The Senses Beyond the Five
Why We Name the Senses
One of the first steps in psychic training is naming what you experience. Language grounds the intangible. When we give names to our perceptions, we can recognize them, track them, and sharpen them.
The physical senses are well-known: sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell. But the Witch works with more than five. We perceive through what psychics call the “clairs” — ways of receiving subtle information beyond the ordinary.
The Four Core Clairs
There are many ways perception can be sliced, but the four most commonly taught are these:
Clairvoyance – Clear Seeing
Clairvoyance is psychic sight: images, visions, flashes that arrive in the mind’s eye. Sometimes it looks like a daydream, sometimes like a vivid scene that overlays reality.
Common experiences: seeing colors around people (auras), sudden symbolic images during meditation, waking dreams.
Cautions: clairvoyance often speaks in metaphor. A vision of a crumbling tower may not mean literal collapse, but instability in some part of life. Learn to interpret, not just report.
Witch’s Tool: Crystals that strengthen clairvoyance include amethyst, lapis lazuli, and clear quartz. Scrying mirrors, bowls of water, or flame gazing also open this channel.
Clairaudience – Clear Hearing
Clairaudience is psychic hearing: voices, whispers, tones, or words that arrive in your inner or outer ear.
Common experiences: hearing your name called when no one is there, music in dreams, sudden words that echo in your mind.
Cautions: discernment is critical here. Not every voice is spirit; some are echoes of your own mind. Always test, ground, and confirm with divination.
Witch’s Tool: Crystals like sodalite, blue lace agate, or lapis. Bells, rattles, chanting, and drumming sharpen psychic hearing.
Clairsentience – Clear Feeling
Clairsentience is psychic feeling: sensing emotion, energy, or atmosphere in your body.
Common experiences: walking into a room and instantly knowing the tension, feeling another person’s grief or joy, a “gut feeling” that proves true.
Cautions: clairsentience can be draining if you don’t shield. Witches who are strong empaths often confuse others’ emotions with their own. Learn detachment.
Witch’s Tool: Crystals like rose quartz, black tourmaline, and hematite help balance emotional overwhelm. Grounding practices are essential.
Claircognizance – Clear Knowing
Claircognizance is psychic knowing: information that drops into your awareness without reasoning. You don’t see it, hear it, or feel it, you just know.
Common experiences: blurting out truths you couldn’t have known, a sudden “download” of insight, an unshakable certainty that proves accurate.
Cautions: this one is hardest to trust because there are no sensory “proofs.” The key is journaling and testing. Over time, you’ll learn the difference between intuition and random thought.
Witch’s Tool: Crystals like herkimer diamond, fluorite, and sapphire. Silent meditation and automatic writing strengthen this channel.
Other Clairs and Lesser-Known Senses
Though the four above are most common, there are others:
Clairalience (clear smelling): scents that have no physical source — smoke, flowers, perfume, often tied to spirits.
Clairgustance (clear tasting): tasting flavors connected to energy or spirits, e.g., tasting blood during baneful work.
Clairtangency (psychometry): touching an object and perceiving its history or energy.
All of these are threads in the Witch’s tapestry of awareness.
Why the Clairs Matter to the Witch
Some treat the clairs as “psychic parlor tricks.” They are not.
For the Witch, these senses are tools of survival and craft.
Clairvoyance helps us read omens, scry the future, and navigate ritual visions.
Clairaudience connects us with spirits, ancestors, and gods who communicate through sound.
Clairsentience alerts us to energetic shifts, danger, or the needs of our community.
Claircognizance gives us unshakable conviction in our magic, knowing when to act and when to hold.
Without these senses, spellwork is blind. With them, it is alive.
Exercise: The Clair Journal
Start a journal dedicated to your psychic experiences.
Each time you sense something, note which clair it came through.
Record the context, the feeling, the symbols, and what followed.
After weeks, review. Which clair is strongest for you? Which is weakest? Where do patterns emerge?
This builds trust. It also teaches you your own “psychic language.” For one Witch, a red rose may always mean love. For another, it may mean danger. Journaling reveals your codes.
Exercise: The Two-Minute Scan
Choose one clair to focus on each day:
Clairvoyance: Close your eyes and ask to receive one image for the day. Write it down. Check how it shows up.
Clairaudience: Sit in silence. Listen for words, tones, or rhythms. Record them.
Clairsentience: Enter a room. Without analyzing, write down how it feels.
Claircognizance: Ask a question. Write the first answer that arises.
Repeat daily. Over time, your accuracy strengthens.
The Witch’s Responsibility
With awareness comes responsibility.
Do not blurt every impression. Not every hit needs to be spoken.
Do not invade people’s energy without permission. Psychic awareness is not an excuse for boundary violations.
Do not feed fear. If you sense something heavy, deliver it with care, not theatrics.
Ethics matters here as much as in spellcraft. These senses are sharp tools. Wield them with responsibility.
The world will tell you that only five senses are real. That what you see, hear, feel, and know beyond them is fantasy.
But you, Witch, know better.
You have more than five senses. You have eyes that see beyond sight, ears that hear whispers of the unseen, skin that feels the breath of spirits, and knowing that defies explanation.
Name them. Claim them. Train them.
Because the next step will take you deeper still, into the tools and techniques that hone these clairs into sharp instruments of the Craft.
