The Power of the Creative

The Potency of Possibility
Creativity is not just about learning how to make things: It's about transformation ~ taking the world as it is and seeing the possibility of something new within it. Seeing that a lump of wood could become a beautiful sculpture ... the same quality of vision that sees that an ailing and corrupt political system could be swept away and justice restored.
No wonder that artists have been by turns demonised and exalted:
The Ancient Chinese, and the Ancient Celts, both depicted the "Creative Spirit" as a dragon, the most powerful of mythical beasts.
The Ancient Egyptians saw art as essentially magical: If you painted a picture of a person, you effectively gained control over them. This belief led to the adoption of the famous Hieroglyphic script ('picture writing').
The early Christian Church saw images as being so potentially spiritually subversive, that all images were banned in churches, except for strictly 'educational' purposes.
Sigmund Freud saw civilisation as the result of careful repression of our 'animal' instincts into the subconscious, and art as the subversive expression of those instincts.
Carl Jung saw art as the 'drawing forth' of subconscious wisdom into the community, and hence an essential part of a thriving, growing society.
Pablo Picasso felt that simply the act of painting influenced the world around him, and that through exhibiting his work he could transform society for the better.
Piet Mondrian felt that paintings could reveal inner truths about the universe, directly and without the need for conscious understanding.
Edward Adamson discovered that painting and sculpture could provide a key to unlock the minds of his most profoundly disturbed patients, setting in place the foundations for contemporary Art Therapies.

Of Dragons
The art of several ancient cultures contained images of fierce winged beasts, which we loosely class as 'dragons'. But where we have knowledge of the symbolic meaning of these beasts, we find that they are often considered a powerful force for good, rather than frightening destructive monstrosities.
The Ancient Chinese have left behind many written tracts which describe the symbolism of their dragons. The most well known of these are the "I Ching" (Book of Changes) and "Tao Te Ching" (The Book of the Way). In these books, dragons are seen as representing the "Creative Spirit" and the highest virtue.
The Ancient Celts saw dragons as symbolic of their most dearly held values. The Celts saw Fire as effectively "distilled magic", and the dragon as the creature which breathed magical power for the benefit of the tribe.
Our word "Dragon" stems from the Ancient Greek "Drako", which means "To see clearly". Dragons in our culture used to be seen as clear-sighted (clairvoyant), able to cut through to the truth of a situation, as well as to see the possibilities of the future.
Those who would discredit ancient wisdom (of whom there are many) have sought to confuse the word "Dragon" with the word "Draconian", and change the symbolic meaning of dragons from a positive, creative, wise force, into a cruel, greedy and demonic force.
In fact the word "Draconian" comes from an Ancient Athenian law-maker who happened to be called Drako, but whose laws were severe, and whose punishments were cruel and excessive.