Judging other's talents

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a ritual and witnessed something that I wished wouldn't have happened: I watched someone get told that they did not have any mage-sight or mage-hearing.

This conclusion was based on the fact that the person could not see or hear something that the leader of the ritual said was there. Well, I did not see or hear it either, and everyone knows that I see and hear weird things all the time. And I have been around this person enough to know that she has some type of mage-sense.

(Note that I am not happy with using the term mage-sight, etc.; it is just what this person was using to describe the ability.)

And there is a possibility (at least fifty percent) that there was nothing actually there. I will not go into why I believe that except to say that the ritual leader unknowingly failed a simple test, and I spotted the resultant mistake (think cold-reading and you will get the idea).

It disturbs me that a judgment was made of someone's abilities based on one test. It disturbs me that I suspect that it was a false test. Even more disturbing is the fact that it was seven year old girl that was told she had no mage-sight and no mage-hearing.

And it really disturbs me that I had much the same thing done to me when I was a kid, but that is a whole another issue, isn't it?

I don't want to think about the damage that might have been done here, but it is rather hard not to. As I said at the beginning of this post: I wished it would not have happened.