# Clairaudience

Source: https://spiritfold.com/Clairaudience  
Published by the Australian Spiritual Alliance on Spiritfold, licensed CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

**Clairaudience** ("clear hearing") is the reported "hearing" of voices or sounds that can't be heard by ordinary means, either because they are too far away or because they are said to come from the spirit world.[1] Spiritualists distinguish it from [clairvoyance](https://spiritfold.com/Clairvoyance), a kind of "seeing", and from clairsentience, the sense of a spirit's presence without seeing or hearing anything.[1] Spiritualists treat it as a form of mental mediumship, in which the medium interprets what is received.[2]

## Description

### What clairaudients describe

A 2022 study compared 26 people from Spiritualist communities who reported hearing voices with 40 people with psychosis who heard voices. The Spiritualist voice-hearers reported less distress and more control over their voices. Their experiences often combined several senses into a single entity, and often came with visual imagery. Most said they had heard voices before they came to Spiritualism, which suggests the experience did not begin only through deliberate practice.[3]

A 2023 study by the anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann and colleagues interviewed 22 people who heard voices but had no need of clinical care. Many heard voices daily, yet reported little distress, and almost all said the voices had a positive effect on their lives. Most interpreted the voices as spirits, and described learning to understand, manage and train their communication with them.[4]

### In a church service

Many Spiritualist services include a demonstration in which a medium relays messages from the spirit world to people in the congregation; the Spiritualists' National Union in Britain stresses that this is not entertainment but a way of showing that the soul lives on.[5] What is heard is not always complete: at a Canberra service, one medium told how she had heard only the first two letters of a name and offered "Joe" when the name was "Joel", and asked listeners not to get stuck on such slips but to hear the medium through.[6]

### Learning to listen

Communities in which hearing spirit voices is expected, Spiritualists among them, teach people to "discern" which voices are genuine. A comparison of such communities found two broad methods taught for experiencing spirits: trained attention to one's inner experience, and repeatedly speaking to the unseen other. In all of them, the ability to hear spirit is expected to grow clearer with practice.[7]

In Spiritualism this training usually happens in a [development circle](https://spiritfold.com/Development_circles) (often called a class), a group that meets to develop the gifts of people who may become mediums.[1] In the Canberra mediumship classes observed by the anthropologist Matt Tomlinson, students began with an "attunement": closing their eyes, quietening the mind and trying to feel their own energy until impressions arose. The main task, he writes, is learning to recognise which impressions come from the spirit world and gaining the confidence to pass them on.[8]

## Scope

### What it includes

- Hearing voices, words or sounds that the person attributes to spirits or to a source beyond ordinary hearing[1][4]

### What it is not

- It is not proof of contact with spirits. Researchers point out that cultural ideas about spirit communication may help people make sense of voices that come to them unbidden, but may also lead some people to experience their own thoughts as voices from outside themselves.[4]
- It is not fortune-telling or counselling. The Spiritualists' National Union says mediumship exists to show that people survive death; it is not meant for forecasting, advising or counselling, and mediums do not call up spirits at will.[9]
- Hearing voices is not in itself a sign of mental illness, but it can be. Western Australia's health department notes that many people have brief, occasional hallucinations without being mentally ill, while hallucinations are also common in conditions such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.[10] Research comparing spiritual and clinical voice-hearing finds important similarities as well as differences.[3]

## Traditions and lineage

Attitudes to hearing voices have changed over time. A 2024 historical review describes how hearing voices was once seen as a gift giving access to the divine, was later pushed to the margins by religious authorities, and then stigmatised by medicine and psychiatry, before health authorities in several countries began to bring voice-hearers back into the community.[11]

## Context

### Within Spiritualism

Clairaudience is one of the recognised forms of Spiritualist mediumship. The National Spiritualist Association of Churches in the United States lists it among the "phenomena of Spiritualism"[12] and classes it as mental mediumship, in which what is received is interpreted by the medium.[2]

Its value lies in the evidence it can carry. The Spiritualists' National Union suggests that a person receiving a message ask whether the communicator was clearly identified, whether recent events were known, and whether the message was relevant.[13]

### In Australian Spiritualism

The Spiritualists National Union of WA describes "perception" as one of the two kinds of mental mediumship, in which the medium may see, hear or sense pictures, sounds or feelings.[14] Sydney and Melbourne examples follow below.

### A Spiritualist perspective

For a Spiritualist medium, clairaudience is one of the ways spirit communication may come: words, names or sounds heard inwardly and then interpreted by the medium. Because it is interpreted, an honest medium holds it lightly. What is heard may be partial or unclear, and a good medium says so rather than filling the gap with guesswork. A heard name is one piece of evidence to offer plainly and check with the recipient, never an instruction to obey or a prediction to act on.

A Spiritualist teacher would also be careful and kind about the wider subject of hearing voices. As the research above shows, many Spiritualist voice-hearers heard voices before they came to Spiritualism, and such experiences vary greatly. A circle is not the place to diagnose anyone, and not every voice should be put down to spirit. Where voices are distressing, frightening or unkind, or a person is struggling to cope, the right response is to encourage them, gently and without judgement, to see their GP or a mental health service. Spiritual development and good health care can go together, and a responsible teacher makes sure they do.

## Clairaudience in Australia

In his study of Sydney Spiritualism in the late 1970s, Gillen set clairaudience beside clairvoyance and clairsentience as modes of spirit perception. He noted that messages heard from spirit, like those spoken by a trance medium, were often phrased in an elevated, old-fashioned style and usually needed interpreting before they made sense to the person receiving them.[1] In the open development class he attended, prayer and readings were followed by a long silent meditation, after which members described what had come to them and the leader interpreted it.[1] The Victorian Spiritualists' Union lists clairaudience among the subjects it covers, alongside clairvoyance, healing and the afterlife.[15]

Australian services support people who hear voices without treating every voice-hearer as ill. Voices Vic, run by Uniting Vic.Tas in Melbourne, offers peer-led hearing voices groups, and states that up to one in ten people hear voices and that some find the experience encouraging or comforting while for others it is distressing.[16] HealthyWA refers people to the Hearing Voices Network Australia for support.[10]

## Safety and good practice

- HealthyWA advises that people whose hallucinations are ongoing and distressing should seek professional advice, and that anyone troubled by them should see their GP or mental health services to work out the cause.[10]
- Voices can sometimes be hurtful or threatening, which can be frightening.[16] In Gillen's Sydney study, 27 per cent of the Spiritualists in his sample reported having come under psychiatric attention or having had a "breakdown" at some time, a figure he thought high, and nearly all the mediums described a period of mental stress and crisis around the time they decided they had mediumistic powers.[1]
- The NSAC Code of Ethics asks its mediums to represent facts truthfully, make only realistic statements about mediumship, not exploit people's trust or play on their fears, and discuss any fee at the start.[17]

## Related modalities

- [Clairvoyance](https://spiritfold.com/Clairvoyance)
- [Mediumship](https://spiritfold.com/Mediumship)
- [Psychic reading](https://spiritfold.com/Psychic_reading)
- [Telepathy](https://spiritfold.com/Telepathy)
- [Spiritualism](https://spiritfold.com/Spiritualism)

## References

1. Gillen, Paul. *[The Spiritualists: Gnosis and Ideology](https://figshare.mq.edu.au/articles/thesis/The_spiritualists_gnosis_and_ideology/19431146/1)*. PhD thesis, School of Behavioural Sciences, Macquarie University, November 1981 (accessed 11 October 2026).
2. National Spiritualist Association of Churches. ["Mediumship"](https://nsac.org/mediumship/). NSAC, © 2026 (accessed 12 October 2026).
3. Moseley, P., A. Powell, A. Woods, C. Fernyhough and B. Alderson-Day. "Voice-Hearing Across The Continuum: A Phenomenology of Spiritual Voices". *Schizophrenia Bulletin* 48, no. 5 (2022): 1066–1074. [doi:10.1093/schbul/sbac054](https://doi.org/10.1093/schbul/sbac054). Open access (CC BY); abstract read via [Europe PMC](https://europepmc.org/article/MED/35733238) (accessed 11 October 2026).
4. Luhrmann, T. M., X. A. Chen, D. Baumeister and E. Peters. "When Spirit Calls: A Phenomenological Approach to Healthy Voice-Hearers". *Schizophrenia Bulletin Open* 4, no. 1 (2023): sgad025. [doi:10.1093/schizbullopen/sgad025](https://doi.org/10.1093/schizbullopen/sgad025). Abstract read via [Europe PMC](https://europepmc.org/article/MED/39145340) (accessed 11 October 2026).
5. Spiritualists' National Union. ["About Spiritualism"](https://snu.org.uk/about-us/about-spiritualism/) (no date shown; accessed 12 October 2026).
6. Tomlinson, Matt. *[Speaking with the Dead: An Ethnography of Extrahuman Experience](https://doi.org/10.53288/0465.1.00)*. Earth: punctum books, 2024, p. 62. Open access under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (accessed 12 October 2026).
7. Luhrmann, T. M., B. Alderson-Day, A. Chen and others. "Learning to Discern the Voices of Gods, Spirits, Tulpas, and the Dead". *Schizophrenia Bulletin* 49, Suppl. 2 (2023): S3–S12. [doi:10.1093/schbul/sbac005](https://doi.org/10.1093/schbul/sbac005). Abstract read via [Europe PMC](https://europepmc.org/article/MED/36840538) (accessed 11 October 2026).
8. Tomlinson, Matt. *[Speaking with the Dead: An Ethnography of Extrahuman Experience](https://doi.org/10.53288/0465.1.00)*. Earth: punctum books, 2024, p. 31. Open access under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (accessed 12 October 2026).
9. Spiritualists' National Union. ["Mediumship"](https://snu.org.uk/about-us/about-spiritualism/mediumship/) (no date shown; accessed 12 October 2026).
10. Government of Western Australia, Department of Health. ["Hallucinations and hearing voices"](https://www.healthywa.wa.gov.au/Articles/F_I/Hallucinations-and-hearing-voices). *HealthyWA* (no date shown; accessed 11 October 2026).
11. Evrard, R., B. Beauvais, A. Essadek, J. Lighezzolo-Alnot and C. Clesse. "Neither saintly nor psychotic: a narrative systematic review of the evolving Western perception of voice hearing". *History of Psychiatry* 35, no. 2 (2024): 177–195. [doi:10.1177/0957154x241231690](https://doi.org/10.1177/0957154x241231690). Abstract read via [Europe PMC](https://europepmc.org/article/MED/38424509) (accessed 11 October 2026).
12. National Spiritualist Association of Churches. ["Spiritualism Explained"](https://nsac.org/spiritualism-explained/). NSAC, © 2026 (accessed 12 October 2026).
13. Spiritualists' National Union. [*A Guide to Mediumship Provides Evidence of Life After Death*](https://snu.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Evidence.pdf) (leaflet). SNU Publications, © 2014 (accessed 12 October 2026).
14. Spiritualists National Union of WA. ["About Us"](https://www.snuwa.org.au/about/) (no date shown; accessed 12 October 2026).
15. Victorian Spiritualists' Union. ["About"](https://www.vsu.org.au/about-vsu) (no date shown; accessed 11 October 2026).
16. Uniting Vic.Tas. ["Voices Vic: Hearing voices support"](https://www.unitingvictas.org.au/services/mental-health/hearing-voices-support) (no date shown; accessed 11 October 2026).
17. National Spiritualist Association of Churches. [*NSAC Code of Ethics*](https://nsac.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/NSAC_Code_of_Ethics_18.pdf). Approved April 2018, adopted October 2018 (accessed 12 October 2026).

## Further reading

- Moseley, P. and others. ["Voice-Hearing Across The Continuum: A Phenomenology of Spiritual Voices"](https://doi.org/10.1093/schbul/sbac054). *Schizophrenia Bulletin*, 2022 (open access).
- Luhrmann, T. M. and others. ["When Spirit Calls: A Phenomenological Approach to Healthy Voice-Hearers"](https://doi.org/10.1093/schizbullopen/sgad025). *Schizophrenia Bulletin Open*, 2023.