Complete Psychic Ability List for Beginners

This complete list of psychic ability is a must have cheat sheet for all the common and uncommon psychic abilities. It’s like SparkNotes, but better!

So, if you’ve been wondering if what you’re experiencing is a psychic breakthrough or if it’s just last night’s tacos, look no further.

Types of Psychic Ability

At the heart of it, there are four types of psychic ability:

• Clairvoyance: Clear seeing
• Clairsentience: Clear feeling
• Clairaudience: Clear hearing
• Claircognizance: Clear knowing

Each of these abilities works in a different way but tells the same message. For example, if I wanted to let you know I was baking cookies (chocolate chip, of course), I could:

• Send you a text
• Open my front door and let the smell float over to your house
• DM you a picture on Instagram

Though they are different forms of communication, the end result is the same: you get the message. That’s how psychic gifts work, too.

And with practice and the right guidance, it’s easy to develop all of these abilities!

Tip: The repeated word prefix clair is from the French clair(e) and means “clear”.

1. Clairvoyance: clear seeing

Clairvoyance means psychic sight. It is the ability to connect with your intuition via visions.

Shows like That’s So Raven and movies like The Sixth Sense made psychic visions popular and mainstream. But someone who is clairvoyant is not necessarily seeing the future or having dramatic visions like you see in the movies.

• Sometimes, clairvoyance is subtle. For example, you may just see a color, number, or an image quickly flash in your mind’s eye. The images may be literal or symbolic.

• Other times, you may experience this ability as a “movie” playing in your mind, or as a still picture (like a photo or image).

• On the flip side, your visions could not be so subtle and lead you to say things like, “I saw that coming!”

Other terms for clairvoyance:  third eye, psychic eye, psychic vision.

Learn more: Clairvoyance for Beginners

2. Clairsentience: clear feeling

Have you ever interacted with someone and felt what they were feeling? Or sensed positive or negative energy when you walked into a room?

Clairsentience is the ability to connect with your intuition via feeling and sensing. Empathy (feeling the emotions of others) also falls in the clairsentient category.

For example, say a client comes to me for a psychic reading. She is emotionally drained because of her job. Come to find out, her company is going through a major change, and everyone is anxious about it. Someone with clairsentience in this situation could feel the anxious emotions of their co-workers. 

• Those with clairsentience pick up on the energy around them. They may get good or bad vibes about people and places.

• After spending time with friends and partners, psychic clairsentients usually need to take some time alone to decompress. Watching the news or tragic realistic movies may also be difficult.

• Other terms for clairsentience: empath, spiritual or intuitive empath

If this sounds like you, I encourage you to read my tips for dealing with energy vampires.

Learn more: Clairsentience for Beginners

3. Clairaudience: clear hearing

Don’t get me wrong, every psychic ability on this list is wonderful, but clairaudience is my favorite extrasensory perception!

Clairaudience means psychic hearing and is the ability to connect with your intuition via the auditory channel. It is often referred to as that “little voice within”.

Basically, just as clairsentience is inner seeing, clairaudience is inner hearing.

• For example, someone with clairaudience may hear sudden instructions or messages like, “call mom,” “go right,” or “check the garage door.” They may also receive inspired ideas or sudden answers to a problem.

• Spiritual mediums are often clairaudient and can hear words, phrases, names and messages from those who have passed on. My favorite memory of clairaudience was when I was doing a reading for a mediumship reading for a client and heard the message, “Say hi to Bobo”. Turns out, Bobo was the family pet!

Learn more: Clairaudience – Understanding and Developing it Like a Pro

4. Claircognizance: clear knowing

Claircognizance is an inner knowing. It means to know something without logic or facts, often in the form of gut feelings.

• If you’ve ever known that you should avoid your new neighbor, take a different route to work, not take that drink or call someone up, you’ve experienced inner knowing. At the time, you probably didn’t know why you were having those feelings. Your friends may have made fun of you, or you may have thought you were being silly, but something was telling you that you were right.

• These claircognizant feelings can be very strong and also come in the form of intuitive thoughts that pop into your head at random. For example, my husband was driving with some co-workers when he suddenly KNEW that everyone needed to buckle up. Minutes later, their vehicle was hit by a car going 65 miles an hour. He didn’t know why everyone needed to buckle up – he just knew they had to do it immediately. Listening to this intuitive guidance may have saved his life!

Psychic Ability Examples

As I said, my husband received a claircognizant message that saved him and his co-workers.

Here’s the thing, though: He could have received that intuitive message in a different way.

• He could have had a vision of an accident flash in his mind’s eye. (clairvoyance)
• Or, he could have heard the impact or squealing tires or heard the impact before it happened. (clairaudience)
• He could have had a feeling that there was going to be an accident. (clairsentience)

Those types of psychic abilities would have delivered the same intuitive guidance, but in a different manner.

Less Common Types of Psychic Ability

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention these less common types of psychic abilities.

While they’re pretty awesome, they typically don’t stand on their own (someone who experiences them likely also experiences one of the main abilities above).

Clairalience: clear smelling

Clairalience is the ability to smell things outside the normal range of smell, such as the perfume of a loved one who has passed away.

Sometimes a person in spirit will fill a room with a familiar smell so that their loved ones know they are around. For example, I have a friend who often smells cigar smoke which she associates with her father.

I don’t know how our loved ones in spirit do this, but it can be very comforting!

Clairgustance: clear tasting

Well, you’ve heard it all now! Clairgustance is (as you may have guessed) inner tasting.

Those with this ability can taste without putting food into their mouth. (If only I could survive on this method, I’d still fit into my skinny jeans from the ’90s!)

This extrasensory perception can show up when a medium is doing a reading. If the spirit they’re connecting with loved cheesecake, it’s possible the psychic will get the taste of cheesecake!

Next Steps

With a little practice and patience, anyone can learn to tap into and strengthen their psychic ability. Yes, even you!

To get started, I invite you to download my FREE audiobook and guide, 7 Real World Steps to Embracing Your Intuitive Gifts.