are sometimes used by teams searching for missing people or things.

In a 2008 study at Harvard University, published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, researchers used brain imaging (fMRI) in an experiment designed to give positive results if telepathy, clairvoyance or precognition existed. The brain responded in the same way to "psi" and "non-psi" images, and the authors described their findings as the strongest evidence yet against such phenomena. Research into "remote viewing", a laboratory method developed in the 1970s, is described on the Remote viewing page.

Traditions and lineage

The Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology traces prophecy and second sight, as forms of clairvoyance, back to ancient times. It says Spiritualism in Great Britain was preceded, around the 1830s, by an outbreak of clairvoyance, and that clairvoyance remains a prominent feature of the Spiritualist séance. In 1837 the French Academy promised 3,000 francs to anyone able to show real clairvoyance. Its jury turned down one candidate, a twelve-year-old girl, because it could not rule out that she was seeing in the normal way despite her covered eyes.

Spiritualism also prompted psychical research, which developed methods to study telepathy, clairvoyance and precognition. The Society for Psychical Research was founded in London in 1882, and from the 1930s to the 1960s J. B. Rhine's parapsychology laboratory at Duke University in the United States attracted wide interest.

Context

Within Spiritualism

Clairvoyance is a core practice in Spiritualism, where it is understood as a form of mediumship. The National Spiritualist Association of Churches in the United States lists it among the "phenomena of Spiritualism", which it describes as mental and physical demonstrations of mediumship. In Britain, the Spiritualists' National Union says that mediumship is meant to give evidence of survival, not to foretell events, give advice or counsel, and that mediums cannot call up a particular spirit; it is the spirit who chooses to communicate. This is why a Spiritualist clairvoyant concentrates on describing and identifying the communicator. In London, the Spiritualist Association of Great Britain says it holds public demonstrations of clairvoyance every day. See also Mediumship and Platform mediumship.

In Australian Spiritualism

Clairvoyance has long been part of Australian Spiritualist services. In 1920 the Victorian Association of Spiritualists in Melbourne advertised a mediums' meeting with readings from flowers and clairvoyance, and in 1922 a visiting lecturer gave clairvoyant readings to members of the audience at a Hobart meeting, after which the Hobart Spiritualists' Church presented him with books.

Today the Centre Christian Spiritualist Church in Subiaco describes the messages it gives through flowers at every service as a form of clairvoyance; Elizabeth Spiritualist Church in South Australia holds a weekly evening of talk, discussion, clairvoyance and healing; and the Victorian Spiritualists' Union's Spiritualism course has a session on clairvoyance and the development circle.

A Spiritualist perspective

In everyday Spiritualist use, clairvoyance means seeing spirit, and that is how a Spiritualist medium understands the gift. The wider sense of clairvoyance described above, of seeing distant places or future events, is a different matter. A Spiritualist would respect that some people work in that way, but would not treat it as mediumship, because it offers no evidence that the dead live on.

What a Spiritualist teacher looks for in a clairvoyant medium is clear, specific description of a person in the spirit world that the recipient can recognise, given humbly and without embellishment. Clairvoyance is not offered for fortune-telling, and a good medium will not frighten people with predictions or tell them what to do with their lives. Mediums should also be open about any fee before a private sitting, never encourage people to keep coming back, and take particular care with the grieving. If a vision is unclear, it is better to say so than to fill the gap.

Clairvoyance in Australia

Consumer protection

Scamwatch, the scam information website of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), warns that scammers posing as psychics or clairvoyants may contact people by post, email, phone or in person, predicting good fortune or claiming the person is in trouble, and then offering a solution.

The law

Section 40 of South Australia's Summary Offences Act 1953 makes it an offence for a person, intending to defraud, to claim to act as a spiritualist or medium, or to claim to use telepathy, clairvoyance or similar powers. The maximum penalty is a $10,000 fine or two years' imprisonment. The offence requires an intent to defraud.

Safety and good practice

Scamwatch advises never to send money, credit card details or other personal details to people who approach you claiming psychic powers. If you choose to use a psychic or clairvoyant, it advises finding out the total cost and exactly what you'll receive, and asking about any conditions and ongoing or hidden costs before going ahead.

Spiritualist bodies set their own standards. The National Spiritualist Association of Churches' Code of Ethics asks its mediums to discuss fees and financial arrangements at the start, to make only realistic statements about what mediumship can offer, and not to exploit the trust and dependency of the people they serve. The Spiritualists' National Union suggests that anyone receiving a message ask whether the communicator was clearly identified, whether there was enough evidence of who it was, and whether the message was relevant.

Related modalities

• Psychic reading
• Telepathy
• Psychometry
• Remote viewing

Further reading

• Britannica Editors. "Clairvoyance". Encyclopaedia Britannica.
• Britannica Editors. "Extrasensory perception". Encyclopaedia Britannica.
• "Clairvoyance". Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology. Gale, via Encyclopedia.com.
• Moulton, S. T. and S. M. Kosslyn. "Using neuroimaging to resolve the psi debate". Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2008.