What is Clairalience? The psychic sense of smell.

Our sense of smell has a unique ability to trigger memories and emotions.

Have you ever walked past someone wearing a perfume or cologne that reminded you of a person, an encounter or even a shared memory?

If so, you have experienced the power of the olfactory psychic sense.

Clairalience is the physic ability to perceive smells beyond our 5 basic senses. This primal sense allows the psychic medium to sniff their way around an individual’s life. By following the scent, we can perceive memories, feelings and emotions about a person’s past, present and future. 

What is the meaning of clairalience?

Clairalience means clear smell and is known by several names, clairscent, clairolfaction and clairessence. It is the ability to perceive scents only detectable through our extrasensory abilities.

If you have ever detected an odor that only you could smell? Then you have experienced psychic smelling. These scents usually appear out of nowhere, in an unexpected place and are fleeting in nature. But on rare occasions the scent of a loved ones perfume or a flower can linger for up to a couple of days.

Common odors include a loved one’s favorite cologne, a particular cigarette brand or even the smell of cleaning detergents.

How does clairalience work?

Clairsentience enables you to smell odors that are others cannot, and reveals details about a person, place, animal, or thing. Each scent tells a unique and meaningful story about the spirit persons life.

A clairalient experience leads you on an olfactory journey to dig up insights about experiences shared with loved ones, significant memories, our states of mind or general health and future revelations, just to name a few. Each scent provides an abundance of information on any aspect of a person’s life.

Although a psychic medium may perceive the same scents for different readings, its meaning will differ for each client. For instance, smelling freshly baked pizza could be connected to a family business, it could be about the importance of making pizza together or that they simply enjoyed eating pizza.  

Just like with the physical senses clairscent is closely connected to the sense of taste, known as clairgustance. So don’t be surprised if you simultaneously smell and taste a freshly baked croissant, an apple pie or a fish and chips.  

If you want to know more about the other clair senses, you may be interested in one of the following articles ‘The 8 clair senses‘ or ‘Develop clairsentience, the psychic ability of feeling’

How common is clairolfaction?

Clairolfaction is not common, in fact, it is considered a rare gift among psychic mediums A study conducted by JAMA Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg revealed that only 6.5% of 7,417 US adults over the age of 40, experienced phantom odor perceptions.
Dr Bainbridge also found that women were more likely to experience phantom odors than men in the same age range.
Unfortunately, it is a psychic gift that is often side-lined, undervalued and unexplored. But developing this psychic ability is not only good for mediums, it is also a great way to improve our intuition and connect to higher states of consciousness.

Are you interested in developing the clairalience? Then you may be interested in learning more about ‘how to develop clairalience through the chakras, or how meditation can improve clairalience. Alternatively, click below to listen to a guided meditation.

How do you know if you have clairolfaction ability or not?

Those with clairolfaction abilities will usually have a sharp sense of smell in their daily lives. They usually perceive odors faster and more intensely than others. They are the individuals that will usually know when something is wrong with their food, people, places, or situations.

Such individuals find it difficult to ignore their instinct and do not stop digging until they get to the bottom of a situation. 

What does clairolfaction smell like?

Getting a whiff of roses or smelling the perfume of a loved one in spirit is a pleasurable experience. The spirit realm uses scents to get our attention and let us know that they are present. 

Psychic scents smell just like those experienced with our normal sense of smell. Using our psychic sense of smell allows us to detect any aroma, in varying degrees of intensity and for different amounts of time. It is a subtle but intense experience that can instantly lead us down memory lane and remind us of those precious moments shared together. 

In psychology and medicine, this phenomenon is referred to as an olfactory hallucination or phantosmia, which means phantom smell. Most people experience plesant aromas such as the smell of roses or lavender and this can boost our mood and restore our physical and emotional health.

However, it is also possible to perceive unpleasant smells, also referred to as cacosmia. The scent may be intense or overpowering but, in my experience, only ever lasts a couple of seconds. This can include the strong smell of cigars, burning rubber or rotten eggs, just to name a few.

 What are the most common phantom odors.

Our psychic sense of smell can potentially detect any scent that we can perceive through our nose but some scents are more common than others.

Below is a list of the top 10 phantom odors reported by the general public and psychics:

Pleasing odors	Undesirable odors
Perfumes & colognes	Smoke: e.g. cigarette, pipe
Flowers: e.g. roses, lavender	Burning: e.g. rubber
Food: e.g. freshly baked bread, pizza	Chemicals: e.g. sulphur or smell of rotten eggs
Beverages: e.g. coffee, chamomile, mint	Gases: e.g. ammonia
Freshly cut grass	Faeces

Although each odors can trigger memories, emotions or feelings it also contains a symbolic meaning. The spirit world exchanges messages in the most efficient way possible and imbeds additional details symbolically. E.g. smelling roses could be a sign that you are working too hard and that you need to find a work life balance, that care needs to be taken for your health, or that healing is on its way.

If want to know more about psychic scents, their literal and symbolic meanings keep an eye out for upcoming articles or join the mailing list.