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.