Tom wrote:

I did not say i was insulted. I said that what he wrote smacked of
elitism to me. Stop pretending to read my mind. Just read my words. It
is simpler and more accurate.

You are in error. Elitism is a system of hierarchical ranking which in
the end palces an extra measure of authority, governance, pride,
supriority, or resource management in the hands of those who place high
in rank. Stating that various people have various gifts, often genetic,
and various deficits, often genetic, is in no way a ranking system.

Go back and read my post: i was referring to genetic gifts. I cannot see
well, and it's genetic. I have an unusually high proficiency at internal
3-D mapping skills; it's genetic. That's all i was talking about.

I brought it up (and what follows is addressed to Rick, not to you, Tom,
spoiler of conversations, disrupter of this newsgroup, deployer of the
old "Let's You and Him Fight" game) because my undertsanding of such
gifts as non-hierarchical and non-elitist is a central tenet of my
beliefs, founded upon a series of incidents that happened to me many
years ago. I hope that my account of these seemingly digressive
incidents will place what i wrote about such gifts in context for you.

Back in the 1970s a book called "The Origin of Consciousness in the
Breakdown of the Bi-Cameral Mind" by Julian Jaynes was all the rage in
occult, metaphysical, and philosophical circles. The author's premise
was that consciousness as we know it (that is human consciousness, which
Jaynes felt existed in sharp distinction to, and at an emergent level
from, the consciousness of other animal species) was the result of
evolutionary changes in the physical structure of corpus callosum of the
human brain. He went so far as to claim that modern human consciousness
differed from the consciousness of even late prehistoric and eraly
historic humans in that we (the modern humans) no longer heard voices in
our heads as "from the Gods" or "spirits" in the way that "primitive
man" had.

At a crucial pojnt in his argument, however, Jaynes unwittingly revealed
a strange weakness in his theory -- he mentioned that certain people he
had met claimed to be able to hear music in their minds, just like the
old "primitiive" people must have heard, and that they claimed that this
music was not just the sound of themselves singing subvocally, but
instrumental music or songs that seemed to come from another entity,
much like the ancients heard the voices of Gods. Jaynes then revealed
that this had happened to him, once. Once! One time in his life he heard
a fragment of a symphony playing in his head. He was, of course, telling
us this because it was so strange and unusual.

My then-partner and i were flabbergasted! Julian Jayenes did not
constantly hear music playing in his head?

Huh?

Didn't everyone?

I mean -- surely, we thought, everyone has songs and symphonies and
piano solos and old advertising jingles palying constantly in their
heads, right? We both did!

We began to ask everyone we knew: "Do you hear music playing in your
head right now? if so, what is it?"

Well, of course, everyone in my family said sure they did -- Mozart,
Chuck Berry, The Royal Pudding jingle from the Charlie McCarthy radio
show, whatever -- constantly, all day ... and all of the night. My
mother even wrote a short story alluding to this gift, called "And They
Shall Have Music..."

But then, while i was asking folks this question at parties, one of my
friends looked around and said, "You're all maiking this up, right? You
don't *really* hear music in your heads, do you? You're just saying
that... aren't you?" And i realized i had met another Julian Jaynes type
-- a man who did not not hear music in his head.

I asked him if he liked music. He did.

I asked him if he owned recordings of music. He did.

I asked him if he could sing music. He could, and demonstrated it.

"But isn't there some music playing in your head right now?"

"No."

"What do you mean, 'No'? Can't you hear an old tune? If i say, 'The Star
Spangled Banner', doesnt it start up playing in your head -- Da dada
dada, da-da da-da da-da, da DA dada DA dada DA? -- or if i say 'Fur
Elise' doesn't that little piano thing start playing dada dada da, da da
da da in your head? And don't you wake up in the morning singing, you
know, like some old Memphis Jug Band song or La Paloma or Dr. Pepper is
the Friendly Pepper-Upper or i'm in love - Uh! - i'm all shook up or i'm
using my Bible for a Roadmap or The Crave by Jelly Roll Morton or ...
something?"

"No."

"No? Not even waltz across Texas with you in my arms or big legged woman
with the meat shaking on her bones or n-e-s-t-l-e-s Nestles makes the
very best ... cho-colate?"

"Nope."

And that's when i realized that what i took for granted, this constant
stream of very loud music playing in my head at top volume at all times,
even in my dreams, was some sort of genetic ... something. Anomoly.
Gift. Fluke. Idiosyncracy. Thing.

So i began looking at other gifts, and identifying them.

I have no depth perceprtion and cannot play games that involve catching,
batting, or shooting. It's genetic. But i knew people who could shoot at
tiny targets and hit them -- and they could do this the first time a gun
was put into their hands. Their keen eyesight and hand-eye coordination
was genetic.

And then there were the drawers -- folks who picked up a pencil around
the age of three and just began drawing and by the time they were ten
were well into two point and three point perspective and by the time
they were fifteen could draw the human figure in motion without
reference. Genetic, and usually others in their family also had this
gift.

So Rick, you speak of the training and study required to fully integrate
-- at all levels of perception -- the elemental system, and i believe
you, that you have done this work, that it has been something you have
accomplished. But for me, it was not like that. I created my first
system of fully realized tactile / colour / number / alphabet / totem
animal corespondences when i was in grade school. This was all my own,
and i did it without refeence to, or knowledge of, any classical
European Hermetic systems, Asian systems, or other such prior work. It
was simple, idiosyncratic, and childish, but it worked. Here is a sample
of it, circa 1956, when i was nine years old:

earth green/brown 4 F forest/garden moss tree-frog emerald velvet
air white/pink 3 H sky/cloud wheat swallow rose quartz tulle
water blue/green 2 W river/ocean kelp salmon sapphire satin
fire yellow/red 1 S lava flow zinnia wasp citrine broacade

When i first learned that there were classical systens of corrspondence,
via reading modern redactions of Medieval and Renaissance texts, i was
ecstatic. I set about memorizing each system, building memory temples to
each one, like houses or theme parks to visit, each one different. I
made large painted diagrams detailing each system's salient maps,
especially those that could be mapped onto circular diagrams. Flipping
from one system to another was (and is) as easy for me as flipping from
one diagram to another, one room in a house to another, one mental
temple to another.

This is just who i am and how i am. It is not the result of effort on my
part, any more than accurately shooting at targets took great effort on
the part of my keen-eyed friends or drawing the human figure took great
effort on the part of my artist friends.

I hope that this explains a bit of how i work and think in the magical
world of the elements. If you have any questions, please ask and i shall
be glad to reply.

cat yronwode