Historical Veritas / V-Society Magick Articles archive
Article metadataArchival notice: This is an archival republication of a historical forum article. The text is preserved for research, citation, and continuity; authorship remains with the original forum author where identifiable, and dates/replies/views reflect the surviving capture or Wayback-era ledger where available.
- Author: Prophecy
- Original post date: October 01, 2006, 12:46:46 PM
- Author quote / captured profile/signature line: Hermetic Magician / Veritas Teacher / Posts By Osmosis
- Article title: Clairvoyance
- Length: 4673 words (~21 min read)
- Replies / views: 12 / 2780
- Last visible board activity: July 31, 2007, 02:28:56 PM
- Source archive: Forum topic archive
- Local capture source: res/Clairvoyance.rtfd; duplicate capture: res/Clairvoyance_2.rtfd
- Archival flag/tag: historical archive; Veritas Society; Magick Articles; preserved forum post
Additional archival context
- Archivist abstract: A treatment of clairvoyant perception, spiritual sight, subtle observation, and the epistemic risks of interpreting non-ordinary perception.
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Its nature, development and application
Clairvoyance has been defined as the psychic ability of the trained occultist to see, know and understand that which his mind desires without any apparent commonly-approved media. Amongst dictionaries one of the most accurate definitions is to be found in the Merriam-Webster’s Medical Dictionary:
“The power or faculty of discerning objects or matters not present to the senses.”
A slightly more in depth statement is offered by the clairvoyant Rosicrucian Paschall Beverly Randolph in his “Seership: Guide to the Soul Light”:
“Clairvoyance is the art and power of knowing or cognizing facts, things and principles, by methods totally distinct from those usually pursued in their attainment.”
Each of these definitions are excellent because they do two things: define clairvoyance as the knowledge of something with no accepted media, and highlight that it can be both the accurate imagination of a thing removed in space or time from the occultist as well as the intuitive knowing of a particular fact or piece of knowledge supposedly concealed.
Already the reader may have been educated regarding something that in the common New Age movement and amongst most psionic resources is an entirely ignored branch of clairvoyance: the ability of clairvoyance to penetrate into much more than merely physical things that the magician can not see. This is hardly the scope of clairvoyance, which when properly developed expands so as to allow the mind of the occultist to penetrate into anything which is apparently hidden from him. When the true expanse of clairvoyance is then considered we find that many psychic faculties, such as precognition, psychometry, and the reading of minds (to name only a few) are in fact merely characteristics of a properly developed clairvoyant faculty.
Due to the far encompassing powers attributed to true clairvoyance it has come to be held amongst magicians as one of the most honored and divine of faculties, and the magician who obtains the “true sight” is often heralded as one of the highest mystics of his order. In every magical text that documents the ability, especially if the author himself has it, we find that it above all else is written most passionately about, nearly every author exalting it above all the other powers attributed to the trained magician.
So why is this power so revered? To understand, a simple look at the roots, even the linguistic roots, of magic may suffice. “Magic”, as the scholarly student should well know, comes from the root “magia,” a Latin term used to denote the “wise arts.” The students of the wise arts were called the “magi,” or wise men. The word “wise” itself seems to be an apparently innocent word, but amongst nearly every religion conceivable the attainment of wisdom is held as the most righteous pursuit of the devoted. The average man would define the wise as those who, through many life experiences complimented by a good education, have pieced together accurate and resonating “truths” about life. Those who possess wisdom in today’s society are seen as the old men who have fought in wars, to use an example, and who having been on the frontline themselves can make a fairly accurate guess as to what is coming up next on the agenda regarding the war and the governments at play in it. It would seem then that true wisdom should not be the educated guessing of a man who has experienced much in his life, but instead the actual knowing of events that do not rely on such personal experience, and are not the fruits of guesses. Who can be called the most wise? The battle-hardened veteran that has been mentioned, or the man who can penetrate into all components of the event on every level, and therefore know precisely what the outcome shall be, why it is actually happening, the true motives of those involved, and even the eventual but inevitable repercussions of it ever occurring? Surely even by today’s superficial standards the latter would be seen as the one who was truly the wisest regarding the issue, and therefore the best individual to be consulted regarding it.
This is the power of clairvoyance, and the gift of the image it gave to those who possessed it. Because the well trained magician possesses this gift to one degree or another he has access to knowledge and wisdom which the average man is not within reach of. Through gradual observation this came to be known amongst the people of the time, even the kings, queens and emperors, and eventually this group of mystics came to be called “wise men,” the magi.
It should be apparent now that when you practice telepathy, reading minds, psychometry, or anything else which involves some sort of “extra-sensory” perception, you are in fact developing clairvoyance in so far as its original use in magic is concerned. Under this premise many well trained psychics may accurately say that they are somewhat clairvoyant, but such practices will only develop the outer rims of this incredible skill. So as to avoid confusion amidst the vast array of powers attributed to clairvoyance, let us divide it more simplistically into three practical categories, listed here in order from the most basic to the most advanced:
1.) Intuitive Clairvoyance
2.) Sensory Clairvoyance
3.) Perceptual Clairvoyance
Intuitive Clairvoyance
Intuitive Clairvoyance is the most common form of clairvoyance, often labeled “extra-sensory perception,” or ESP. It keeps the article of “clairvoyance” in its title because in most cases the feats attributed to it manifest in some sort of vision or image on the part of the receptive psychic.
The most publicized manifestation of Intuitive Clairvoyance would have to be the phenomenon known as precognition. Precognition is a momentary glimpse into the often near future: usually the future of the psychic, but occasionally the future of someone associated with him. The things seen here belong to the mental body, the “mind’s eye” if you will, which is consistently more perceptive to subtle changes than the physical brain is usually capable of calculating. When precognition occurs without the mental imagery that sometimes accompanies it, then it becomes the far more common “intuitive feeling” that something in particular is soon to happen.
Another famous form of intuitive clairvoyance is that of dream prophecies, wherein one has a dream which divines the future in some way, shape or form. In this instance you are viewing something occurring on the Intelligent Sphere through the mental body, often through an unconscious projection, and your brain is attributing images to these mental impulses in order to try and make sense of them. Communication between the mental body and the physical brain is at its climax during the deepest states of sleep, and for this reason clients who are mesmerized are often sighted as being able to foretell some basic future events in a manner much akin to how the deep sleeper may be able to divine some hints as to what the future may hold by deciphering the imagery of his dreams.
The last example of intuitive clairvoyance we shall observe here is that of the apparent imagining of seeing something which holds true to something else that is actually occurring. I will give an example citing my own experience: when I was eighteen years old I lived with three other roommates, one of whom owned a pet ferret named Spike. Quite often Spike would push his way out of his cage, and very shortly there would be several people looking for him. I was always silently in my room during such instances, as it is where I spent 90% of my time studying, but I would always know when my roommates were looking for Spike because I would “see” Spike run under the chair I was sitting on at my desk, even though my door would be closed and there could be no possible means by which he could have arrived in my room. As you might have guessed, any further inquiry into spotting Spike in my room would always result in a fruitless search; if he ran under my chair and I looked there immediately, I would only find that there was nothing there. Spike was never actually in my room: my intuition had merely conceptualized his image for my observation. Usually within one minute of my “sighting” the ferret would be found. This can not be called precognition, as Spike would never wind up in my room, and what I was seeing was the result of a present situation as opposed to some possible future circumstance. The explanation is merely that my intuitive clairvoyance personified the thoughts of those I was living with as an image of their desire: in this case, finding Spike the ferret.
Sensory Clairvoyance
Sensory Clairvoyance refers generally to the ability of the psychic to feel something, either emotionally or physically, which he would usually be unable to feel. With this general application the term “Clairsentience” has been derived, describing the ability to experience sensations physically that have metaphysical origins. In most of these cases however, staying true to the idea of clairvoyance, there is an accompanying mental image of the phenomenon, as can be seen in the case of psychometry.
Psychometry is the capability to know something regarding on object merely by touch; its cousin would be contact telepathy. The magician knows that this power is triggered by the ability to draw from an object the qualities which have become attached to it on the Intellectual level, thus allowing for the observation of things which have occurred throughout any length of time, each action being recorded eternally in the causal sphere and Intellectual matrix of that item. Touch is not necessary, though somewhat characteristic of the skill: the clairvoyant need only look at the object and his sight will penetrate the physical object so that he may look directly into its astral matrix, into the Archeus, and there see for himself exactly what energies, emotions and thoughts are attached to it. This same thing he can do with any animal or person.
The roughly related skill of contact telepathy is far more common, and likely occurs more than most people would care to ever keep track of. Amongst the initiated who have trained their psychic faculties, such instances of telepathy become an almost entirely automatic process of daily life. Surely you can recall instances where someone will approach you and grab perhaps your shoulder or arm from behind, and you will instantly have in your mind a complete picture of exactly who it is behind you? Many people will also testify to being in their rooms, back turned to the door, and know exactly who walks into the room on some occasions. This is most common amongst people who spend a great deal of time in a particular place, usually a place that stays rather static in its description, and therefore become silently accustomed to its energies. Any new imposing energy which enters the room shall communicate to the room as if the energies of the room were merely sensitive receptors connected to the person who resides within it. Those who have developed skill in energy manipulation can recreate this ability at whim by charging the room appropriately, and can even design the atmosphere so as to instill via a sort of automatic “contact telepathy” certain feelings to whoever enters the room.
Returning to clairsentience, this is no more than the ability of the initiated to feel the energies he works with. This skill is pivotal in the progress of the magician, as he must be able to feel out the energies of an individual in order to properly heal him, decide his nature, mesmerize him, or even influence him. The feelings one receives through this ability should be allowed to have images attached to them, thus facilitating perceptual clairvoyant recognition of those same energies without being required to feel them personally.
Perceptual Clairvoyance
Perceptual clairvoyance is the most widely known characteristic of clairvoyant power in general, as it is to this that the ability to see entities, the spirits of the deceased, and the energies of the incorporeal world are most famously attributed. There is, however, much more to this ability than mere seership.
By far one of the most interesting core powers attributed to clairvoyance is something called etheric vision, this being the power of the clairvoyant to see the energies which effect this world. The first form of development for this power is the attainment of what is called “psychic vision,” this being the ability of the clairvoyant to perceive visibly the correspondences of occult virtues and thoughts attached to energy. When the magician has developed the psychic sight profitably, the motivational energies behind the occult virtues, intellectual properties and color associations of thoughts and actions shall become apparent themselves, and they may be viewed apart from all other attachments.
So what exactly is the psychic sight, and how does it operate? The psychic sight is the result of enhanced communication between the mind and the body; the mental perception and the physical perception. As the mind is placed allegorically between the body and the spirit, the natural development of internal communication that the magician experiences will result first in the view of the mental body being expressed to the physical body. While the physical eye sees space and those things which obstruct and occupy space, the mental eyes perceive qualities held in the Intellectual Sphere, wherein the mental body has its being. These qualities pertain to emotions and actions, particularly the motivations behind them, and by their observation a great deal may be made known. Through systematically subjecting the perceptions of the mental body to the optic faculty of the physical body, one may perceive in various symbolic ways information regarding the state of various things. One with the psychic sight, for example, will be able to merely look at a man and know what kind of mood he is in, what he has experienced that day, what he is thinking (often personified as a sort of “TV” sitting above his head in the triangular shape of the beams connecting the mind to the causal sphere), amongst other things. The lethargic or easily satisfied individual shall suffice to leave the resultant perceptions as various symbols, and much of what he shall perceive through his psychic sight shall be as veiled and symbolic as the information we all receive in our dreams. In time a fitting understanding of these symbols may be aroused, but they will never be entirely efficient for understanding. The method individual shall instead subject the perceptions of mind to a designated key, training his mind to communicate to his brain certain decided images in accordance to what has been decided. It is my opinion that the most efficient way to receive information via the psychic sight, as well as pave the way for the development of the etheric sight, is to subject these perceptions to a color key, wherein every emotion and action has a representative color. This allows for a far more organized application of the psychic sight, and we shall discuss the manner of doing this momentarily.
There are many rumors, speculations and some outright fallacious assertions regarding the nature of this power, how it is developed and to what extent it may be applied. For exactly these reasons is this ability so rare, as people will no doubt labor endlessly to develop it using false methods, only to find that they were the victims of fraud or misinformation. I shall attempt here to provide not only a fitting explanation of exactly what the psychic sight is, but also how it operates and an exercise by which means both it and general psychic sensitivity may be developed.
To begin, let us examine what the developed etheric vision may be trained to see:
-Entities, and all such beings composed of energy
-All forms of energy, particularly in the world around him
-All thoughts as expressed by energy
-Through physical objects as if they were not present
-The contemplations of the heart
-The nature of a man
After the etheric vision has been fully developed, nothing can block your trained vision; not even physical objects. You may look at a man and know his name, his nature, how he usually behaves, if he is tired, the state of his health, what he is intending to do in the near future, what “sins” he has committed, what good he has done, even what is in his pocket. The extent of this power is most frightening, and even the most righteous magician will be intimidated by the clairvoyant magician who has fully trained this faculty.
There is a great deal of fog surrounding the concept of some so-called “third eye” which I would like to now unveil. The etheric vision is no more than the result of the proper stimulation and conditioning of the physical eyes and the matrix known as the spirit or astral body which connects the physical body to the soul, or inner self. The soul naturally sees everything which it commingles with quite perfectly, much as we may quite easily observe essentially all physical things. Each body is adapted to perceive those things it shares existence within in its respective world, so that the physical eyes may see physical objects, the mental eyes may see intelligent attributes and thoughts, and the spiritual eyes may see ethereal and spiritual substances. Each of these bodies communicate in a parallel manner, but this communication is often merely instinctive, and remains either dormant or, at best, uncontrolled amongst the uninitiated. The proper way to develop the etheric sight is to stimulate physical eyes with an ethereal substance, such as the vital force, or to train it to perceive mental qualities, gradually allowing it to see those energies attached to the qualities. In either case what you are doing is the same: you are conditioning the physical eyes to provide an image perceptible to the brain that would usually remain imperceptible.
None of this relies on some supernatural “third eye.” It is all a perfectly natural extension of the physical eyes by allowing them to communicate with what the spiritual or mental eyes see, so that the images of one may pass on and be perceived by the other. In this manner what the soul sees on its level of your parallel existence may be conveyed to the physical eyes, allowing that vision to become perceptible to the waking consciousness. Pumping flamboyant amounts of energy into the Ajna chakra merely stimulates the pineal glands when done with the intent of developing psychic vision as opposed to developing Kundalini; this area will naturally leak these energies into the physical eyes, and as such reproduce as a bi-product the effect of increasing the communication which makes etheric vision possible. When developed in this manner clairvoyance comes neither quickly nor completely, but instead slowly and imperfectly. These claims may easily be experimented with by the magician who has a knowledge of the vital force: accumulate only a small amount of the vital force into the physical eyes, and then perform any operation which would require clairvoyant sensitivity. Perform the same operation, but instead put much more energy into the lower forehead area and go about the same exercise. The observant magician will notice every time that the tiniest orbs of the vital force pushed into the eyes can create more perfectly the etheric vision than a much larger amount pumped into the location of the ajna chakra. The mesmerist, or any magician who is skilled in passing his vital force to others, may experiment with this on other untrained individuals who, though they know nothing of occultism, are willing to act as test subjects for this purpose.
We shall now continue to an exercise which I have developed myself, and to which many students testify as being most excellent in developing the communication between the eyes of the body and the intuitive sight of the mind. It gradually brings about the recognition of clairvoyance through the activation of psychometry and the psychic sight by developing the magician’s overall sensitivity to subtle mental qualities and their associated energies, also called “psychic sensitivity.”
Psychic sensitivity is a tricky area, as there are many frauds that suggest methods to reach it that will only result in complete self delusion, allowing the victim to exist in an illusory state of confidence supplied by an unrealistic idea of personal accomplishment. Unfortunately many areas of psychic prowess have become subject to such things as of late, but psychic sensitivity in particular, as it is by far the most subjective. Bending a spoon or moving an object can be witnessed by anyone: how you happen to "feel" something is entirely subjective.
For this reason any practices revolving around developing psychic senses should be kept as objective as possible. Holding your hand around a plant for an extended period of time alone will do nothing. Doing so with the intent of feeling the invisible forces that perpetuate it shall accomplish some small amount in the ways of sensing energy, but shall do very little for the attainment of such skills as psychic insight and telepathy. If you are interested in developing the ability to correctly feel and decode different energies, I suggest using a Color Key, which can be accomplished as such:
Every color has a psychological set of correspondences to the average human mind. Take an array of colors, perhaps strips of different colored cardboard paper, and lay them before you in a row. Start by merely looking at and contemplating each individual color one at a time, and reflect for a while what each color suggests to you before moving on. Any sort of psychological stir should be acknowledged, but in particular you are looking for feelings of creation, destruction, well being, decay, action and inaction. While paying particular attention to which colors create these feelings for you, you should still keep track of all the feelings each color invokes after careful observation. After you have a set of correspondences made up in your mind for each of the colors, begin to hold your hand over the colors and visualize that all the qualities of that color are streaming into the palm of your hand, wrapping around it, intermingling with it. Try to feel what these qualities are like: attach a physical sensation to them. Perhaps the color red, for example, stirs up ideas of passion, aggression and destruction: it would be common to feel these as a sort of heat in the palm correlative to all fire qualities. What you are essentially learning to do is train your psychic self to not only feel, but decode and understand, the passive and active sides of each of the four elements.
After some success in these, when you believe each color has a specific "feel" to it, start doing this exercise with your eyes closed. When you can feel these energies distinctly, and choose which colors they correspond to correctly without looking at the color your hand is over, all done with your eyes shut, then you may rightly say that you have developed several psychic faculties: clairsentience, energy scanning, and low-grade clairvoyance (a most precious skill in the eyes of the magician). At this point when you hold your hands around a plant, for example, and you shall not only be able to presence of the invisible force which feeds it, but you shall be able to discern how much longer it shall most likely live, if it is still growing or has begun to die, how healthy it is, and other such chemical factors. With your eyes closed, because of your work with the strips of color, your psychic senses will attribute certain colors to these qualities.
To explain how each of the three resultant abilities of this exercise are obtained, a short examination will suffice:
1.) Clairsentience. Because you have attributed certain physical sensations to these qualities, when they are present you shall be able to feel them accordingly.
2.) Energy scanning. Because you have not only worked with the colors but the occult virtues of those colors as well, you will be able to break down and examine energy signatures with which you are familiar, and therein be able to correctly diagnose the state of the thing from which the energy originated.
3.) Clairvoyance. Because we have attached color to both the sensations and the occult virtues, your mind shall apply to these energies the colors which they are most aligned with, allowing them to have distinction in your mind one from the other. With practice you will gradually begin to be able to see these energies in active life according to the colors which you have ascribed to them.
There is a fourth skill which results as a sort of bi-product from this training, and it is psychometry. There is a simple exercise which may be employed towards the ends of refining psychometry, and which once developed serves excellently as a demonstration of psychic ability: Because you have attributed the sensations to the colors, and you will always be able to feel the presence of these colors if you focus due to the occult qualities you have trained yourself to be receptive to, you shall always be able to tell the color of an item in your hand. When you have developed some skill with this exercise an excellent way to see undeniable results is to take a deck of cards, shuffle it well, and then with your eyes closed begin to separate them into two stacks: red and blue, or whatever the two colors happen to be for that particular deck. When all the cards have been sifted through open your eyes and examine the two piles to check your accuracy thus far. Another fun thing to do, particularly for the uninitiated (as it can be passed off as merely a magic trick), is to draw from a deck of cards a series of three or four cards, and lay them face down in a row. Wave your hand slowly over the row of face-down cards, then declare that you will flip over all the cards in the row of the same color, and then all the cards of the other color. If you have felt which cards possessed which qualities correctly, the result is amusing to both the magician and the spectator.
I have presented the approach of developing the psychic sight by means of increasing the communication between the physical eyes and the mental sight; this is not the only way, nor is it the most effective for fully developing this clairvoyant vision. It is, however, the most effective means for one who has not had extensive training with the electric and magnetic fluids, with the vital force, and with the fire element, to develop the perception of energies and qualities. This exercise will allow you to know the qualities of things merely by looking at them, as well as develop the ability to feel something at a distance and accurately divine its nature. What it will not allow you to do is peer into the ether deep enough on a vibratory rate to actually penetrate through physical objects with your sight, nor will it allow you to see any entity above a lower elemental in stature, and therefore it will not allow you to peer into the Akasha. For information and practicalities regarding development of the etheric vision to this level, one should consult both Franz Bardon’s “Initiation into Hermetics” and Max Heindel’s “The Etheric Vision and what it Reveals.”
Logged
The magician becomes filled with God, fed upon God, intoxicated with God. Little by little his body will become purified by the internal lustration of God; day by day his mortal frame, shedding its earthly elements, will become in very truth the Temple of the Holy Ghost. Day by day matter is replace
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Archivist note: Preserve corrections as appended notes where possible. Avoid silently modernizing terminology, spelling, or claims unless a moderator intentionally creates a separate edited edition.