The word "psychic" is derived from the Greek word psychikos ("of the mind" or "mental"), and refers in part to the human mind or psyche (ex. "psychic turmoil"). The Greek word also means "soul".
In Greek mythology, the maiden Psyche was the personification of the human soul. The word derivation of the Latin psȳchē is from the Greek psȳchḗ, which means, literally, "breath", and is a derivative of psȳ́chein, to breathe or to blow (or you could say, the breath of life - to live).
The French astronomer and spiritualist Camille Flammarion is credited as having first used the word psychic in the way we consider it today, with all the cultural pictures of divination, seers, palmistry and etc - particularly when it was later introduced to the English language by Edward William Cox in the 1870s.
Elaborate systems of divination and fortune-telling date back to ancient times. Perhaps the most widely known system of early civilization fortune-telling was astrology, where practitioners believed the relative positions of celestial bodies could lend insight into people's lives and even predict their future circumstances. Some fortune-tellers were said to be able to make predictions without the use of these elaborate systems (or in conjunction with them), through some sort of direct apprehension or vision of the future. These people were known as seers or prophets, and in later times as clairvoyants (A french word meaning "clear sight" or "clear seeing") and psychics.
Seers formed a functionary role in early civilization, often serving as advisors, priests, and judges. A number of examples are included in biblical accounts. The book of 1 Samuel illustrates one such functionary task when Samuel is asked to find the donkeys of the future king Saul. The role of prophets appeared in all ancient cultures. In Egypt, the priests of the sun deity Ra at Memphis acted as seers. In ancient Assyria seers were referred to as nabu, meaning "to call" or "announce".
The Delphic Oracle is one of the earliest stories in classical antiquity of prophetic abilities. The Pythia, the priestess presiding over the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi, was believed to be able to deliver prophecies inspired by Apollo during rituals beginning in the 8th century BC. The last recorded response was given in 393 AD, when the emperor Theodosius I ordered pagan temples to cease operation.
In the mid-nineteenth century, Spiritualism became prominent in the United States and the United Kingdom. The movement's distinguishing feature was the belief that the spirits of the dead could be contacted by mediums to lend insight to the living. The movement was fueled in part by anecdotes of psychic powers.
But what does “Psychic” really mean for us today?
Ways of being psychic are always changing, and how we consider this is quite different than it was in the 1870’s, when spiritualists and mediums were popular in the US for a population dealing with the grief after the civil war.
It’s quite different than 20 years ago, when I first started studying psychic abilities - I remember taking a class on spirit guides and thinking, “I can’t tell anyone I’m doing this, they will think I’m crazy!” - nowadays, people are much more comfortable talking about spiritual things, witchy things, and all the intuitive arts.
Think of it a bit like the new age movement - in the 60’s on the west coast of the united states was this huge explosion of alternative spirituality, born of the post-war generation’s desire to re-write their relationships to family, culture, faith, and the earth. This seeking brought us things like homeopathy, a range of new body work techniques, somatic education, took Jung and Freud’s radical psychology to the mainstream and etc. Aromatherapy used to be fringe, now it’s available at Target. What I’m getting at is that psychic abilities, intuitive arts, and being aware of energy in these extraordinary ways is not far behind.
While we’re not seemingly evolving outwardly in the world, we’re actually evolving internally through software updates to what we can sense, manage, and handle energetically in our psyche’s. So people are working much faster energetically and what is possible in a lifetime for a person today couldn’t exist 20 years ago.
Consider your grandparents - if they handled the amount of communication that you do on a daily basis, through texting, messaging, the news, social media, Slack, your job, etc - their heads would explode! If you want to see where humanity is evolving, this is where to look. And it all has to do with your psyche - the energy space inside of your where you process information, read energy, sense energy, and know energy. This is one example of where we are evolving internally in creative ways as a people.
This space is also where you create from. So most of the clients I work with in my sessions, and all of the students who come to Art of the Seer Academy for classes are feeling a tension and an inner struggle bringing forth their unique creative energy. They sense they can have more, be more, express themselves more fully in their lives and feel an artificial restraint on that. Mostly that restraint is collected up foreign energy, outdated ways of being, and karma that is holding one back from a full and direct expression of self in the world.
Now, just because we’re all able to work faster in energy means that it’s even more important now more than ever to slow things down and look at the details with discernment. Discernment is an art, a learned skill, and is essential to the energy sensitive person.
This is why you would practice meditation as a psychic, as a sensitive person - meditation is an ancient technology that allows you to focus on your inner landscape in an extra ordinary way - to start to discern what is your energy, from and of your own creative spirit - and what is not.
This is important because that energy space inside of you - your psyche - is there all the time, in subtle and sometimes imperceptible ways directing the course of your life, affecting directly how you see the world around you, and how you engage with the relationships in your life. This is your spirit, trying to drive the car of your body, or ride the horse of your life. It’s always there, doing its best. But if your windows are fogged up with energy that isn’t yours, or your horse has blinders on, it can be hard to see yourself and others clearly. It can be hard to know where to step next in the dark forest. You can feel lost, stalled, adrift, or listless rather than empowered, creative and vital.
Now the last thing to discuss here before we get into the practice is that a psychic works with energy in two ways. A psychic has the ability to sense energy - to be receptive. This is the one that most people are aware of - if you think of every energy sensitive person you know, they always talk about how they are the effect of energy in certain places, relationships, situations. They have an overdeveloped sense of being receptive to energy.
But if you’re able to sense or be the effect of energy, that means you’re also able to to direct energy in equal measure. These two abilities go hand in hand. Most psychics I’ve met, and I’m including myself, have an under-developed ability to direct energy in conscious, constructive, meaningful ways. Most sensitives are proficient in one or the other, think of it like a bicep and tricep - I have found that most people are over developed in one area and deficient or unpracticed in the other.
When you have tools, and a practice grounded in discernment, you can learn how to direct energy so that you can manage and re-direct energy in your psychic space and the world around you in creative ways that support your desires, goals, and dreams. This can be profoundly healing for a sensitive person who has felt over-run, overtaken, and disempowered by all that they have and are sensitive to - all they have been receptive to.
Learning this alternative skill takes fortitude, commitment, and a bit of uncomfortability - your consciousness is a musculature, so all the rules of training your body apply to training your psychic abilities and your energy. The payoff can be gratifying, mystical, and free-ing.
This is what we teach here at Art of the Seer Academy - how to turn on and activate this part of your consciousness that may have been a bit left out - atrophied - and how to bring that spiritual part of you, your creative energy - through the veil and to the forefront in your life.
Our hope in this New New Age of the 21st Century is that this kind of study and practice empowers you to bring your vitality, energy, and creativity to the forefront in life in unique and unexpected ways - to have more of the experiences you want in your relationships, your art, your business, your creative expression, your work - wherever it is that you want to express yourself more fully as a sensitive being, in a body, having a unique life experience and all the magic that can entail.