Clairintuition, or psychic intuition, is the transpersonal psychic perception of intuitive impressions known as hunches, forebodings, warnings, or presages concerning people, situations, or events beyond one’s immediate personal circumstances, needs, or lived experience. These impressions may concern the past, present, or future, with future-oriented clairintuitive impressions experienced as premonitions. It is a purely intuitive form of psychic impression that does not have the cognitive, affective (emotional), or sensory-type features of the other psychic perception preferences or "clairs." A clairintuitive impression may relate to something that has already happened, something currently unfolding, or something yet to occur. When it concerns a future event or outcome, it is typically experienced as a premonition, presage, forewarning, or foreboding. Unlike innate survival instinct, ordinary psychological intuition and spiritual inner guidance, which all relate to our own physical safety and well-being, personal needs, life experiences and choices, and everyday circumstances, clairintuitive impressions are mental-metaphysical awareness experiences of nonlocal, nonsensory, and nonphysical information concerning the past, present, or future of other people and the wider world. Origins Of The Term "Clairintuition" I first introduced the term "clairintuition" to the general public in my book The Sensible Psychic (2022) to distinguish this specifically psychic form of intuitive awareness from ordinary personal intuition and from other psychic perception preferences or "clair senses." I first introduced the term "clairintuition" in my book The Sensible Psychic (2022) in an attempt to separate “the psychic substance from the intuitive fluff.” I created the term to distinguish intuitive-type psychic perceptions from everyday personal intuition or spiritual inner guidance, as well as from the other types of psychic perceptions or "clairs" such as claircognitive knowing, clairempathic feeling, and clairsomatic sensation. I had already been using the term clairintuition for many years as a way to reconcile my own experiences as a hereditary psychic medium with three troubling mainstream notions about intuition and authentic psychic perception: The confusion created by the rebranding of psychics as “intuitives.” The ill-conceived catch-all psychic concept known as “clairsentience.” The popular marketing claim that “everyone is psychic because everyone has intuition.” After decades of struggling with vague, contradictory, and recycled psychic terminology, I developed a new conceptual model of psychic perception that more accurately reflects both my own lived experience as a psychic medium and what I have observed in other practitioners and students over the years. Clear language matters because when intuition and psychic perception are treated as interchangeable concepts, gifted people can spend years misunderstanding the very abilities they are trying to develop, while mainstream society will continue to question our credibility. Maybe it is time to say the quiet part out loud and take back our true identity. We are psychic. Not just intuitive. Psychic. Not intuitive. Deal with it. The rebranding of psychics as “intuitives” that began in the 1980s may have been well-intended as a way for professional psychics and mediums to distance themselves from the negative “psychic” stereotypes portrayed in mainstream media. Sadly, however, it did not make psychic practitioners or their work any more credible. Quite the opposite. It further blurred public understanding of authentic psychic perception and created even more confusion about what psychics actually experience. Today, many professional psychics and mediums, including myself, are trapped in a proverbial no-man’s land between the terms psychic and intuitive. You see this confusion everywhere online: services advertised as “intuitive psychic readings,” courses promising to develop your “intuition and psychic abilities,” and social groups for “psychics and intuitives.” At some point someone has to ask: which is it exactly? Psychic ability or intuition? The terms are not synonymous. A vivid clairvoyant vision or distinct clairaudient voice is in my experience much more than a mere “intuition.” Why does it matter? Because representation matters. Clarity matters. Keeping it real matters. As social researcher Brené Brown observes, language is fundamental to meaning-making and self-awareness: “When we don’t have the language to talk about what we’re experiencing, our ability to make sense of what’s happening and share it with others is severely limited.” [20] In my experience, genuinely gifted people too often dismiss their innate psychic potential because of this kind of pop-culture gaslighting. have worked with psychic seekers and students who have struggled for years to master their unique psychic perception process because they fundamentally misunderstand the basics of psychic ability, perception, and channeling or reading. Newly awakened psychics and mediums can spend years trying to understand their true psychic ability because their development efforts are constantly redirected by myths, misconceptions, recycled folklore, and online fluff. It is impossible to learn to speak and write poetry fluently in a sophisticated language if everyone around you who claims to speak it is actually talking gobbledygook and gibberish. Maybe it is time to say the quiet part out loud and take back our true identity. We are psychic. Not just intuitive. There are no separate psychic “senses” or “reception” pathways, because psychics and mediums do not “sense” or “receive.” We perceive. Clairintuition: More Than A Clairsentience Spin-Off The second reason I coined the term clairintuition was the generic psychic ability known as clairsentience, which traditionally includes a mismatched and vague assortment of empathic emotions and mood states, physical sensations and medical symptoms, various forms of intuition, and in some definitions even cognition. I struggled to make sense of this odd buffet of “sub-clairs” for many years because, in my experience, psychic impressions typically labelled as "clairsentient" do not fit neatly into one box as a single “clair sense” or psychic ability. Instead, clairsentience is actually an umbrella concept used for three very distinct types of psychic impression: Clairintuition: premonition, presage, foreboding Clairsomatica: somatosensory, sensation, foresensing (also coined by me in The Sensible Psychic in 2022) Clairempathy: affective, emotional, feeling, presentiment (coined by Isaac Bonewits in Real Magic in 1989) My purpose in separating clairsentience into three distinct types of psychic perception was not to invent new terminology for its own sake, but to provide clearer, more representative, and more empowering language for the lived experiences of authentic psychics and mediums that have historically been grouped together under vague or inconsistent pop-culture labels. In my conceptual model of psychic perception, I also reframe the traditional “clairs” or “psychic senses” as psychic perception preferences rather than separate psychic “senses” or “reception” pathways. Because psychics and mediums do not “sense” or “receive.” We perceive. The 'Everyone Is Psychic' Marketing Ploy The third reason I created the term clairintuition is the popular claim in psychic pop culture that "everyone is psychic because everyone has intuition." I have personally never seen any evidence to support this claim. It does not resonate with my own lived experience as a hereditary psychic medium, nor have I witnessed this in my work with psychic development students and other authentic practitioners. In fact, what I have seen again and again is that some people quite simply have a far greater innate capacity for psychic perception than others, just as not everyone has the same natural aptitude for music, art, athletics, or mathematics. The "everyone is psychic" myth is, in my view, little more than a convenient marketing message to sell more courses, workshops, books, and training programs that promise almost anyone can become a proficient psychic practitioner. And it works because, like many persuasive beliefs, it is based on a half-truth. Yes, everyone is indeed intuitive. We all experience some form of inner guidance, instinctive knowing, or subconscious pattern recognition. Some of us acknowledge it, some of us don't. Either way, it does not automatically follow that everyone is therefore also psychic. The key distinction is the transpersonal nature of intuitive psychic perception. Ordinary intuition is personal and self-referential, guiding our own choices, decisions, safety, survival instincts and spirituality. But clairintuition is transpersonal. It is the intuitive awareness of nonlocal, nonsensory, and nonphysical information concerning other people, events, situations, or outcomes beyond your immediate personal experience. Turning a subtle self-referential human awareness faculty into evidence of a universal transpersonal psychic calling that applies to everyone is an injustice to those of us who are truly called and would like the world to take us a little more seriously. So, What Is Intuition Really? The term intuition derives from Latin intueri meaning ‘to look at, consider,’ and intuicioun meaning ‘insight, direct or immediate cognition, spiritual perception.’ The mainstream notion of ‘intuition’ is however rife with myth, misconception, and even controversy. This muddle is in part due to different fields using the term to represent different things. “Given this range of uses, nothing can be said about intuition in general,” remarks philosopher Richard Rorty.[1] For example, psychologists define intuition as unconscious thought, [2] or ‘unconscious pattern-matching cognition’ [3], while in spirituality and metaphysics intuition is customarily regarded as an innate spiritual knowledge. It is in fact described by mystics and spiritualists of many traditions throughout the ages [4], while occultists, esoteric scholars and metaphysicians conceive of it as the true ‘sixth sense.’ The phenomenon of 'intuition' or authentic psychic foreboding is generally misconceived by science and misconstrued in popular culture. This distinction matters because psychic perception has increasingly been reduced in popular spiritual culture to little more than “heightened intuition.” I disagree. Intuition is certainly one way psychic information may be consciously experienced, but it is only one preference among several. Psychic awareness can also manifest as knowing, emotion, bodily sensation, imagery, sound, smell, or taste. Dictionary definitions of intuition range from it being ‘direct access to unconscious knowledge,’ or ‘inner sensing and insight,’ to ‘unconscious cognition,’ or ‘the ability to understand something instinctively, without any need for conscious reasoning.’ For both the practicing and developing psychic or medium it is vital to understand the true nature and role of intuition in the context of authentic psychic perception, beyond these misconstrued popular notions. Everyone experiences ordinary intuition in three innate ways: Instinctive intuition (survival instinct): The biologically wired awareness that alerts us to danger in our immediate environment and helps protect our safety and well-being. It is a form of sentience rooted in the nervous system that we share with animals. Operating rapidly below conscious thought, it typically produces bodily signals such as unease, gut feelings, a sudden prickle of alarm, or an urge to flee before we consciously understand why. Psychological intuition (experiential or pattern-based intuition): The mind’s innate ability to draw on stored experience, knowledge, and pattern recognition to reach conclusions without logical thinking or deliberate reasoning. It is the subconscious information-processing capacity that enables a seasoned nurse, chess player, airline pilot, or parent to “just know” when something is wrong or what to do next in a challenging situation. Spiritual intuition (inner guidance): The inner voice, inner knowing, or innate spiritual awareness we experience as a connection to our higher self, soul, a higher power, or source of divine wisdom or universal consciousness. It is a sense of inner truth or divine inspiration that guides our values, purpose, and major life decisions. From a spiritual perspective, it represents the ongoing communication between our physical self and the larger, nonphysical aspect of our being that knows our soul plan, life purpose, and what is in our best interest. ​​ All three of these forms of intuitive awareness are personal and self-referential. They concern our own lives, safety, relationships, choices, or spirituality. People with psychic ability, however, experience another form of intuition that I call clairintuition. Why the distinction? Because psychic intuition has two unmistakable characteristics that set it apart: it is metaphysical and transpersonal. Clairintuition is metaphysical because it does not arise from anything in the perceiver’s immediate environment (nonlocal), it is not of physical origin, such as an adrenaline response or hearing an unusual sound (nonphysical), and it is not perceived through the five physical senses (nonsensory). ​ Clairintuition is transpersonal because, unlike other forms of intuitive awareness, it concerns someone or something beyond the perceiver’s immediate personal needs, circumstances, or life experience. A psychic or medium may, for example, experience a premonition concerning another person or an event that is going to occur, or a foreboding about circumstances in another time or place that do not directly involve them. ​ The difference is not that ordinary people never experience premonitions or precognitive impressions. They do. The distinction lies in the transpersonal and recurring nature of this kind of intuitive perception in people who have the innate capacity for psychic channeling or “reading.” Instinct, Intuition, And The Inner Voice Primitive man relied heavily on his everyday intuition. He thought in images and symbols, listened to his ‘inner voice,’ and followed his ‘gut.’ Early man fluently spoke the language of the soul, the metaphysical dialect of his spiritual origins. Intuition is the ‘native tongue’ of the mind-soul. It transcends the everyday time-space reality and the physical senses. We are all born with this innate ‘soul language,’ because we are spirit beings in human form. Orthodox science however typically argues that intuition is merely an ‘evolutionary intelligence’ that developed from our primitive, animalistic survival impulses and instincts. Statements like ‘rely on your instinct’ and ‘trust your gut’ are therefore often used interchangeably. It is typically assumed that instinct and intuition are the same thing, but this notion is based purely on a physical, ‘mind-brain’ view of consciousness and does not accurately reflect everyday intuitive experiences. Psychologist Marcie Boucouvalas writes “the intuitive realm has been functional since the dawn of humanity” and “we are all still pioneers and pilgrims on the pathway of better understanding human consciousness.” She believes it essential to transcend the traditional ‘either, or’ way of thinking about rational and intuitive modes of knowing. She adds however that “even if one accepts the validity of intuition, questions beckon.” Is the source of knowledge outside of and beyond the senses, located in a capacity of the human species that we do not yet fully understand? Or does it originate in the senses at a less than conscious level of awareness? [5] Neuropsychiatrist George Dearborn finds intuition is indeed “outside the range of physiology and neurology and is an unconscious process of the mind.” [6] Psychologist Mike Arons says the ‘problematic status’ of intuition is “somewhere between the instincts and the gods,” and the scientific ‘muddle’ around it is due to “skeptical rationalism which is a reactive pole to blind faith.” This has caused the notion of intuition to be either discounted or dismissed. He proposes instead that intuition is supraconscious and its study should thus include spiritual and transpersonal considerations, instead of only pure rationalism.” [7] The human body speaks in urges, impulses, and physical needs, while the soul speaks in premonitions, forebodings, hunches, and gut feelings. As spiritual beings we indeed have physical bodies with certain natural drives and impulses, like the ‘fight or flight’ response when we sense danger, or primal urges to seek out pleasure and avoid pain. These primal instincts have not evolved or changed much since prehistoric times. Despite our many modern advances and sophistication, we remain subject to our primitive instincts. [8] However, as you know from your own intuitive experiences (such as knowing who is calling you before the phone rings, or thinking of long-lost friends and later bumping into them) we cannot attribute all of our gut feelings, hunches, premonitions, and forebodings to mere ‘instinct,’ or a simplistic urge for ‘physical survival.’ In my experience instinct is the subconscious language of the mind-body, while intuition is the subliminal language of the mind-soul. The human body speaks in urges, impulses, and physical needs, while the soul speaks in premonitions, forebodings, hunches, and gut feelings. Intuition is an omniscient, archetypal, transcendental wisdom. It is the core dialect of our inner divinity, our spiritual origins, the eternal soul. We cannot fully access the sagacious, omniscient wisdom of the higher self, or divine self, or spirit through pure human intellect, logic, reason, and analytical thought alone. Instead, we need the ‘soul language’ of our metaphysical ‘inner guidance system.’ Intuition is an aspect of our spiritual essence; an awareness arising from our metaphysical resonance with the universal consciousness or the akashic field. We all experience this mind-soul resonance daily, in the form premonitions, forebodings, hunches, gut feelings, and so on. It is a soul language we are all born with, and it can be further fostered through various spiritual practices, such as meditation, dreamwork, and divination. Ralph Waldo Emerson says, “belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.” In the book Edgar Cayce on Religion and Psychic Experience, author Harmon Hartzell Bro writes that Cayce recommended that should we seek psychic experiences in our daily life, it should ideally be in the context of spiritual growth, learning about ourselves, or helping others. [9] Of course, as human beings, psychics and mediums also speak the everyday ‘soul language’ of intuition. However, when we channel or read, the intuitive impressions we perceive are not merely ‘inner guidance’ impressions, but instead clairintuitions. Clairintuitive psychic perceptions are not personal spiritual insights or private affirmations, but instead transpersonal and universal insights and affirmations, essentially resulting from an enhanced mind-soul dialect we are ‘wired’ to speak. Clairintuition is an expanded lexicon beyond the everyday language of the soul. It is a supernatural perception aptitude or gift, and not merely a form of ‘developed’ inner guidance. Why Psychic Ability Is More Than Mere Intuition It has become the trend in recent years for some psychic practitioners to refer to themselves as ‘sensitives’ or ‘intuitives,’ instead of using the term psychic. This is mainly a consequence of the negative connotations often associated with the word ‘psychic,’ especially in the mainstream media. For example, reporter Lisa Held writes, “while psychics have traditionally profited from claiming to predict the future or communicating with deceased relatives, many are now working in the general field of wellness, calling themselves ‘intuitives’ or ‘intuitive healers,’ who channel ‘energy’ that helps people discover what they want out of life.”[10] Intuitive counselor Susan King confirms, “I call myself an intuitive because I think it takes away any barriers and removes potential erroneous stereotyping.” [11] Journalist Sara Coughlin notes “as mystical as the professional title ‘intuitive’ might sound, the [intuitives] we spoke with described their abilities in highly sensible, practical terms. Intuition is like a muscle — you need to train it and use it regularly to maintain its strength. Intuition is best utilized if channeled through a more tangible medium, like numerology or tarot. And, most resoundingly, they also made it clear that everyone, spiritual or not, does have a sense of intuition that they can hone beyond that gut feeling. It's just up to the individual whether they choose to do so or not."[12] Psychic ability is an expanded capacity for supernatural perception that transcends the personal sphere of everyday intuition. Clairintuition is not merely a ‘honed gut feeling.’ Although it is indeed true that as spirit beings we all have a built-in capacity for intuition, authentic psychic channeling or reading is in my experience certainly not merely a form of ‘honed intuition.’ Everyone does experience precognition, presentiment, and premonition, because it serves to guide us on a daily basis as metaphysical beings on a spiritual mission — whether we are conscious of it, or not. However, this kind of everyday intuition is personal, private, and individual, and mostly focused on one’s own needs, as well as the welfare of your loved ones. In her best-selling book Anatomy of the Spirit: The Seven Stages of Power and Healing medical intuitive Carolyn Myss agrees, “intuition is neither the ability to engage prophesy nor a means of avoiding financial loss or painful relationships. It is the ability to use energy data to make decisions in the immediate moment.” Patent psychic ability or the expanded capacity for supernatural perception transcends the personal sphere of everyday intuition. Clairintuition is not merely a ‘honed gut feeling.’ In fact, many people often fail to recognize their gut feelings and tend to disregard their hunches — only to later realize its validity, or discover its true meaning (sometimes with disastrous, even tragic consequences). Psychics and mediums however perceive profound transpersonal impressions of clairintuition, mostly on behalf of others. Ironically, we tend to be better at channeling these perceptions for others, instead of for our own benefit! Intuition is an aspect of the inner guidance system or our ‘spiritual GPS,’ while psychic perception is transpersonal, prophetic, omniscient, and numinous. Clairintuitive perception is not merely developed inner guidance or ‘honed intuition.’ It is metaphysical gift of prophetic intuition on ‘supernatural steroids.’ The Difference Between Precognition And Premonition Researchers generally do not apply distinct, separate terms for various forms of predictive psychic perception, as parapsychology traditionally does not distinguish between different forms of prophetic psi. Instead, the term precognition is generally used as an umbrella term to represent all forms of foreknowing (claircognizance), foreseeing (clairvoyance), forefeeling (clairempathy), foresensing (clairsomatica), and foreboding or forewarning (clairintuition). However, psychics and mediums know from direct experience that using such a broad term for all these nuanced prophetic phenomena is an underestimation and a gross misrepresentation of predictive psychic perception. It is not as if new terms must be invented for these concepts, because appropriate, distinguishing terms for these predictive phenomena already exist in the dictionary! Classic terms like prescience, presentiment, premonition, and presage have been around for centuries, yet one is unlikely to find them in modern scientific papers, much less in psychic blogs and social media posts. Prescience: foreknowledge, advance insight, anticipation of the course of future events, divine omniscience. Presentiment: to feel beforehand, a foreboding, an intuitive feeling about the future, a feeling that something will happen, a feeling that misfortune or calamity is coming. Premonition: forewarning, advance warning, prior notice, a strong feeling that something is going to happen Presage: something that foreshadows or portends a future event, a foretoken, a prophetic foreboding, an intuition or feeling of what is going to happen in the future, something sensed beforehand. With the advent of a Newtonian worldview and mechanistic, reductive science, these long-standing, time-honored terms have regrettably become outmoded archaisms. Our ancestors conceived these linguistic concepts to communicate their everyday mystical experiences. Yet, you will not find these terms, for example, in the American Psychological Association’s (APA) online dictionary. [14] The only related terms I found listed are precognition, retrocognition and premonitory dream. It is in fact peculiar that in both psychology and psi research the concept of ‘premonition’ is mostly only found in the context of dream phenomena, as demonstrated by the aforementioned example. Science apparently accepts the possibility that premonitions may occur in dreams, and even in altered states of consciousness, but when a premonition or presentiment occurs in the realm of waking awareness, it can only be a conscious or unconscious ‘precognition.’ True psychic perception is so much more than mere ‘mind-brain’ cognition. In fact, the APA essentially agrees, as it states that cognition is only one of the three traditionally identified components of ‘mind,’ along with affect (feeling) and conation (motivation). Yet, when it comes to predictive psychic phenomena, only one of these three ‘components of mind,’ receives attention and recognition in parapsychology? To my knowledge the APA currently offers no ‘affective,’ nor ‘conative’ terminology for what it calls ‘the purported ability to see or experience future events through some form of extrasensory perception.’[15] I suspect the concept of precognition has been adopted as the preferred scholarly term because it is more empirically convenient and academically conceivable. The reductive notion of focusing on psi ‘cognition’ only, and the absence of clear terminological distinctions that reflect the fundamental differences between various clairsapient and clairsentient psychic perceptions, is in my view another result of the ‘arranged marriage’ between parapsychology and orthodox science. A recent neuroscience study proposes, for example, that all emotions are merely ‘cognitive states resulting from the gathering of information.’ Conscious experiences, regardless of their content, arise from one system in the brain. Specifically, the differences between emotional and non-emotional states are the kinds of inputs that are processed by a general cortical network of cognition, a network essential for conscious experiences.[16] But philosophers, spiritualists, metaphysicians, occultists, and mystics, including psychics and mediums, have through the ages always known we are not merely ‘computerized robots,’ or ‘information-processing machines.’ Instead, we are inspired, directed, guided, and protected every day by our feelings and intuitions — by ineffable, subjective, and mostly non-cognitive presentiments, premonitions, forebodings, forewarnings, hunches, and gut feelings. Yet, conventional science reduces these prophetic ‘qualia’ — that sometimes save lives and prevent disasters and tragedies — to one simplistic umbrella concept of ‘precognition’ and ‘anomalous cognition.’ On February 26, 1993, financial executive Barrett Naylor had a premonition, while stepping off a train in New York's Grand Central Station. He felt he should immediately turn around and go home. He followed this gut feeling, which probably saved his life, as later that day a bomb detonated below the World Trade Center, where his office was located. Amazingly, Naylor experienced a similar foreboding eight years later, on the morning of September 11, 2001. Once again, it saved his life. Later he confessed that he felt guilt and regret for not sharing his premonition with others, as he believes it might have helped to save more lives before the attack on the World Trade Center.[17] On the evening of Wednesday, March 1, 1950, a Nebraska church exploded five minutes after the weekly choir practice was supposed to start. Miraculously no one was injured, as the church building was inexplicably empty that evening. All the choir members were ‘coincidentally’ and unusually late for the weekly rehearsal.[18] Although some choir members had mundane reasons for being tardy, including car trouble and overnapping, others had no specific reason to explain why they were late that night.[19] Did the choir members all have a foreboding premonition? If so, it was a shared intuition that was either subconscious or unconscious, but certainly not something of which they were ‘cognitively’ aware. Yet, parapsychology calls it ‘precognition.’ I suspect the concept of precognition has been adopted as the preferred scholarly term because it is a more empirically convenient and academically conceivable concept, while ineffable, old-world notions like presage, presentiment and premonition are inconvenient carriers of esoteric, supernatural, numinous, or mystical connotations. But using terms like these to differentiate between sapient and sentient psychic impressions is necessary in developing a universal psychic vocabulary, as it more accurately reflects and represents our true psychic experiences. For example, not all psychics and mediums have a claircognitive psychic preference for ‘foreknowing.’ They might not necessarily ‘know’ or ‘understand’ something beforehand, but they do ‘feel’ or ‘sense’ it, or even ‘see, hear, taste, or smell’ it. Psychic mind-soul perception is much more than mere ‘mind-brain cognition.’ To clarify the intuition 'muddle' it is therefore necessary for the concept of clairintuition to be clearly differentiated from other types of prophetic or predictive psychic impressions. For a more accurate new conceptual model of psychic perception, I therefore propose the following terms to distinguish distinct types of prophetic or predictive psychic impressions, according to the relevant ‘clair’ preference: Premonition: clairintuitive foreboding Precognition: claircognitive,prescient foreknowing Presentiment: clairempathic, affective forefeeling Prognosis: clairsomatic, somatosensory foresensing Presage: clairsensory apprehensions of foreseeing, forehearing, foresmelling; foretasting; foretouching Excerpt from The Sensible Psychic: A Leading-Edge Guide To True Psychic Perception. © 2022 Anthon St. Maarten REFERENCES [1] Rorty, R. (2021). Intuition. Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Encyclopedia.com. [2] Sinclair, M. (2011). Intuition And Unconscious Thought. Handbook Of Intuition Research. Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd [3] Rosenblatt A.D. & Thickstun, J.T. (1994). Intuition And Consciousness. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly. [4] Intuition. (2018). New World Encyclopedia. NewWorldEncyclopedia.org. [5] Davis-Floyd, R & Arvidson, P.S. (2016). Intuition: The Inside Story: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Routledge. [6] Dearborn, G. V. N. (1916). Intuition. Psychological Review. [7] Arons, M. (1993). Instinct, Intuition And Supraconscious: De-Alienating Reflections. The Humanistic Psychologist. [8] Nicholson, N. (1998). How Hardwired Is Human Behavior? Harvard Business Review. [9] Harmon, H. (1970). Edgar Cayce On Religion And Psychic Experience. Paperback Library. [10] Held, L. (2019). Psychic Mediums Are The New Wellness Coaches. The New York Times. Nytimes.com [11] Garfinkel, P. (2015). Don’t Call Her A Psychic: ‘Intuitive Counselor’ Susan King Sets Up Shop At Hotel Bel-Air. Los Angeles Times. [12] Coughlin, S. (2018). We Asked 5 Spiritual Workers To Define ‘Intuition’ - Here's What They Said. Refinery29.com [13] Myss, C. (1996) Anatomy of the Spirit: The Seven Stages of Power and Healing. Harmony. [14] APA Dictionary Of Psychology. (2021) American Psychological Association. Dictionary.apa.org [15] Precognition. (2021). APA Dictionary Of Psychology. American Psychological Association. Dictionary.apa.org 16] New York University. (2017) Emotions Are Cognitive, Not Innate, Researchers Conclude. ScienceDaily. [17] Naylor, B. 20/20: The Sixth Sense: ‘Seeing The Future’. Oct 26, 2012. ABC News. [18] Nichols, L. (2010). Remember The Miracle: Church Explosion 60 Years Ago Not Forgotten. Beatrice Daily Sun. [19] Edeal, G. (1950). Why the Choir Was Late. Life Magazine. [20] Brown, B. (2021). Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Anthon St. Maarten is a psychic medium and destiny coach with a global clientele of thought leaders, business executives, celebrities, politicians, academics, and luminaries in the arts and sciences in more than thirty countries spanning five continents.

Clairsomatica, or psychic somatosensation, is the perception of bodily sensations and symptoms without an identifiable physical source. Traditionally considered nothing more than a type of clairsentience and sometimes incorrectly described as clairtangency, psychometry or clairkinesthesia, these psychic impressions include a range of nonphysical sensations of touch, pressure, vibration, temperature, pain, proprioception, and other bodily perceptions. The psychic perception of physical sensations is traditionally grouped under the broad and often confusing label of clairsentience, together with emotional or empathic impressions, intuitive forebodings, and even cognitive knowings. After decades of struggling to reconcile these conflicting concepts with my own everyday psychic experiences, I came to understand this category of psychic impressions as a distinct form of psychic perception worthy of its own label and definition. I therefore coined the term clairsomatica to describe this specifically somatic form of psychic perception and introduced it to the world as part of my new conceptual model of psychic perception in my book The Sensible Psychic (2022). In this new model, the traditional “clairs” are not treated as separate psychic “senses” or "pathways of reception," but instead as psychic perception preferences through which different psychics and mediums tend to consciously perceive and experience psychic impressions. Why did I choose to break away from the traditional “clair senses” model? Because it is based on myth and folklore and does not accurately reflect what we know from millennia of spiritual wisdom, well over a century of psychic research, and the everyday lived experience of psychics and mediums around the world. It took me many years of study, research, personal reflection, professional experience (and much confusion and frustration), to eventually figure out why the old model really does not make much sense at all (pun intended). The traditional “clairs” or psychic “senses” model pigeonholes psychic feeling, knowing, sensation, and intuition into a restrictive, outmoded sensory-based model of psychic perception. The truth is that psychics and mediums do not have different psychic senses or sensory "reception" pathways. Psychic perception is by its very nature nonlocal, nonsensory, and nonphysical. Psychics and mediums do not “sense.” We also do not "receive." We perceive. Despite many highly empathic and medically sensitive psychics and mediums experiencing these impressions daily as part of their lived experience, the phenomenon has never been adequately acknowledged as a distinct form of psychic perception, to the extent that it did not even have an appropriate name of its own. This lack of an appropriate term has done the work of some of the world’s most gifted medical mediums, energy healers, and forensic psychics a gross injustice. Until now. Traditionally, this remarkable and very useful type of psychic perception preference was mistakenly referred to either as clairtangency (psychic touch), or psychometry, or more recently clairkinesthesia, or merely considered to be a “subtype” under the ill-conceived umbrella term known as clairsentience. The Clairtangency Myth Clairtangency as a catch-all term is totally inadequate in this context, as it linguistically refers to only one aspect of physical sensation, namely touch or tactile perception. Psychic bodily sensations, however, are not experienced only as impressions of “touch,” but also as perceptions of pain, temperature, proprioception, and pressure. Labelling all psychic sensation perceptions as “clairtangent” therefore makes no sense. The Psychometry Myth Psychometry, also known as object reading or psychoscopy, is traditionally seen as the psychic ability to perceive information about a person, place, or event by handling an associated object, typically in the form of a personal belonging such as jewelry or clothing, a family heirloom, or a photograph. While psychometric psychic reading is very valuable as a psychic reading technique, it is not in itself a form of psychic perception. It is a merely psychic reading practice or method, just as scrying with a crystal ball or drawing a tarot card are reading practices or methods rather than forms of actual psychic perception. The Clairsentience Myth Clairsentience is traditionally understood to be a common or generic psychic ability that includes a mismatched and vague assortment of empathic emotions and mood states, various physical sensations and medical symptoms, as well as all forms of intuition, and in some instances even cognitions. I struggled to make sense of this odd buffet of “sub-clairs” for many years because, in my experience, psychic impressions typically labelled as “clairsentient” do not represent a single “clair sense” or psychic ability. Instead, clairsentience is actually a single term used for three very distinct types of psychic impression preference. Clairsomatica: somatosensory, sensation, foresensing Clairintuition: premonition, presage, foreboding Clairempathy: affective, emotional, feeling, presentiment (coined by Isaac Bonewits in Real Magic in 1989) The proof of the pudding is simple: if you ask authentic psychic empaths and somatics, they will tell you that not every empathic psychic is clairsomatic, nor is every somatic psychic necessarily clairempathic. So why, then, would we think of them all as “clairsentient” when their lived experiences are so different? The Clairkinesthesia Myth Clairkinesthesia is a bizarre new term that recently entered the online psychic vernacular. TPhe term kinesthesia refers to the perception of bodily movement and position, closely related to proprioception. The notion of "clairkinesthesia” expands this into a psychic perception concept that is vaguely defined as mish-mash of “physical sensations, vibrations, shifts in energy and movements in the body" which simply makes no sense at all. If a psychic impression specifically involves an apparent sense of movement or bodily position, it is more accurately understood as a kinesthetic or proprioceptive clairsomatic impression, not an entirely separate “clair sense.” Origins Of The Term 'Clairsomatica' The term clairsomatica distinguishes somatosensory or somatic perception from all the other psychic perception preferences. Somatic means ‘pertaining to the body.’ It derives from French somatique and directly from the Latinized form of Greek sōmatikos, ‘of the body,’ as well as from sōma or sōmatos meaning ‘the body.’ The somatosensory system in the human body involves the perception of touch, pressure, pain, temperature, position, movement, and vibration. It is spread throughout the body and consists of sensory receptors and neurons in the skin, muscle, and organs, as well as the central nervous system. Somatosensation is a mixed sensory category of physical sensations, which includes: mechanoreception (touch, pressure, vibration) thermoreception (temperature) proprioception (motion, body position) equilibrioception (balance) nociception (pain) Clairsomatica therefore encompasses all forms of psychic somatosensation typically perceived by psychics and mediums as impressions or embodiments of touch, pressure, vibration, temperature, proprioception, pain, and other bodily sensations and medical symptoms. Clairsomatic perceptions commonly experienced by clairsomatic psychics and mediums include: tickling sensations in various areas of the body, but especially the face, back, neck, and hands pressure on the crown of the head chills or goose bumps hair standing on end sensations of being touched or even pushed sudden temperature changes in rare instances sensations of physical trauma, or even ‘blows’ to the body. A haunting example of clairsomatica is reported in the case of the Stans Poltergeist in Switzerland in the 1860’s. Suddenly I felt a soft rustling of the hairs on my left temple, as if caused by a playing finger. Thinking that someone wanted to wake me, I grasped at it with my left hand and felt a soft warm little hand - I felt quite distinctly the thumb and finger. As I did, so it softly withdrew in the direction of the window, where I saw, in sharp relief against the shutters, a dark shape moving slowly backwards and forwards.[1] For awakening clairsomatics these embodied psychic sensations can be unpleasant, disconcerting, even disturbing and traumatic at times. Exceptionally gifted clairsomatics experience all manner of temperature changes, unusual aches and pains, physical discomforts, ‘creepy’ sensations, and a plethora of medical symptoms, including pain, headache, nausea, fatigue, tinnitus, and vertigo. The Phenomenon Of Shared Ghost Symptoms For some this psychic preference can create challenges in their personal life, as some clairsomatics, despite being in perfect health, can ‘feel physically sick’ or experience shared ghost symptoms with a partner, close friend or relative who is suffering an actual illness or disease. Clairsomatics sometimes even experience this psychic version of an 'ailment' without being aware of the other person’s condition. One of the unpleasant ways I sometimes experience this phenomenon is when I do a reading for someone who has a cold, the flu, seasonal allergies, or is simply a heavy smoker. I have, for example, experienced burning sensations in my chest; felt congested and suddenly began to cough inexplicably; and I have even felt my eyelids and nose itching, and so on. There have been times when I would physically ‘choke up’ as I start talking to a client on the phone; or I might develop a headache; or feel intense anxiety, as I prepare to call them. I recall a funny episode when a client awkwardly apologized to me when this happened: “Sorry, I was so nervous to talk to you, I chain-smoked several cigarettes before you called!’ As a child, I frequently had distressing clairsomatic experiences. For example, I felt physically ill and extremely uncomfortable in the presence of people who were suffering from an illness. I was even hospitalized due to this on at least two occasions that I know of. The doctors’ official explanation at the time was that I suffered from some sort of ‘asthma,’ but today I know it was due to an anxiety response brought on by extreme experiences of clairsomatica. Some clairsomatics can experience shared ghost symptoms with a partner, close friend or relative who is suffering an actual illness or disease. I also vividly remember the specific clairsomatic experience that prompted me to consciously begin suppressing these unpleasant impressions. I was attending a children’s theatre performance when I was about ten years old. I was sitting a couple of seats away from a girl about my age, who I later noticed had a broken arm in a cast. It started with me feeling a numb, aching pain and an itching sensation in my right arm, which I perceived for the duration of the show, and quite some time after. Eventually my discomfort became so unbearable, I leaned forward in my seat, with my aching arm bent under my chest, in an attempt to relieve the discomfort. Then I looked over to the side and noticed a cast on the girl’s arm. I instantly experienced another clairsomatic sensation, in which I felt myself ‘falling,’ and then I clearly felt the ‘cracking’ blow to my arm. It was so vivid, it made me sit back up in shocked surprise! The incident was a very unsettling experience at a time in my life when I was old enough to realize for the first time that I could physically ‘feel’ what other people feel. I certainly did not want to have another experience like that, so I deliberately began to suppress my clairsomatic perceptions, and somehow became quite skilled at blocking it out as I grew older. These days, I am less distressed and proactive in managing these experiences, but I generally still make efforts to avoid it. Clairsomatica is something I have never fully embraced, much less attempted to further develop, despite the fact that many clients and friends have told me over the years that they experience a sense of well-being when I’m around, or that I exude some sort of ‘healing energy’ when I channel for them. It certainly explains why strangers tend to follow me around in public places and constantly gravitate towards being in my personal space. Mediumistic Perception Of The Cause Of Death In mediumship readings, I sometimes experience a more tolerable version of clairsomatica, when I perceive the deceased person’s cause of death. For example, I might feel pressure or tension in the area of my chest, which usually indicates a heart attack, or a sensation of discomfort in the lower part of my torso, which signifies a lung condition or difficulty breathing, and so on. I have also felt ‘blows’ to my body, which usually indicates some sort of accident or violent trauma. I only experience these physical causes of death in ways that are already familiar to me. In other words, I know what chest pain, or the sensation of respiratory inflammation feels like, but I do not have first-hand experiences of what it feels like to be ‘run over by a truck,’ for example. In such cases, I might perceive the information as another type of psychic impression, such as a clairvoyant vision, for example. I recently did a reading for someone whose mother had been brutally murdered several years ago. The client later explained that the perpetrator not only shot the victim, but also drove over her lifeless body with his truck. I have obviously never experienced anything like this myself, so instead of physically embodying this cause of death, I instead perceived a clairvoyant memory flash of a similar scene in the television series The Righteous Gemstones (2019), which I had been binge watching at the time. Not knowing what had happened to her mother, this unusual vision initially seemed bizarre to me, but the client instantly understood its significance. The Emerging Science Of Body Psi Parapsychology research data for clairsomatic perception is limited and traditionally focused mostly on its role in extreme psi or ‘paranormal’ phenomena, such as spirit possessions, poltergeists, and physical mediumship, as well as mental health pathology...and apparently with much skepticism. For example, physician William Hammond, an outspoken critic of spiritualism, who considers mediumship a ‘mental illness,’ argues that the psychic impressions of being ‘touched’ that some mediums attribute to spirit activity are “merely symptoms of nervous derangement of some kind.”[2] Parapsychologist Christine Hardy however confirms data from spontaneous cases and informal investigations suggest that psi information is indeed sometimes ‘felt’ by the receiver. She calls it a tele-empathicsensation that matches the sender's experience. According to Hardy, this concept of ‘body-psi’ has been formally explored in experiments (such as remote staring), to demonstrate the autonomic system reacts to unconscious psi information.[3] Parapsychologist Dean Radin reports psychophysiology has become increasingly important in the study of various psychic phenomena. Psychophysiology studies mind-body interaction using empirical techniques to identify correlations between inner, subjective experience and objective, measurable bodily responses, such as that of the nervous and cardiovascular systems. Radin says this approach provides objective ways to probe the unconscious mind, which is where psychic information is thought to first arise.[4] Such impressions, operating below the level of conscious awareness, can manifest as subtle changes in the body and may be noticed in the form of chills, stomach clenching or other visceral sensations, heart palpitations, and the presence of goose bumps.[5] Radin concludes that studying these types of psi phenomena are challenging, but that it is viable and that there is a growing interest in this research approach in both psychology and the neurosciences. Detection of unconscious influences in bodily reactions does not provide the same type or level of detail that is available to conscious awareness. But it does provide a way to explore mental activity that is otherwise not available. Using such techniques, telepathy has been explored by looking for correlations in brain activity between pairs of isolated or distant friends. Clairvoyance and precognition have been studied by measuring changes in brain activity, heart rate, skin conductance, and pupil dilation when a person accurately versus inaccurately describes targets distant in space or time. Precognition has been studied by measuring physiological responses before being exposed to unpredictable stimuli.[6] The Odd Relationship With Poltergeist Phenomena Clairsomatic symptoms have interestingly been found to have an inverse relationship with poltergeist activity, which modern researchers argue might be evidence of alterations in the psychophysiology of the so-called poltergeist ‘agent.’ A poltergeist is traditionally believed to be a mischievous ghost or a supernatural being that is responsible for physical disturbances, such as making loud noises and moving objects. The German term poltergeist literally means ‘noisy spirit,’ from poltern ‘make noise, rattle’ and geist ‘ghost.’ The modern hypothesis for poltergeist phenomena is however that it is due to psychokinetic influence by a living ‘agent,’ instead of it being a spirit haunting. Poltergeist phenomena are typically linked to a specific living person, and it usually only happens in the presence of that person.[7] Parapsychologist William Roll finds that when an agent exhibits certain psycho-physical symptoms, the poltergeist phenomena often tend to calm down, or even subside completely. Roll identified this oddity in at least three poltergeist cases he investigated. For example, in one case the paranormal activity subsided after the agent had suffered a bout of epileptic seizures that required hospitalization, and only resumed again once he was treated for it.[8] In another case the poltergeist activity abated when the agent suffered migraine headaches and vomiting episodes, and only flared up again once she had received treatment for these symptoms.[9] The Funtional Necessity Of Psychic Hygiene I find the above poltergeist discovery intriguing in the context of my own psychic practice. I believe psychic channeling, mediumship, and energy healing are a calling, and that regularly practicing these gifts or abilities enhances the health and well-being of the practitioner. In fact, I find it odd when other psychics, mediums, and healers complain about constantly ‘feeling drained’ due to the energy demands of their work. For me, the experience is quite the opposite. I find psychic channeling rather energizes me and improves my health and well-being (unless I really overdo it by working too much). It is in fact when I am not working for lengthy periods of time that my health and well-being begins to suffer. I therefore compare psychic work to ‘going to the gym,’ or ‘donating blood.’ It promotes the psychic or medium’s health and well-being. I believe psychic channeling improves auric integrity and balances the flow of chi (universal life force) in the psychic, medium, or healer’s energy field. Psychics and mediums are ‘wired’ to channel or read, and if we do not do it on a regular basis, both our mental and physical health and wellness begin to suffer. In fact, I consider it a functional spiritual necessity, or even a kind of ‘metaphysical hygiene.’ Frequent psychic channeling improves auric integrity and balances the flow of chi (universal life force) in the psychic, medium, or healer’s energy field. I further suspect this may be an underlying cause of mental and physical health problems for many spiritually ‘gifted’ people, especially those who are lazy and negligent, in denial, or simply resistant to their metaphysical abilities. I know of a few colleagues who experienced a marked improvement in their health and well-being once they embraced their psychic ability, overcame their hesitance, or resolved their lack of self-trust and self-worth and began to consistently practice psychic, mediumship, or energy healing work. I further believe science might discover new avenues of understanding should it begin to approach psychic phenomena more often from a premise of it being adaptive, rehabilitative, purposeful, healing, or even divinely ordained, instead of attributing it to psychosomatic neuroses, psychopathology, or neurological malfunction. Clairsomatica As A Form Of Crisis Impression Similar to clairempathic phenomena, clairsomatica is also reported in cases of crisis impression, where subjects experience ‘shared illness’ or ‘dying symptoms’ at the time of the crisis. For example, a man whose father was dying was awakened at the exact time of his passing by intense feelings of ‘suffocation,’ while his father was in fact drawing his final breaths in a distant location. I remember grabbing my mouth, forcing it open to help me breathe. I was fighting for all I was worth, but the pains were now unbearable.[10] Author Paul Hawker reports the case of a woman who was awakened one night by the sound of her ‘heart breaking.’ I know it sounds really odd, but that's what it was. I heard it crack and felt my chest sort of splitting. The next day, while driving to work, she suddenly felt a sensation of 'pressure' on the side of her face. I distinctly remember the pressure was that of a cheek lightly pressed against mine, sort of cuddling me. The feeling I was filled with at this time was one of love and support — it felt fine. I then felt a hand holding my hand and 'felt' it had no middle finger. I knew this because there was no pressure in this area. And then it dawned on me. I realized it was my dad's hand; he'd lost his middle finger in a building site accident.[11] Later that day, her husband informed her that her father had passed away during the night from a heart attack. Claisomatica In Psychokinesis Experiments Clairsomatica has also been documented in a successful series of psychokinesis experiments conducted from 2013 to 2015 in an Argentinian laboratory with a factory worker named Ariel Farias, who had the ability to raise a table’s legs off the floor by simply placing his hands on it. What makes this study notable in terms of clairsomatica is that Farias reported ‘feeling a sensation of heat’ in his hands whenever he was able to lift the table. However, temperature measurements showed his hands and forearms were in fact cold while he was performing telekinesis, leading researchers to conclude that the experience of heat in his hands is a purely subjective sensation.[12] Farias also reported feeling as if he was ‘merging with the table’ during successful trials. The very moment the table began to move, he felt sensations similar to those felt by an airline passenger when the plane takes off. He also said that when the table leg rises, it’s ‘similar to when you put on your shoes; at the beginning you feel the difference between bare and covered skin, but in a few seconds, you forget this difference and begin to feel the shoes as a part of you.’ He also described the inverse sensation (removing one’s shoes) when the force disappears, and the table leg falls down to the floor.[13] Is Clairsomatica A Parallel To Mirror-Synesthesia? A possible scientific parallel to clairsomatica can be found in studies of a special form of synesthesia known as mirror-synesthesia or pain synesthesia. Mirror-synesthetes feel a matching sensation in the same part of their body as another person. Seeing someone else being pinched on the cheek, for example, would cause the mirror-synesthete to feel a similar sensation in their own cheek. These studies not only provide unmistakable evidence for the existence of this type of synesthesia,[14] but also that it is not merely a form of vicarious empathy [15] and that it correlates with increased levels of emotional empathy.[16] Neurologist and researcher Joel Salinas estimates about 1.5% of the general population experiences this phenomenon, which he describes as a neurological trait, instead of it being a ‘disorder.’ Salinas, known as ‘the doctor who can feel your pain,’ is himself a mirror-synesthete. He says it enables him to feel the emotional and physical experiences of his patients. He describes it as a ‘heightened empathic ability’ that offers him invaluable clues about how to see life from other people’s perspective.[17] Just walking around every day, I feel strangers hurting, and I feel it so thoroughly and completely ~ Megan Pohlman Journalist Erika Hayasaki reports the case of mirror-synesthete Carolyn Hart who wanted to become a physical therapist, but the pain and discomfort she would have to constantly share with her patients would have been too much for her to tolerate, so she became a massage therapist instead. Hart describes her “most flagrant mirror-sensorial perception” as “pain shooting down my legs when I see other people’s wounds and injuries.” When she sees another person being touched, she experiences ‘a gentle perception that tickles her skin.’ She also perceives similar sensations whenever she sees another person being bumped or shoved. But, if the contact becomes more aggressive, for example if I witness a person body-slammed, then I don’t feel that ticklish exteroceptive sensation. Instead, I will feel what I call synesthesia-for-pain…which feels like bolts of electricity coursing down the back of my legs.[18] Synesthete Maureen Seaberg describes the similar case of Megan Pohlman, a pediatric nurse who literally feels the pain of her young patients. Pohlman says, “just walking around every day, I feel strangers hurting, and I feel it so thoroughly and completely.” Allan Doctor, a pediatric intensive care physician who has worked with Pohlmann for many years, says her abilities are indeed remarkable. For example, nurses often ask for additional pain medicine or sedation when a child has high blood pressure or heart rate, which then prompts him to investigate whether the cause is, in fact, pain, or something else, like a fever. “Megan’s reliability in sensing when they really are in pain or anxious, versus other causes, is unusually acute.”[19] Excerpt from The Sensible Psychic: A Leading-Edge Guide To True Psychic Perception. © 2022 Anthon St. Maarten REFERENCES [1] Joller, M. (2015). Stans (Switzerland) Poltergeist. Psi Encyclopedia. The Society for Psychical Research. [2] Hammond, W.A. (1876). Spiritualism And Allied Causes And Conditions Of Nervous Derangement. G.P. Putnam’s. [3] Hardy, C. (2000) Psi As A Multilevel Process: Semantic Fields Theory. The Journal of Parapsychology. [4] Carpenter, J. (2012). First Sight: ESP And Parapsychology In Everyday Life. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. [5] Beloff J. & Rhine, J. B. (1981). On The Nature Of Psi. Journal of Parapsychology. [6] Radin, D. (2016). Presentiment. Psi Encyclopedia. The Society for Psychical Research. [7] Williams, B. (2019). Psychological Aspects In Poltergeist Cases. Psi Encyclopedia. The Society for Psychical Research. [8] Solfvin, G. F. & Roll, W. G. (1976). A Case Of RSPK With An Epileptic Agent. Parapsychology Review. [9] Roll, W. G. & Tringale, S. (1983). A Haunting-Type RSPK Case In New England. Research in Parapsychology. Scarecrow Press. [10] Fenwick, P & Fenwick, E. (2008). The Art of Dying. Bloomsbury Academic. [11]Hawker, P. (2000). Secret Affairs Of The Soul: Ordinary People's Extraordinary Experiences Of The Sacred. Wood Lake Publishing Inc. [12] Braude, S. E (2018). Ariel Farias. Psi Encyclopedia. The Society for Psychical Research. [13] Gimeno, J. & Burgo, D. (2017). Laboratory Research On A Presumably PK-Gifted Subject. Journal Of Scientific Exploration. [14] Ward J. & Banissy M.J. (2015). Explaining Mirror-Touch Synesthesia. Cognitive Neuroscience. [15] Rothen N. & Meier B. (2013). Why Vicarious Experience Is Not An Instance Of Synesthesia. Frontiers In Human Neuroscience. [16] Ward, J. et.al. (2018) The Relationship Between Mirror-Touch Synaesthesia And Empathy: New Evidence And A New Screening Tool. Cognitive Neuropsychology. [17] Salinas, J. (2017). Mirror Touch: Notes from a Doctor Who Can Feel Your Pain. HarperOne. [18] Hart, C.C. (2017) Reflecting on Mirror-Touch. Carolyncchart.com [19] Seaberg, M. (2018). Meet the Nurse Whose Superpower Is Feeling Your Pain – Literally. Glamour.com. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Anthon St. Maarten is a psychic medium and destiny coach with a global clientele of thought leaders, business executives, celebrities, politicians, academics, and luminaries in the arts and sciences in more than thirty countries spanning five continents. He is also a metaphysics teacher, psychic development coach, podcaster, and spiritual blogger. Anthon is a hereditary psychic medium in professional practice since 2004 and a liberal arts post-graduate with a major in psychology. Anthon publishes the spiritual life design blog, The S Word, and is the author of Divine Living: The Essential Guide To Your True Destiny and The Sensible Psychic: A Leading-Edge Guide To True Psychic Perception.

Clairolfaction, also known as psychic smelling, is the perception of scents, odors or aromas without an identifiable physical source. This rare form of psychic perception preference has also acquired a rather extravagant collection of alternative names in modern esoteric and metaphysical usage, including clairalience, clairscent, clairessence, clairfragrance, clairaroma, clairosmia, clairolfactance, clairolfacience, and clairosmesis. Psychic smell, or clairolfaction, is a lesser-known psychic impression preference or "clair sense" involving olfactory or smell perceptions. These unusual perceptions may include anything from pleasant fragrances and familiar or nostalgic scents to unpleasant smoke, chemicals, decay, or putrid odors. In mediumship and trance channeling, these perceptions are most often associated with deceased individuals or spiritual presences. In channelled psychic readings, however, clairolfactory impressions are perceived as nonsensory psychic impressions that carry symbolic meaning or medical significance for the client or sitter. In medical science, unexplained smell perceptions are known as phantosmia or cacosmia and are not considered spiritual or supernatural in origin. This differs from the experiences reported by many psychics and mediums through the ages. The term olfaction means "the sense or faculty of smell," derived from Latin olfacere, meaning “to smell” or “to get the smell of.” The term clairolfaction therefore combines the traditional psychic prefix clair, French for “clear,” with olfaction, the established scientific term for the sense of smell. This is the term I use in my writing, research and psychic education work because it is the most precise and linguistically defensible. Clairolfaction was used by author and scholar Isaac Bonewits as far back as 1970s as part of his broader system of “clair senses" that is now used by many modern-day psychics and mediums. Bonewits also coined the terms clairgustance and clairtangency, and introduced clairempathy to distinguish emotional psychic perception from the much broader catch-all term clairsentience. However, despite the availability of this perfectly sensible term for one of the rarest forms of psychic perception, an extraordinary number of competing names and misconceptions inexplicably exist in contemporary folklore for essentially the same psychic phenomenon. At last count, I have identified at least ten such skunked terms: Clairalience seems to be the term that is most widely used these days, usually justified by the false claim that alience is French for “smelling.” It is not. No dictionary (French or English) has an entry for it, and my research over the past two decades has not once turned up a single etymological reference to support the idea that "alience" is a real, standalone word meaning smell or smelling. Actual French words for smelling are instead terms like sentir, flairer, or odorat...nothing resembling "alience." I suspect the term clairalience may be a mash-up of 'clair-' with a misheard echo of 'olfaction', or simply as a word invented to sound French or Latin. At some point, it made sense to someone, or sounded cool, and it eventually caught on. I have also not been able to pinpoint when exactly this concoction was invented. Clairscent derives from scent, which has roots in Old French sentir, meaning “to feel, smell, taste, or perceive,” and Latin sentire, “to perceive or sense.” It is maybe more easily understood as a an English word, but scent refers to a a smell or odor...not the faculty or process of smelling itself. Clairfragrance falls into the same trap and is even more restrictive because fragrance implies a pleasant smell, whereas clairolfactory psychic perceptions can often be very nasty and unpleasant. Clairaroma has the same limitation. An aroma is generally understood as a noticeable, often pleasant smell and therefore does not adequately describe the full range of psychic smell perceptions. There is nothing automatically 'nice' about clairolfactory psychic impressions that we should confidently refer to them as clairscents, clairfragrances, or even clairaromas. In fact, quite the contrary! These perceptions can be really nasty and putrid. Clairessence appears to draw on the perfume-related meaning of essence, particularly distilled oils and fragrances, but essence primarily refers to the intrinsic nature or character of an aroma, rather than the actual faculty of smell. Clairosmia incorporates the Greek-derived osmia, relating to smell. It makes sense linguistically, but -osmia is also used extensively in medical terminology for neurological and psychiatric conditions associated with altered smell perception that are not representative of the psychic phenomenon. These medical terms include: • Anosmia (no smell) • Hyposmia (reduced smell) • Hyperosmia (heightened smell) • Parosmia (distorted smell) • Phantosmia (phantom smell) • Dysosmia (abnormal smell) Clairosmesis is the lesser of evils. It derives from Greek osmesis and osmasthai, meaning to “smell” or “perceive by smell.” It is linguistically fine, but osmesis is an obscure term, far less familiar than olfaction, and it is also used in medical contexts. To modern English readers it is additionally easy to confuse with the word "osmosis." Clairolfaction is simply more established and more immediately understandable. Clairolfactance and clairolfacience are no doubt the worst of the bunch. They are obviously Frankenstein hybrids of olfaction. The words "olfactance" and "olfacience" simply does not exist in English. Psychics and mediums already face enough skepticism, scorn, and ridicule. We really do not need to add poor vocabulary to the mix by using silly words like 'olfactance' and 'olfacience', which you will not find in any reputable English dictionary. After a lifetime of lived psychic experiences and more than two decades working professionally as a psychic mediumship practitioner, author and educator, I have become increasingly reluctant over the years to adopt nonsensical terminology simply because it is popular or frequently recycled by social media influencers. The words we use in our work should accurately describe our perceptual experiences. For this reason, I use clairolfaction as the preferred term for psychic smell. When 'Psychic Smell' Is Medical, Not Metaphysical In psychiatry and medicine, smelling an odor that is not physically present in the environment is considered to be an olfactory hallucination, medically known as phantosmia, or ‘phantom smell.’ Cacosmia, on the other hand, refers specifically to the perception of foul or unpleasant odors, typically experienced as smelling something burned, spoiled, rotten, or otherwise offensive. [1] Clairolfaction is not frequently acknowledged or discussed in the psychic community, probably because it is not a common psychic preference. It is most often associated with unusual mediumship experiences and spirit phenomena. Whether it is purely a mediumship phenomenon, or simply misunderstood or underreported by psychics is unclear, but accounts of this phenomenon traditionally focus mostly on extreme paranormal phenomena, such as poltergeist activity and demonic possession. The case files of paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren include, for example, numerous accounts of foul ‘cacosmic’ odors and bizarre smell phenomena, such as those in the book In a Dark Place. [2] Clairolfaction In Mediumship & Paranormal Research Psi research data on clairolfaction further appears to be limited mostly to physical mediumship, for example the anecdotal accounts of physical mediums Indridi Indridason and Franek Kluski. Indridason produced a fragrant smell when he was channeling, as well as other smells, such as seaweed. These smells would sometimes cling to other people after he touched them.[3] Various odors also permeated Kluski’s body during séances, including the smells of fruit, leaves, flowers, incense, disinfectant, animal smells, rotting flesh, sweat, and dirty clothing. These smells reportedly clung to him for a long time and were emitted from different parts of his body.[4] It is unfortunate that psychic smelling is generally overlooked in both psi research and the psychic community, as smell perceptions are some of the most psychologically and emotionally meaningful ‘qualia’ people experience. “Not only is it a chief component of taste,” writes Amelia Buckley, “but it holds the key to our emotions. It is a primary factor in memory and can manipulate our feelings in a way that sight or sound can’t quite do.”[5] Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense of smell than through any other channel. ~ Oliver Wendell Why 'Smell' Is Such a Powerful Psychic Perception Ordinary smell is a powerful sense. We all experience smell associations that instantly take us back to moments of heightened emotion or special memories. It is no accident, for example, that when we experience a negative intuition or gut feeling we say things like, ‘I smell a rat,’ or ‘it smells to high heaven,’ or ‘something smells fishy.’ Smells have the unique ability to immediately evoke emotions or trigger vivid memories. No other sense can so instantly bring back a meaningful moment from the past, or invoke the memory of a special person or event. This psychic perception phenomenon adds an exceptionally meaningful component in the channeled readings of those psychic or mediumship practitioners who experience these types of impressions. Clairolfactory psychics and mediums tend to also perceive clairgustance or psychic taste impressions along with certain smell perceptions. It makes perfect sense that this mental partnership would exist in a metaphysical context, since our physical perception of taste and smell also go hand-in-hand. Signs of Spirit Presence: Smoke, Perfume & Familiar Smells The most commonly reported experiences of psychic smell involve the smell of a deceased loved one’s perfume, as well as smells associated with cigarette and cigar smoke. I had a very striking personal experience of this while having lunch at a restaurant one day, when I began to smell the stench of second-hand tobacco smoke. I complained to the waiter, as it was supposed to be a non-smoking area, but both my companion and the waiter were perplexed, as neither of them smelled anything, and there was clearly nobody smoking inside the venue? Driving home, I soon realized the truth. Whoever had been ‘stinking up’ the restaurant was now also ‘chain-smoking’ inside my car. Later that evening, the ‘culprit’ made himself known during a mediumship reading. The first thing I said to my client was, “whoever the person is you were hoping to connect with today, I can already tell you one thing for sure…he must have smoked like a chimney!” She confirmed that he indeed used to smoke two to three packs a day. Smoke and perfume are however not the only smell perceptions clairolfactors perceive. In readings I have perceived the smell of flowers (especially roses), perfume or cologne, cigarette smoke, leather, incense, spices, fresh bread, fast food (hamburgers and pizza), animals (including dogs, cats, and horses), sea water, and even ‘wet sand.’ Sometimes these smell impressions can be very unpleasant, but fortunately for me that does not happen very often. Foul smells I have had to endure include urine, dirty laundry, and chemicals (alcohol, turpentine, and disinfectant). I have however heard of psychics and mediums who smell even worse things, like ‘burning rubber,’ ‘wet dog,’ and ‘rotting eggs.’ Paranormal investigators also report in books like Exposed, Uncovered & Declassified: Ghosts, Spirits, & Hauntings: Am I Being Haunted? the smell of sulphur as one of the classic signs of a haunting or demonic activity. [6][7] My Unusual 'Ozone Orbs' Experiences The most interesting aspect of my own ‘smelling ability’ is an unusual odor I began perceiving early on in my career. While I am channeling, spirit energy at times manifests clairvoyantly in the periphery of my ordinary vision as light orbs of ‘flickering, floating lights,’ comparable to ‘seeing stars,’ or the ‘flashers and floaters’ you see after looking into a bright light. These orbs usually bring with them a distinctive smell. The best way I can describe it is that it smells like ‘electricity’ or ‘ozone.’ It is not unpleasant, simply unusual. For a long time, I had no way of describing it, until I bought a small air purifier many years ago. I soon discovered that the faint smell of ozone, generated in small quantities by the negative ions from the purifier, was quite similar. I have since discovered I am not the only one to experience this phenomenon and that similar cases have been reported physical mediumship. A well-documented example is a report by psi researcher Gustave Geley of a séance conducted by physical medium Franek Kluski on March 17th, 1920, during which he produced ‘phosphorescent lights smelling of ozone.’ From these lights, floating in the air, came what looked like shining smoke, accompanied by a very strong smell of ozone, which the participants smelled until the end of the séance. Some of the participants were touched by what seemed like a shining, flowing stream which over a period continued to shine on the hands, hair, and faces which it touched. The little fires, which kept appearing in increasing numbers, started to travel through the medium and come out of him.[8] In Other Realities?: The Enigma of Franek Kluski’s Mediumship author Zofia Weaver writes that according to Geley’s records ozone was the most frequent odor occurring around Kluski during his séances and was often associated with these ‘highly phosphorescent, moving lights.’[9] Can Clairolfaction Be A Positive Omen? I have been rather fortunate with clairolfaction, as I have in recent years begun to experience an unusual phenomenon of foreboding or portentous clairolfaction that is exceptionally positive, pleasant and uplifting. I suspect it may be something I have been experiencing all my life, but for some reason I only became aware of it more recently. I have also not been able to find any information on this phenomenon. I call it auspicious aroma. Merriam-Webster defines auspicious as ‘having qualities which inspire hope’ and ‘pointing toward a happy outcome,’ while an aroma is ‘a sweet or pleasant smell,’ as well as a ‘special quality or impression associated with something.’ My ‘auspicious aromas’ are pleasant, happy, comforting ‘smells’ that are mostly indescribable, but always a good sign. One of the only significant associations I have been able to make thus far was a smell perception that somehow reminded me of the pantry in my maternal grandparents’ home (one of my favorite places when I was a child). The feeling I have when I perceive these smells is vague excitement and a sense of joy. I have found that they are always a good omen or foreboding that something good, positive, reassuring, or fortunate is about to occur in my life. For me it is essentially the ‘phantom smell’ version of finding a four-leaf clover or seeing a shooting star. Science writer Alexandra Michel argues that psychology textbooks have taught us for decades that there is a clear line of distinction between perception — how we see, hear, touch, taste, and smell — and higher-level cognitive processes that allow us to integrate and interpret our senses. Yet, emerging interdisciplinary research is showing that the delineation between perception and cognition may be much blurrier than previously thought…New findings also show that our so-called low-level perceptual processes, such as smell, may actually be much smarter than previously thought. Discerning exactly what is top-down or bottom-up may be far more complicated than scientists once believed.[10] Neuroscientist John McGann uses cutting-edge techniques to explore the neurobiology of sensory cognition in smell. He uses the olfactory system as a model to investigate neural processing of sensory stimuli. He argues that our nose knows more than we realize. He believes the myth that our ability to smell is ‘non-essential’ is a serious mistake that has caused science to neglect research in this critical and mysterious part of the human mind.[11] In a recent series of experiments McGann discovered that “it was like the information coming into the brain from the nose already had the memory of bad things incorporated into it.”[12] In other words, we appear to be able to ‘know’ or ‘predict’ information from a smell, before the actual smell information even reaches our brain for sensory processing. When Psychic & Mediums Smell Illness Similar to other psychic preferences, clairolfactory psychics and mediums also develop personal symbolism or subjective associations with their psychic smell perceptions. For example, I can tell someone is terminally ill whenever I smell ‘rotting peaches.’ This association comes from an early childhood experience when I was about five years old. While visiting my grandparents, they introduced me to a sickly little girl who lived across the street from them. The day we met she was playing outside with her older brother. He was gently pushing her in a makeshift swing attached to the overhanging branch of a large peach tree. The instant I saw her, it seemed like the bright sunlight of a perfect summer’s day suddenly vanished. A dark, depressing shadow descended for me over everything, and I was overwhelmed by a sense of profound sadness, anxiety, despair. In that gloomy moment, the air was thick with the unpleasant odor of rotting peaches on the ground around us. I felt that she was extremely sick and dying, and so I came to associate the ‘peach smell’ with terminal illness. Years later, I was told that soon after we met, she had passed away from leukemia. Clairolfaction is especially meaningful in the context of health and healing, as some medical psychics, mediums and energy healers report the ability to ‘smell disease,’ or detect the early symptoms of illness, or identify affected areas of the body through smell impressions. Research in this field is limited, but there has been renewed interest recently due to Joy Milne who unknowingly smelled her husband had Parkinson's disease — over a decade before his symptoms became severe enough for him to seek help and be diagnosed. Despite a keen sense of smell since childhood, Milne never realized she had a ‘superpower,’ until the couple attended a support group for people with Parkinson's. There were many people gathered in the room and as soon as she walked in, she realized they all had the same ‘greasy, musty smell’ she had begun smelling on her husband many years earlier, before he was diagnosed. Once she realized the connection, they approached a researcher in regenerative medicine, but he dismissed her claims, thinking it was impossible. Several months later, he heard about research that showed dogs could smell cancer,[13] which reminded him of Milne. He then invited her to participate in an experiment in which she was asked to smell T-shirts worn overnight by two groups: people who had Parkinson's, and a control group. Not only was she incredibly accurate (she only made one mistake), but she was even able to tell if a person was in the early or late stages of the disease.[14][15] Interestingly, there is another case of a man who happens to suffer from Parkinson’s hallucinations, during which he smells a ‘noxious skunk-onion excrement odor’ that would suddenly intensify two to three hours before a weather storm, and would last until it has passed. According to a 2013 study he is the first reported case of ‘weather-induced exacerbation of phantosmia.’[16] Frequently Asked Questions About Psychic Smelling Is clairalience the same as clairolfaction? Yes. Clairalience and clairolfaction are both terms used to describe the same psychic perception phenomenon: perceiving smells without an identifiable physical source. I prefer to use the term clairolfaction because it is more precise and linguistically defensible. "Alience' is a made-up term that does not exist in English, French, or Latin. What is psychic smelling? Psychic smelling is the mental-metaphysical perception of scents, odors, or aromas as psychic impressions as opposed to ordinary physical smell. Normal smell is sensory. Psychic smell is nonsensory. These psychic impressions may include perfume, smoke, flowers, food, animals, chemicals, unpleasant odors, or other familiar smells. Can only mediums smell spirit presence? Yes. Some mediums do report smell perceptions during spirit communication or channeled readings. In evidential mediumistic readings, a familiar perfume, cologne, cigarette or cigar smoke, flowers, or other distinctive smells are perceived as evidence of a particular deceased person or spirit presence. This is however a rare psychic perception preference that is not common among mediums. That said, these experiences are definitely not limited to mediums. Researchers have been documenting similar "smell" experiences among the general public for decades, usually under scientific terms such as after-death communication, sense of presence, or bereavement studies. For example, a 2021 study found that smell was reported in 28% of cases, versus 44 - 48% for hearing and touch and 46% for vision. So, spirit smells are less common than sounds, voices, touch, or apparitions, but occur in more than a quarter of reported cases. Interestingly, although the researchers use the clinical term “hallucinations,” they explicitly state in their paper that they use it neutrally and do not mean to imply that these experiences are pathological or necessarily unreal. However, the study also does not attempt to determine whether the experiences are genuinely spiritual or metaphysical in origin. Why do I smell perfume or cigarette smoke? In mediumship and spiritual traditions, a sudden familiar smell with no obvious physical source are often interpreted as a sign of a deceased loved one’s presence. However, unexplained or recurring phantom smells can also have ordinary or medical causes and should not automatically be assumed to be supernatural or paranormal. How common is it to smell a deceased loved one's presence? It is more common than most people realize. Studies of bereaved people have found smell-related experiences in roughly 17% to 28% of reported encounters, depending on the study and research method. Familiar perfume, tobacco smoke, flowers, cooking smells, and other personally meaningful scents are among the examples people report. Interestingly, while one large modern study found that smell-based encounters were less common than visual, auditory, or tactile experiences, olfactory experiences were among those most strongly associated with increased religious or spiritual significance afterward. In other words, smelling spirit is spiritually more impactful and meaningful than other forms of afterlife vaidation. Is smelling a deceased loved one a sign of mental illness? No, usually it is not. Studies have repeatedly found sensory experiences of deceased loved ones to be relatively common among otherwise healthy people, and researchers generally do not regard these experiences as automatically pathological or as a sign of mental disorder. In fact, they are often rather viewed as comforting, healing and meaningful. Persistent or disturbing phantom smells, however, should be medically investigated because conditions such as phantosmia (olfactory hallucination) can have physical or neurological causes. Also, if you experience these smells repeatedly and consistently in a way that is upsetting or disturbing, it is recommended to consult with both a registered healthcare professional and an appropriately qualified spiritual specialist, so that possible physical, neurological, and spiritual explanations can all be considered. What is the difference between clairolfaction and phantosmia? Clairolfaction is the esoteric definition of unexplained smell perceptions perceived as psychic or mediumistic information. Phantosmia is the medical term for perceiving an odor when no physical odor is present and can be associated with several neurological or physical conditions. Can spirit smells be evil or demonic? Yes, but this is very rare. Some paranormal traditions do associate these smell experiences with disturbing spirit activity. Renowned paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, documented a famous case that later inspired horror films such as The Conjuring. In theirwork they often encountered unpleasant and seemingly unexplained foul and sulfurous odors in locations where paranormal activity was reported. However, it is not true that unexplained smells are automatically negative or demonic. Many spiritual and religious traditions actually describe the exact opposite. For example, according to Catholic beliefs, holiness has a smell that can be perceived around a holy person, either in life or especially at death. This smell is described as sweet, floral, or similar to incense, while Islamic traditions associate holy martyrs with the fragrance of musk. Various spiritual wisdom traditions describe pleasant floral, incense-like, or familiar fragrances as signs of divine, ancestral, or benevolent spirit presence. Ancient Greek literature also describes the gods as having distinctive ambrosial fragrances, while Chinese ancestor-veneration traditions have used incense for thousands of years as part of ritual communication with deceased ancestors and deities. In other words, the nature and context of the smell matters. Otherworldly smell experiences can be unpleasant, or neutral, or comforting, profoundly uplifting or even divine. Source: The Sensible Psychic: A Leading-Edge Guide To True Psychic Perception. © 2022 Anthon St. Maarten REFERENCES [1] Leopold, D.A. (2002). Distortion Of Olfactory Perception: Diagnosis And Treatment. Chemical Senses. [2] Warren, E & Warren, L. (2014). In A Dark Place. Graymalkin Media. [3] Haraldsson, E. (2018). Indridi Indridason (Medium). Psi Encyclopedia. The Society for Psychical Research. [4] Weaver, Z. (2018). Franek Kluski. Psi Encyclopedia. The Society for Psychical Research. [5] Buckley, A. (2020). Stop And Smell The Roses! An Ode To The Most Beguiling Sense. OptimistDaily.com [6] Pye, M. et. al. (2011). Exposed, Uncovered & Declassified: Ghosts, Spirits, & Hauntings: Am I Being Haunted? New Page Books. [7] Wilson, C. (2015). Mysteries: An Investigation Into The Occult, The Paranormal, And The Supernatural. Diversion Books. [8] Weaver, Z. (2015). Other Realities? The Enigma Of Franek Kluski’s Mediumship. White Crow Books. [9] Weaver, Z. (2018). Franek Kluski. Psi Encyclopedia. The Society for Psychical Research. [10] Michel, A. (2020). Cognition and Perception: Is There Really A Distinction? Association For Psychological Science. PsychologicalScience.org [11] McGann, J.P. (2017). Poor Human Olfaction Is A 19th-Century Myth. Science. [12] Science Podcast: 13 December Show. Listen To Stories On Fear-Enhanced Odor Detection. Science.org. [13] Experimental Biology. (2019). Study Shows Dogs Can Accurately Sniff Out Cancer In Blood. ScienceDaily.com. [14] An Unlikely Superpower. (2020). Invisibilia: Season 6, Episode 3. Npr.org. [15] Trivedi, D.K. et. al. (2019). Discovery Of Volatile Biomarkers Of Parkinson’s Disease From Sebum. ACS Central Science. [16] Aiello, S. R. & Hirsch, A. R. (2013). Phantosmia As A Meteorological Forecaster. International Journal Of Biometeorology. [17] Bonewits, I. (2005). A Pagan Glossary Of Terms: Useful Words And Phrases For The Interdimensional Traveler. Neopagan.net [18] Elsaesser, E., et. al. (2021). The Phenomenology And Impact Of Hallucinations Concerning The Deceased. BJPsych Open. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Anthon St. Maarten is a hereditary psychic medium, researcher, author, and accredited adult educator with more than two decades of professional experience. In full-time practice since 2004, he has conducted more than 12,000 psychic and mediumship readings for clients across thirty countries on five continents. His personal search for making sense of his own psychic experiences since childhood, and ultimately mastering his perception process, has given him an in-depth knowlegde and understanding of psychic perception, mediumship, channeling, and the developmental challenges often encountered by both aspiring and experienced practitioners. Anthon is the author of a research working paper titled A Unified Conceptual Triad of Psychic Perception: Nonlocal Mind-Soul Resonance, Sapient-Sentient Awareness, and Psychic Impression Preference. This paper outlines the original conceptual framework that underpins the Unlock Your Psychic Potential™ training program and his broader approach to psychic development training and education. He is also the author of The Sensible Psychic and Divine Living, and the founding editor of PsychicBloggers.com. Anthon holds a postgraduate degree in Liberal Arts with a major in Psychology and is a certified outcomes-based adult education facilitator, assessor, and moderator. His teaching combines professional practice, independent research, structured educational methodology, and lived experience as a hereditary psychic medium. His psychic decelopment training program is science-informed, spiritually inclusive, and focused on conceptual clarity, authenticity and accurate terminology. He aims to help psychic and mediumship students to develop greater discernment and self-trust, and build their skills on a credible foundation rather than mythology, superstition, or pop-culture stereotypes.

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Clairolfaction, or psychic smell, is the perception of scents without an identifiable physical source. Learn what it means and how it differs from phantosmia. What is clairolfaction? Glossary of Sensible Psychic Terms by Anthon St. Maarten Clairolfaction, also known as psychic smell, i s the psychic perception of scents, odors, or aromas without an identifiable physical source in the immediate environment. The word combines clair, meaning “clear,” with olfaction, the sense of smell. It belongs to the family of psychic perception terms that includes clairvoyance, clairaudience, and clairgustance. People who experience clairolfaction may suddenly perceive a distinctive perfume, cigarette or cigar smoke, flowers, food, chemicals, incense, or another recognizable scent when there is no obvious physical explanation for it. In mediumship, these scents are sometimes associated with a deceased person. A medium might, for example, perceive the perfume someone wore while alive or the smell of tobacco associated with that person. Clairolfaction can also occur outside mediumship as a spontaneous psychic perception or impression. Is Clairolfaction the Same as Clairalience? Clairalience is another modern term commonly used for psychic smell, along with less common variations such as clairolfactance, clairolfacience, clairscent, and clairosmesis. However, the linguistic origins of several of these alternative terms are unclear. Clairolfaction is the more sensible and preferred term because olfaction is an established word for the faculty of smell. Clairolfaction vs. Phantosmia Clairolfaction should not automatically be confused with phantosmia , the medical phenomenon of perceiving an odor when no external odor is present. Phantosmia can have various physical or neurological causes. Persistent, unexplained, or concerning phantom smells should therefore be medically evaluated rather than automatically interpreted as psychic phenomena. Learn More For a more in-depth discussion of clairolfaction, including actual mediumship experiences, historical cases, medical research, competing terminology, and my own lived experiences as a psychic medium, read the full article : SOURCES: The Sensible Psychic: A Leading-Edge Guide To True Psychic Perception by Anthon St. Maarten (2022) A Unified Conceptual Triad of Psychic Perception: Nonlocal Mind–Soul Resonance, Sapient–Sentient Awareness, and Psychic Impression Preference by Anthon St. Maarten (2025) Clairolfaction - The Gift Of Psychic Smell

What is Clairsomatica? Learn how psychic bodily sensation is more than just clairsentience, psychometry and clairtangency, and why Anthon St. Maarten coined the term. What is clairsomatica? Glossary of Sensible Psychic Terms by Anthon St. Maarten Clairsomatica, or psychic somatosensation , is the perception of bodily sensations and symptoms without an identifiable physical source. These psychic impressions include a range of nonphysical sensations or psychophysical impressions of touch, pressure, vibration, temperature, pain, proprioception or kinesthesia, and other embodied perceptions. Traditionally, psychic experiences of this kind are simply grouped under the broader label of clairsentience, or incorrectly described as clairtangency or psychometry , and more recently as clairkinesthesia . I coined the term clairsomatica as an alternative to more accurately represent and describe this specifically somatic or embodied form of psychic perception and published it as part of a new conceptual model of psychic perception in my book The Sensible Psychic (2022). What Does Clairsomatica Feel Like? Clairsomatic psychic impressions are experienced as bodily sensations or physical symptoms. It encompasses all forms of psychic somatosensation typically perceived by somatic psychics and mediums as impressions or embodiments of touch, pressure, vibration, temperature, proprioception, pain, and other bodily sensations and medical symptoms. Clairsomatic perceptions commonly experienced by clairsomatic psychics and mediums include: tickling sensations in various areas of the body, but especially the face, back, neck, and hands pressure on the crown of the head chills or goose bumps hair standing on end sensations of being touched, struck or even pushed sudden temperature changes in rare instances sensations of physical trauma , or even ‘blows’ to the body. These impressions arise during psychic readings, mediumship, trance channeling, energy healing, paranormal forensic work, medical intuition or everyday spontaneous psychic or mystical experiences. Is Clairsomatica The Same As Clairsentience? No. The concept of clairsentience traditionally combines several very different forms of psychic impression, including emotions, bodily sensations, intuitive forebodings, and in some definitions even cognitive knowings. In the Psychic Impression Preference Model ™, I separate these into three distinct perception preferences: Clairsomatica : somatosensory, sensation, foresensing Clairintuition: premonition, presage, foreboding Clairempathy: affective, emotional, feeling, presentiment This provides a much clearer language for psychic experiences that have traditionally been grouped together under the broad label of “clairsentience” which does not reflect the lived experience of authentic psychics and medums. Is Clairsomatica The Same As Clairtangency? No. Clairtangency refers specifically to touch or tactile psychic impressions. Clairsomatica is a more representative term that includes the broader range of psychic somatosensations, including touch, pressure, vibration, temperature, body position, balance, and pain. Is Clairsomatica The Same As Psychometry? No. Psychometry, also known as object reading or psychoscopy , is a psychic reading method in which psychic information is accessed or faciliated by handling an associated object, such as jewelry, clothing, a photograph, or family heirloom. It is a reading technique , not a distinct form of psychic perception. Clairsomatica describes how a somatic psychic impressions are consciously perceived, regardless of the reading method or tool being used, in the same way that scrying a crystal ball or drawing a tarot card are reading practices and not itself a distinct form of psychic perception of itself. Why Did You Coin The Term Clairsomatica? I coined Clairsomatica after decades of struggling with psychic terminology that was too vague or inconsistent to accurately describe my own lived experiences as a hereditary psychic medium. I first published the term in The Sensible Psychic (2022) as one of eight psychic perception preferences in the conceptual model I developed to describe how psychics and mediums consciously experience authentic psychic impressions. Learn More For a more in-depth discussion of clairsomatica, including actual experiences, historical cases, medical research, competing terminology, and my own lived experiences as a psychic medium , read the full article : SOURCES: The Sensible Psychic: A Leading-Edge Guide To True Psychic Perception by Anthon St. Maarten (2022) A Unified Conceptual Triad of Psychic Perception: Nonlocal Mind–Soul Resonance, Sapient–Sentient Awareness, and Psychic Impression Preference by Anthon St. Maarten (2025) Clairsomatica - The Gift Of Psychic Sensation