Jung believed our art reflects our ancestry. Each one of us is a unique strand of colorful thread that comprises a larger tapestry. Each fiber is the result of the artists personal experience that reach all the way back to our childhood and influences our artistic creation. Just as the "literary historian" brings to his work "certain peculiarities of a work of art into relation with the intimate, personal life of the poet," the artist does the same with dyes, inks, and oils. That our stories become who we are, and as such, inspires us creatively. (Cain, et al., 2010).
Or is it as Socrates believed, which was that creativity is derived through divine possession. Socrates referred to this affect as an unseen companion (a demon)? Socrates thought creativity was a gift from the gods that made him unique. Although, scholars suggest what Socrates experienced was nothing more than his inner voice or conscious, not an unseen supernatural artifice that had taken control of him and in time, the word demon came to mean "an attendant of power or spirit." The ancient Greeks believed the cord that linked the mortal to the gods was possessed by something or someone within influenced the mortal to act externally. The belief is what ultimately lead Christians to believe demons were evil spirits.
Part Two follows.
Source: Cain, Finke, Johnson, Leitch, McGowan, Sharpley-Whiting, and Williams. The Norton Anthology of Theory & Criticism. 2nd Ed. Published by WW Norton and Company, New York/London. 2010.
Image: Merlin the Magician from a medieval transcript