What is clairintuition?
Glossary of Sensible Psychic Terms
by Anthon St. Maarten
Clairintuition, or psychic intuition, is the transpersonal perception of intuitive psychic impressions such as hunches, forebodings, warnings, or presages concerning people, situations, or events beyond one’s immediate personal circumstances, needs, or lived experience.
These impressions are purely intuitive because they have no cognitive, affective (emotional) or sensory traits or characteristics like the other forms of psychic perception, also known as "clairs." Clairintuitions may concern the past, present, or future, with future-oriented impressions experienced as premonitions.​
How Is Clairintuition Different From Ordinary Intuition?
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Everyone experiences intuition in three innate ways: instinctive intuition related to survival and safety, psychological intuition based on life experience and pattern recognition, and spiritual intuition experienced as inner guidance. All three are personal and self-referential.
Clairintuition differs because it is instead metaphysical and transpersonal. Clairintuitive psychic impressions are nonlocal, nonsensory, and nonphysical and concerns the past, present, or future of other people and the wider world.​ Unlike other forms of intuitive awareness, it concerns someone or something beyond the perceiver’s immediate personal needs, circumstances, or life experience.
Is Clairintuition The Same As Clairsentience?
No. The traditional term "clairsentience" is used as a catch-all for several very different kinds of psychic perception, including emotion, bodily sensations, intuition, and in some definitions even cognitive knowing.
In the Psychic Impression Preference Model™ of psychic perception, I separate these into three distinct perception preferences:​
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Clairintuition: premonition, presage, foreboding​
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Clairsomatica: somatosensory perception, sensation, foresensing​
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Clairempathy: affective perception, emotion, feeling, presentiment
This makes it easier to describe what a psychic or medium is actually experiencing when they channel or "read" for someone, instead of confusingly grouping very different psychic impressions under the one broad label of "clairsentience."
Is Clairintuition The Same As Claircognizance?
No. Claircognizance is sapient in nature, while clairintuition is sentient, much like cognitive thought or reasoning is the counterpart of intuition. Sapient means having wisdom or the ability to reason, reflect, and understand things. Sentient means being able to feel or sense things.
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Claircognizance is experienced as a spontaneous psychic knowing of factual information or cognitive insight, while clairintuition is experienced as an intuitive sense, foreboding, or awareness without rational explanation. In simple terms, claircognizance is knowing or understandin; clairintuition is sensing, feeling or intuiting.
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Is Clairintuition The Same As Precognition?
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Traditional parapsychology places predictive or prophetic psychic phenomena under the broad umbrella of “precognition,” sometimes also using terms such as “precognitive clairvoyance,” while popular dictionary usage often refers to such experiences as “clairvoyance.”
My model more clearly and accurately separates the main forms of predictive psychic perception by how the impression itself is actually perceived:
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Clairintuition is therefore the intuitive awareness of an occurrence, probability, or potential concerning the past, present, or future, experienced as a premonition, presage, or foreboding. Unlike the other psychic perception preferences, it has no clear cognitive, affective, or sensory-type characteristics.​​
Why Do We Need The Term "Clairintuition"?
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I coined the term clairintuition to distinguish purely intuitive psychic perception from ordinary personal intuition and spiritual inner guidance, and to address three recurring problems in psychic terminology:
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The rebranding of psychics as “intuitives.”
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The catch-all concept of “clairsentience.”
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The claim that “everyone is psychic because everyone has intuition.”
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I first introduced the term publicly in The Sensible Psychic (2022) as part of my new conceptual framework known as the Psychic Impression Preference Model™.
Learn More
For a more in-depth understanding of clairintuition, including the difference between intuition and instinct, the problems with the traditional concept of clairsentience, and the distinction between premonition and precognition, read the full article.
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SOURCES:
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The Sensible Psychic: A Leading-Edge Guide To True Psychic Perception by Anthon St. Maarten (2022)
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A Unified Conceptual Triad of Psychic Perception: Nonlocal Mind–Soul Resonance, Sapient–Sentient Awareness, and Psychic Impression Preference by Anthon St. Maarten (2025)
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