Intuition and psychic are they the same or different?

I am asking this question because i am pondering over a post made on a tarot blogg http://78notes.blogspot.com/ which i found today via http://thedailyfey.com/blog/ anyway in the tarot post there was a distinction made between intuition and psychic abilities which interested me. Part of the reason i guess is because i do read cards and have had the proverbial ‘are you psychic?” question which i too have always hedged on. This would probably because i find the word psychic to be somewhat offensive as i associated it with those weird people over there that are a part of the new age and those who go on TV and have egos the size of Africa. The media has pretty much damned the word because of the people who they have focused on, and the storeys that have been published. The dramatic, the odd and the egotistical. The media also become all sceptical when ‘psychics’ are unable to perform on demand or perform accurately and clearly. Information that is gained using extrasensory perceptions is not always clear in fact it can be quite cryptic and down right frustrating. But then i also believe that there are some things that we are not meant to know, somethings that it is better if we go through them, experience them.. as it is through experience that we gain wisdom. But i digress.. a little. Needless to say i have an aversion to the word psychic and am much more comfortable with intuition.

To my understanding i have i guess believed that intuition and psychic are interchangeable words. Some people would get flashes of intuition, that gut feeling that knowing, where as others would get flashes of psychic information, which to my mind is pretty much the same thing. It is amazing the influence that the media can have on such things.

Perhaps intuition is a form of psychic ability, if you take the term psychic and use it has an umbrella term to mean the ability to receive information from a spiritual energetic source, through all of the senses? And intuition is one of those ways of receiving such information. *ponders this* or perhaps now that i think about it a bit more perhaps intuition is the ability to interpret the information. *ponders this to*

In this tarot blog post, Ginny Hunt outlined three major types of psychic abilities: clairvoyance, clairaudience, and clairsentience. I quite like the last one as i had not heard of it before and it fits those other ways of picking up information from the either, or wherever. Here i have copied and pasted (quoted) was she has written about those terms)

“Basically, there are three major types of psychic abilities: clairvoyance, clairaudience, and clairsentience. Clairvoyance is the ability to see images, scenes, visual impressions in one's mind's eye that are extrasensory messages about another person. Clairaudience is hearing things spoken, listening to guides, spirits, or departed ones. Clairsentience is feeling, smelling, tasting or otherwise physical sensations that communicate extrasensory messages.”


But i am still wondering about intuition and weather it is separate? Different from psychics. In my mind i still see the term ‘psychic’ being more of an umbrella term, and that intuition can be interchanged with psychic for those who are uncomfortable with the word psychic. But then i am also starting to see how psychic is an umbrella term with intuition falling into a sub category and that intuition is about interpreting information from extrasensory psychic abilities clairvoyance clairaudience and clairsentience. I suspect that Tarot or divination also falls into the Extrasensory abilities, because while the cards have particular meanings, they fall together in a random way but a good reader will often ‘see’ other meaning s in the cards that are not actually written in books, thus interpret this extra information or hidden information using their intuition. Err... not sure how clear that sentence is... *sheepish grin*

According to Wiki a psychic is as follows “is a person who professes an ability to perceive information hidden from the normal senses through extrasensory perception, or is said by others to have such abilities.” Which if you interpret intuition as being an extrasensory perception then yes it falls into the umbrella term of psychic. This would mean that intuition is a psychic ability especially if you explain intuition as a extrasensory perception. Your gut it telling you something, information that is hidden from the ‘normal’ senses, so to speak.

Currently i am strongly leaning towards intuition as interpreting information that is gained through psychic ability such as clairvoyance, clairaudience, and clairsentience, might take some more thinking however...

I am also wondering what other extrasensory perceptions are there out there??

Hey look some more from trusty wiki..

Clairsentience (feeling/touching)
Clairaudience (hearing/listening)
Clairalience (smelling)
Claircognizance (knowing)
Clairgustance (tasting)

And finally i hope everyone has an excellent and blessed solstice in both hemispheres.

The nature of reality, or perhaps the nature of this world.

Reality for one person can and is sometimes very different from that of another. Some people are naturally more grounded in this world and others in a world of their own. For me I am from this world, and as a witch my magic also comes from this world, as well as my deities, my spirit guides, and the energy that is magic comes from this world. This is not to say that this world is only made up of everything that you physically see hear touch smell and taste, because I also believe that this world has strong spiritual and energetic components. This is why there are seven directions when casting a circle between the worlds. You are casting your circle between the physical world and the spiritual energetic worlds, which are all a part of this world.


Recently I started doing some aura cleaning, and interesting exercise from C Penczak’s Living temple book. One of the things that you look for when you are in your deep trance is cords that are connected to you. Some of these cords are unhealthy they are connections that you have with people and places that are no longer necessary, are not healthy for you to have. For me the unhealthy cords were connected with a person. These cords were in many ways created by me as I had a very close friendship with this person, that turned sour in a very nasty way a few years back. And to be totally honest I still feel anger about it all. This anger, hurt, and frustration caused there to be cords. However these cords are not all one sided although many of them are.


The problem I had the other night as I was extracting these cords was in essents the nature of reality. My reality did not match the reality of the person at the other end of the cords. And it was my reality that was called into question several years ago when the friendship turned sour, it was me that was sat on that picnic table as the sun rose trying to decided if I felt was real. It was me who was screaming so loudly in my head that it all faded to white noise. That was me, my feelings, my understanding of this world which was being called into question. That screaming and white noise lasted quite some time, and now I understand that I had actually shoved it under the mat, so to speak as it was all to much to deal with, to frightening to think about, to close to the abyss that is insanity.


Today I spoke with a very wise friend of mine about how I was feeling and if these cords that felt like they were hooked in and the new ones that kept reappearing as I pulled others out were me or that other person? Or was I just making shit up?

This was brought up because of the screaming white noise that was once again sounding in my head. That noise was the prelim, if you will, to that abyss, to that disconnection from this world.


Often as witches and magical workers we are faced with this abyss, this abyss of disconnect, this abyss of the unreal. By our very nature we work a lot inside our heads and with energy that can not yet be measured by science, can not be seen or felt and in many cases considered to not be real. It takes a strong leap of faith to believe that yes magic is real and we can affect the energy of this world. What we risqué is that we take that faith to far and the reality of this world becomes lost amongst the astral wars, goblins, three headed dogs, and magicians from far away planets in a different dimension.


The abyss of the disconnect became a serious risqué for me on that picnic table and I have fought long and hard to realise the reality of this world, this one I am standing on, the one I live in. I have come to realise that this world is a very magical place, and while there are not astral wars, goblins and magicians from far away planets, there is mystery here, there is magic here and there is wonder right here.


So over the next little while I will be dong aura cleaning a few more times to heal this hurt, to remove these cords that are no longer necessary or healthy for me to have. Like the friendship that became unhealthy and is thus no longer, I will extract these cords with love from this world, energy from this world and magic from this world.


This world is where its at.

Seasons on the Down Under

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I have been thinking quite a lot recently about seasons, particularly pagan season of which there are eight. Here in New Zealand which is the southern hemisphere, our seasons are six months ahead or behind, of the northern hemisphere. This is something that the settlers did not think about when they settled here, thus Christmas, which is Yule, is celebrated by the general public on December the 25th. December the 21st in New Zealand is summer solstice , where as Yule is a Winter solstice’s holey day.

With Christmas bearing down on us at great knots, there are those wintery Xmas decorations starting to show in the windows of shops, and the famous Kirks, Xmas shop with its shiny expensive heirloom decorations, of snow laden trees, baubles, and jandal wearing, cloak draped Santa’s. In contrast the weather is warming up and the sun showing a bit more often, the days getting longer and the muggles are breaking out their bbq and inviting their friends over for meat and beer.

What does this mean for Witches and pagans of varying hues living in New Zealand. Most of us are first generation, with our families being nominally Christian,( as in, they Celebrate Easter with secular chocolate and Christmas with secular presents and do not go to church even semi-regularly, also xmas and Easter has pretty much been relegated to secular type holidays here in NZ), but Xmas is still considered a time for families to spend together, thus spending xmas day with our families is still a requirement. I call it a command performance but i digress.

Others however enjoy this time they spend with their families eating too much, trying to stop aunty hit the sherry again, and herding the children away from the present laden pine tree, with its fake snow, until after lunch when the gifts are allowed to be torn apart, opened. These are of course age old rituals, and can differ from family to family. In my family where all packed up our presents, food, kids and animals and headed to a place called Mokau, where my grandfather jack built a batch, a very traditional kiwi batch, with its kikouia grass and cactus garden and toilet on the outside and the zip.. oh the zip i have fond memories of the bottom dropping out of the zip, water everywhere, luckily it was not hot water as we had only just finished filling it up. Opps digressing again and yes the batch was sometimes refered to the house that Jack built. (it’s a poem)

Anyway our family would go the batch as it was called, and spend Christmas and new years, fishing, building sand castles, eating, digging for pippies, floundering, swimming and all manner of beach like activities. The Christmas tree was a pine branch that the uncles had ‘found’ somewhere, and xmas dinner was leg of lamb or beef, roast chook stuffed, roast potatoes, kumara, carrots, salads, and for new years there was always a bbq outside. Both were followed with a night time walk down the beach and watching the ocean.. it was pretty cool.

Now as i am older, that lovely batch is no longer, and i am a practicing witch, so how do i relate to this season of summer with its winter celebration? Sure i could ‘only’ celebrate the summer solstice, and ignore the existence of xmas all together but then I have tried this and it doesn’t sit right in my head nor for that matter my heart. So now i am contemplating how can I sanely combine the two.

As a younger Witch when reading the various witchy books out there that explained the seasons and what the stood for i can remember questioning the reasoning’s presented, actually i still to, mostly because these books where written in a different country for a somewhat different climate, sure New Zealand has very distinct Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn, but they do not fall precisely on the days that were prescribed in these books. So eventually for me the pagan calander changed and evolved, and these holy days became more times, or seaons. Let me explain.

Firstly i see these holy days, more as sacred seasons, or time periods, thus summer solstice lasts when the seasons have changed over form spring to summer through to the beginnings of autumn, and the actually dates, per say change every year. Take this year for example; the weather in windy Wellington has not followed a traditional pattern. Traditionally the frosts do not happen until early spring, (end of august/September) however this year they happened nearer the end of winter july/august, which along with some warm bursts, confused our local pine trees which spat there pollen over the city during the course of one foggy weekend, and covered the city with a fine yellow dust, i know this because i was gifted with a sinus infection, which i have not had in years.. good grief.. So the plants, pine trees thought that it was spring, however spring it was not, instead it was winter, sure the end of winter but still winter. Spring this year didn’t really get into the swing of things until the end of September and beginning of October.. and here in November we are still getting cold bursts of southerly winds, which are brrrr.. but it is defiantly spring, that quickening. You can feel it in the air, see it in the unpredictable weather, and the new growth of various plants. As Wendy would say magic grass day has happened. (magic grass day is the day when after the slow growth of winter the grass all of a sudden grow very quickely.)

On the last day of October and 1^st of November was for us Beltane, although that does depend on what calendar you follow, this was for us in Wellington this year still very early spring, even though we had passed the spring equinox. I suspect that it will be this way up until December, which brings me neatly around to the original point of this post; how to celebrate summer solstice with its Yule trimmings.

Another thing to note is that we on the internet are very much like a global village, so while we are celebrating summer solstice here in New Zealand the southern hemisphere, in places like England, Canada and America pagans are celebrating the winter solstice. Beltane for us just gone, was samhain for the northern counterparts, this for me brings a sense of balance, dark and light life and death, however the seasons of balance are actually the equinoxes, when the days and nights are of equal length, and while this is happening I often find that my life has become decidedly unbalanced.. it’s a thing.

So how to make it all feel right in my head especially the Xmas and Summer Solstice? Things I will have to mull over the next few weeks.