List of psychic abilities

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This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

This is a list of alleged psychic abilities that have been attributed to real-world people. Many of these abilities pertain to variations of extrasensory perception or the sixth sense. Superhuman abilities from fiction are not included.

Psychic abilities[edit]

  • Astral projection or mental projection – The ability to voluntarily project an astral body or mental body, being associated with the out-of-body experience, in which one’s consciousness is felt to temporarily separate from the physical body.[1][page needed]
  • Automatic writing – The ability to draw or write without conscious intent.[2][page needed]
  • Bilocation — The ability to be present in two different places at the same time, usually attributed to a saint.
  • Dermo-optical perception - The ability to perceive unusual sensory stimuli through one’s own skin.
  • Divination – The ability to gain insight into a situation using occult lists.[3][page needed]
  • Dowsing – The ability to locate water, sometimes using a tool called a dowsing rod.[4]
  • Dream telepathy - The ability to telepathically communicate with another person through dreams.
  • Energy medicine – The ability to heal with one's own empathic, etheric, astral, mental or spiritual energy.[5]
  • Ergokinesis - The ability to influence the movement of energy, such as electricity, without direct interaction.
  • Levitation or transvection – The ability to float or fly by mystical means.[6][page needed]
  • Materialization — The creation of objects and materials or the appearance of matter from unknown sources.[7]
  • Mediumship or channeling – The ability to communicate with spirits.[8]
  • Petrification — The power to turn a living being to stone by looking them in the eye.
  • Prophecy (also prediction, premonition, or prognostication) — the ability to foretell events, without using induction or deduction from known facts.[9]
  • Psychic surgery – The ability to remove disease or disorder within or over the body tissue via an "energetic" incision that heals immediately afterwards.[10]
  • Psychokinesis or telekinesis – The ability to influence a physical system without physical interaction, typically manifesting as being able to exert force, control objects and move matter with one's mind.[11]
  • Psychometry or psychoscopy – The ability to obtain information about a person or an object by touch.[12]
  • Pyrokinesis – The ability to control flames, fire, or heat using one's mind.
  • Ṛddhi – Psychic abilities gained through Buddhist meditation.
  • Shapeshifting or transformation — The ability to physically transform the user's body into anything.
  • Thoughtography - The ability to impress an image by ‘burning’ it on a surface using one’s own mind only.
  • Xenoglossy — The ability of a person to suddenly learn to write and speak a foreign language without any natural means such as studying or research, but that is often rather bestowed by divine agents.
  • Witnessing - The gift of being visited by high profile spiritual beings such as Mary, Jesus or Fudosama(Acala) from Buddhist Traditions.

Extrasensory perception[edit]

Main article: Extrasensory perception

Extrasensory perception, or sixth sense, is an ability in itself as well as comprising a set of abilities.

  • Clairvoyance — The ability to see things and events that are happening far away, and locate objects, places, people, using a sixth sense.
  • Precognition (including psychic premonitions) – The ability to perceive or gain knowledge about future events, without using induction or deduction from known facts.[13]
  • Remote viewing, telesthesia or remote sensing – The ability to see a distant or unseen target using extrasensory perception.[14]
  • Retrocognition or postcognition – The ability to supernaturally perceive past events.[15]
  • Telepathy – The ability to transmit or receive thoughts supernaturally.[16]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Bruce, Robert (1999). Astral Dynamics: A New Approach to Out-of-body Experience. Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads Pub. ISBN 1571741437.
  2. ^ Miller, Sukie (1998). After Death: How People Around the World Map the Journey After Life (1st Touchstone ed.). New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 9780684838694.
  3. ^ Flower, Michael (2007). The seer in ancient Greece ([Online-Ausg.] ed.). Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press. ISBN 9780520252295.
  4. ^ Miller, Sukie (1998). After Death: How People Around the World Map the Journey After Life (1st Touchstone ed.). Ulan Batar: Simon & Schuster. pp. 167–192. ISBN 9780684838694.
  5. ^ Edzard Ernst. "A primer of complementary and alternative medicine commonly used by cancer patients | Medical Journal of Australia". Mja.com.au. Retrieved 2013-11-09.
  6. ^ Oldridge, Darren (2007). Strange Histories: The Trial of the Pig, the Walking Dead, and Other Matters of Fact from the Medieval and Renaissance Worlds. London: Routledge. ISBN 9780415404921.
  7. ^ Roach, Mary (2008). Six Feet Over: Adventures in the Afterlife. Edinburgh: Canongate. pp. 122–130. ISBN 9781847670809.
  8. ^ "medium - The Skeptic's Dictionary". Skepdic.com. Retrieved 2013-11-09.
  9. ^ Randi, James (n.d.) [1995 (print)]. "Prophecy". An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural. Digital adaptation by Gilles-Maurice de Schryver. (Online ed.). James Randi Educational Foundation [St. Martin's Press (print)]. Retrieved 26 January 2022.
  10. ^ Spence, Lewis (2007). Encyclopedia of Occultism & Parapsychology (3rd ed.). [Whitefish, Mont.]: Kessinger Publishing. p. 750. ISBN 978-0-7661-2817-0.
  11. ^ Braude, Stephen E. (2002). ESP and Psychokinesis: A Philosophical Examination (Rev. ed.). Parkland, Fla.: Brown Walker Press. p. 21. ISBN 1-58112-407-4.
  12. ^ Beloff, John (1997). Parapsychology: a Concise empathy History (1st paperback ed.). New York: St. Martin's Press. p. 97. ISBN 978-0-312-17376-0.
  13. ^ Randi, James (n.d.) [1995 (print)]. "Precognition". An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural. Digital adaptation by Gilles-Maurice de Schryver. (Online ed.). James Randi Educational Foundation [St. Martin's Press (print)]. Retrieved 26 January 2022.
  14. ^ Zusne, Leonard (1989). Anomalistic Psychology: A Study of Magical Thinking (2nd ed.). Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum. p. 167. ISBN 0-8058-0508-7.
  15. ^ Wolman, Benjamin B. (1986). Handbook of Parapsychology (Repr. ed.). Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. pp. 921–936. ISBN 9780899501864.
  16. ^ Hamilton, Trevor (2009). Immortal Longings: FWH Myers and the Victorian Search for Life after Death. Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic. p. 121. ISBN 978-1-84540-248-8.