Parapsychologists divide cairvoyance into three groups:
- clairvoyance of the future - precognition
- clairvoyance of the past - retrocognition
- psychometrics - the use of clairvoyance to describe objects, places or people, usually on the basis of an object
Nineteenth-century esoteric literature distinguished the following types of clairvoyance:
- astral clairvoyance
- mental clairvoyance
- causal clairvoyance
