CLAIRVOYANCE, SPIRITUAL

An intellectual occult phenomenon in which a person is able to sense, feel, or know something about a person or thing or is able to receive or send knowledge to a person at a distance of time or space without using any ordinary medium of communication is spiritual clairvoyance. It remains to be seen whether or not there is a natural explanation for certain types of clairvoyance, whether by means of some type of extrasensory perception, a kind of wave that radiates from brain to brain, or some occult energy or force that emanates from one soul to another. Since clairvoyance has been manifested by persons under the influence of the devil, by canonized saints, and by persons suffering from pathological states, this phenomenon may proceed from diabolical, supernatural, or natural causes as yet unknown. If it is irrevocably established that a type of clairvoyance, such as the reading of hearts and minds, is a true miracle, then neither the devil nor a purely natural cause could be offered as an explanation.

Under the general name of clairvoyance other special phenomena may be listed. Telepathy is the sensation or knowledge of something at a distance or the communication of knowledge at a distance, with no known means of communication intervening. There has been no positive and certain explanation of its cause. Telesthesia is the ability to see, sometimes as in a vision, events or persons who are at a great distance; it is recorded of sweden-borg, who claimed to have seen in his mind's eye the burning of Göteborg. Cryptoscopy is the ability to read a letter enclosed in its envelope, to read a book without opening the cover, or to see what is happening on the other side of a wall or closed door. This feat is said to have occurred in the strange case of Mollie Fancher, born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1848 (Thurston, 294–325).

Psychometry is a kind of retrospective clairvoyance in which a person can witness or relive events that have happened in the past, sometimes centuries ago. Such clairvoyance was claimed for Bridey Murphy and for the Misses Moberly and Jourdain [cf. C. A. E. Moberly and E. F. Jourdain, An Adventure, ed. Joan Evans (New York 1955)]. Occult divination, or second sight, is the ability to see clearly and often in detail some event that will happen in the future, sometimes in a manner similar to a prophetic vision. The reading of hearts is a special insight by which one individual is able to know the secrets of another person, even when the second person is unwilling that those secrets be known. St. John vianney is an outstanding example of this phenomenon among the saints. Hierognosis is the ability to recognize immediately either holiness or evil in any person, place, or thing. This phenomenon, like true reading of hearts, transcends the natural order and cannot be explained by natural or diabolical causes. It was manifested in the lives of Catherine emmerich and SS. catherine of siena and frances of rome.

Bibliography: h. thurston, The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism, ed. j. h. crehan (Chicago 1952). z. aradi, The Book of Miracles (New York 1956). j. g. arintero, The Mystical Evolution in the Development and Vitality of the Church, tr. j. aumann, 2 v. (St. Louis 1949-51). a.f. poulain, The Graces of Interior Prayer, tr. l.l. yorke smith (St. Louis 1950). j. marÉchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics, tr. a. thorold (London 1927). r.omez, Psychical Phenomena, tr. r.haynes (New York 1958).

[j.aumann]