Transformation is a key element in all religious traditions. In cultures that stem from the Abrahamic religions transformation remains linked to the Word of God as the transforming entity. In Aboriginal culture, however, the transformative element is the very body of the ancestral spirit – the body becomes the landform. In all traditions the sacred knowledge of the transformation is contained in symbolic text. Liturgy, dance, song become the means by which the 'blessings' of the sacred texts can be transmitted and received – recitation of the Koran, the Psalms, Aboriginal song cycles, Gregorian chants, the Catholic Mass, further enriched by the decoration of sacred spaces with a visual iconography of statuary, sand and rock paintings, stained glass windows, illuminated manuscripts, the richly symbolic geometric design of Islamic cultures. In the beginning was the word, and the word was beautiful. All artforms descend from this ritual celebration of transformation.

On an every day human level 'bringing into mind' is also intimately associated with the word, as symbol-rich word-filled thoughts are translated into storyline and plot. Words exist for us to symbolise the concept or thing that they refer to in order that mental contents can be structured, communicated and remembered. 'Woman' symbolises a generic female human being, 'Nancy' symbolises, generally, a woman known by that name, or specifically my friend who lives in Samoa. 'Nancy-boy' on the other hand symbolises a concept – albeit a narrow prejudicial one. The word ascribed to God in Genesis is more than symbol. It is trans-substantive, transforming matter, becoming 'the thing' itself. God says, let there be "Nancy" and there she is. If I were to say "Nancy" with the full expectation that she would materialise, I would be considered unwell, or at least naively misguided. I am expected to understand that the word is not the thing or the person that it symbolises. My relationship with the world is dependent on this understanding.

There are two quite normal circumstances, however, when that awareness is usefully suspended. When I dream – something I have no control over – anything can transform into anything. When I move through liminal space, where the temporary suspension of day to day awareness is safely undertaken, (Turnbull in Schechner & Appel, 1990; V. W. Turner, 1982 15) and on into 'creativity country' to create – something I do by choice – anything can be transformed into anything. The suspension of one's day to day awareness of the difference between reality and the symbolic world is one of the keys to creativity, an idea that will be discussed in the following section that explores the workings of the mind in relation to creativity. The 'word' has an uncommon function in the act of creation when our symbol rich, word filled thoughts are transformed into artifact or embodied in the performer. If I paint a portrait of Nancy, write her biography, choreograph the 'Nancy ballet', my symbol-filled thoughts about her (unknowable to others and obscured, in a sense, from myself) materialise, are brought into being, become something in their own right. My idea about Nancy is transformed and made real, thus something unformed and unknowable becomes known.

Victory Over Death 2, 1970, synthetic polymer paint on canvas,
Colin McCahon, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

The New Zealand painter, Colin McCahon, explored the idea of 'the word' to great effect in his "Victory Over Death" series in which the prime visual element is the transforming word (and number) itself 16. These pictures have a profound effect on me. When I look at them I have the sense that I am looking at cognition in action – at a mental event as it is happening.

Numbers: sketch for University of Otago Library mural, 1966, plastic paint on board,
Colin McCahon, Hocken Library, University of Otago, Dunedin.

Freud might say that McCahon has presented me with a symbolic representation of his own neurosis that resonates (to my satisfaction) with my own sublimated desires (Arieti, 1976 pp. 21-25).  I say McCahon has mapped a journey into 'country' with these paintings with sufficient skill and flair to allow me to mentally journey with him for a time.

A question of faith, 1970, synthetic polymer paint on canvas, Colin McCahon, private collection

What's in a name?
The English word, "create", derives from the Indo-European root, ker, kere, to grow, via the Latin, creation or creatus, to make or grow (Weiner, 2000, p. 41).  In its beginnings encapsulating the idea of biological fruitfulness, "create" ultimately came to mean "to bring something new into being."

All words in English to do with bringing something into being; human or divine action (create), resulting product or entity (creation), attribute (creative), or state of being (creativity) derive from this root. This is not the case in some other European languages. In Finnish, for example, the common word for creating – Luoda can also be translated as "throwing" or "throwing out". The same word is applied to shovelling snow (Hintikka, 1994).  Clearing space for new beginnings, dispensing with the unnecessary or the obscure, throwing around ideas, perhaps? These words in Spanish and Italian derive, like the English words do, from the same root. The root of "creation" in both French and German maintains its connection to the divine creator, while human activities relating to bringing into being stem from a different source. Japanese has four words for 'creative'; one word for 'creative power'; one for 'creative originality'; one for 'a creative person'. Hungarian has two words for creative, another for creative process and yet another for creativeness 17. Creation in Sanskrit means "what is poured forth" (Hillman, 1983). 

It would be fascinating to trace the etymology of translations of the word "creativity" across all cultures and languages to determine conceptual developments cross-culturally over time. This is beyond the scope of this thesis, but it is clear from this very brief linguistic survey that it would be presumptuous to take any universality for granted. The purpose of this etymological exercise is to get a feel for cross-cultural similarities and differences in conceptual trends.

Across linguistic history many words have been closely linked with and often used interchangeably with "creativity" (Creativity=Art=Inspiration=Genius). "Art" the word most commonly associated with creativity, derives from the Latin root Ars (craftsmanship) and Artis, (human making, either technical or artistic). For the Greeks, art-making was considered the province of artisans, linked directly with techne, an imitative rather than originating practice and not commanding high social status (Herodotus, 1939, p. 167).  Aristotle believed that humans have within themselves a principle of origination, arche (Latin, archetypum: an original, from the Greek, arkhetupos, first moulded eg architect; the beginning technician) that allows them to act. He did not see art-making as stemming from arche, as art-making was considered imitative. Aristotle saw existence as being perpetually in motion, its primary objective always being to transform potentiality into actuality (Aristotle & Madigan, 1999, a; Aristotle, Waterfield, & Bostock, 1996, viii).  Aristotle (following Homer, Plato and Pericles) identified the realm of action, particularly ethical and political action, as the most creative sphere of human endeavour, as these actions were concerned with the making and the governing of societies. Plato discussed banning artists altogether from his utopian city-state, considering their presence dangerously disruptive to social order and public morals (Plato & Lee, 1974).

The role of the 'fates' in Greek culture contributed to the curbing of any over zealous notions regarding the scope of human creativity. Like the builders of the Tower of Babel, Greek art-makers were expected to remember that "pride goeth before the fall." It is curious that Western democracies, which value the notion of individual creativity so highly and raise selected individual artists to celebrity status, retain such admiration for the philosophies of this 'classical' period of human creative history when individual art-making was considered imitative and low status.

"Genius", from Latin, gignere, to beget, originally referred to male begetting, Iuno (Juno) (Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology, 1964, p. 231) referring to female begetting (again the procreative association) throughout the Roman era. The idea of a particularly female creative begetting encapsulated in Iuno seems to have disappeared as the word itself fell into disuse. The idea of genius (and its maleness), however, endured and transformed across cultures, becoming associated with the creative spirit in artistic production during the seventeenth century (Harper, 2001).  A man's Genius (the guardian spirit, the guide from birth to death) was worshipped in Roman households (represented initially by an image of a snake and later an adult male figure in a toga) and accompanied a man (as his higher self) throughout his life. It is difficult to determine, in this broad sweep search, whether Iuno was considered to be equally protective and generative, although it appears it was not commonplace for images of both male and female spirits to be represented in all households, although they appeared side by side in some. Genius then, originally had to do with sex, the higher male self and male begetting of all kinds. Genius also had to do with place, indicating the distinctive spirit, the 'creative nature' of a place 18 and a man's relationship with place. Genius loci (Latin), was the guardian spirit, the special atmosphere of a place. 'Creative genius' has now come to encapsulate the idea of the 'spirit laden' internal space of the unique, special individual.

Philosopher Karl Phillips Moritz said of the creative genius in his essay, The Creative Imitation of Beauty, originally published in 1788, that:

… (T)he horizon of his active power must be as broad as nature itself: that is, his organic structure must be so finely textured and offer so many points of contact with all-circumfluent nature that, so to speak, the outermost ends of all relations in nature on the grand scale, placed beside each other here on a small scale, have room not to crowd each other out. (Harrison, Wood, & Gaiger, 2000, p. 777)

While it is no longer seen to exclude women, an aura of maleness continues to hover about the concept of genius in current usage.

"Inspiration" derives from from L., inspirare, from spirare, to breath. The 14th Century meaning of inspire, was, 'to breath upon, to blow into'; inspiration, to 'receive the breath of life', to have it 'blown in'. The Greeks, of course, had the Muses, nine sister goddesses, daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, who each protected a different art or science and inspired its practitioners. Calliope (epic poetry), Clio (history), Erato (love poetry), Euterpe (lyric poetry and music), Melpomene (tragedy), Polyhymnia (singing, mime and sacred dance), Terpischore (dance and choral song), Thalia (comedy and pastoral poetry), and Urania, Aphrodite, (astronomy) (Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology, 1964, p. 127).  Inspiration, of all these words to do with creation, is the word that most directly resembles its embodiment. A new thought, a sudden insight is invariably accompanied by an intake of breath as the thought occurs, followed by the 'ah' of mental confirmation, which is an exhalation – both the taking in of the breath of life, the receiving, and the enlivened blowing out, giving to the world the spirit laden thought. 'Inspiration' still carries with it a sense of the numinous.

'Creativity', the noun, so prevalent in daily usage today, did not come into common use until the early nineteenth century. Having had a limited specialist function in artistic circles from the 1600's it was first used in its more general sense by Wordsworth in 1816 (Harper, 2001).  In his history of creativity, Robert Weiner suggests that the word "creativity" was brought into play at that time to fill a troublesome linguistic gap. Enlightenment views towards innovation in the arts and sciences held that qualities that exemplified originality and invention were common to both these fields. A word was required which allowed a trans-disciplinary meaning to be expressed – a word which brought the idea of inspiration together with the processes of bringing things into being across all disciplines where new discoveries were seen to be possible and highly desirable (Weiner, 2000) 19. 'Creativity' emerged as the source of all innovation, inspiration and invention, gaining prominence over specific activities of adepts in either art or science. The muses, genius, arche and techne all blended together inside the creative 'man'. It well suited the idea of the perfectibility of human thought and material capability.

While this view became commonplace, indeed axiomatic in Western thinking, there are still those in the fields of arts and sciences who furiously dispute any connection between the inspirational and motivational factors of sciences and the arts. Lewis Walpert, Professor of Biology (Medicine) University College London, wrote in an article entitled Which Side Are You On (Walpert, 2002), that he was bemused by the "obsession for showing that art (is) similar to science". His article asserted that the business of science was to understand how the world works, and that art had no such function; that science was a collaborative process and art individual; that understanding the complexities of a scientific paradigm is the province of a scientist, while understanding art is anybody's business.

Walpert's personal experience and understanding of the creative processes of science is not matched in this article by a similar depth of understanding regarding the processes of art-making and its products (between which he made no distinction). Walpert observed that "we should stop pretending that the two disciplines are similar and instead rejoice in the very different ways that they enrich our culture." Thereby, in a stroke of the pen, eliminating the metaphysical dimension of science and the theoretical exploration of the workings of the world inherent in art-making – a sad limitation on both fields of endeavour.

Human creativity has not been seen over time to be about just art-making, religion, politics or science. The Industrial Revolution saw a shift in thinking which again linked creativity with technological innovation, a resurrection of the classical Greek view with an added bonus of status. Innovation and invention had begun their ascendancy in the creativity stakes, a trend that continues to this day. Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley and other Aesthetes resisted this shift, reacting strongly to the preoccupations of the Industrial Revolution. Their mantra, "Art for Art's sake" reflecting a valuing of aesthetics and beauty over 'creativity' as a general principle (McFall, 2003).  It is probable that this conflict of preoccupations has always existed – between aesthete and technocrat, philosopher and artisan, scientist and artist, popular culture vulture and 'high art' connoisseur. We know what Plato and Aristotle thought in their time, but we haven't got a clue what the artisan forging the statuary for the Temple of Athena thought about his craft or that of the philosopher poet, or what the general populace thought of either. We seem to be no clearer in our information rich electronic age, when we could ask directly what half the world thought creativity was or ought to be.

Creativity – a definition

The structure of meaning I have given to "creativity" throughout these pages fully recognises its spatial and temporal qualities. My concept of creativity is imbued with a dimensional quality, a quality of enfolding space, that envelops us and supports our ability to create; a multi-dimensional space (physical, conceptual, metaphorical) which we inhabit as we go about the serious business of bringing something new into being.

15 An idea first put forward by the anthropologist Van Gennep to describe the processes involved in ensuring effective rights of passage across diverse cultures (Gennep, 1960).  These processes depend on the establishment of a transition space (the liminal space) separate from all day to day social activities through which initiates move to complete their initiation.

16 Colin McCahon Gates and Journeys retrospective, Auckland City Art Gallery, 1988.

17 translations from www.freedict.com

18 Collins English Dictionary, updated Third Edition.

19 Weiner conflates 'genius' with 'inspiration' in his account (Weiner, 2000).