Through a Jungian Lens

This photo was taken on the evening of the Lantern Festival, the last event of the Spring Festival in China.  Since the event is tied to the full moon, that date shifts every year.   That evening, I watched as many sent off paper lanterns into the sky from the Buddhist temple that stood at the side of the park in which I was standing to take this photo.  The lanterns were like small hotair ballons which were powered by a flame in a small box which made the lantern glow in the dark night sky.  Each lantern is sent to the heavens with a prayer written within.  The year before this photo, I stood on the edge of the South China Sea and sent a lantern free into the night sky.

I guess I could say that this sending of a prayer into the night during a full moon is symbolic.  For me, the moon is representative of anima, that distant feminine aspect that is found within the deep and dark underworld of unconsciousness, in shadow country.   I choose to enter into this region of shadows, ghosts and relics in hope of finding hope and meaning.  I know that there is something deeper within, something deeper without that is waiting to be born, to be reborn in consciousness.

Something in us knows much more than the ego does, and in time the ego may learn to enlarge its frame to include this other wisdom.  This is how one benefits from the compensatory power of the unconscious as it seeks to enlarge the narrow frame of consciousness. (James Hollis, On This Journey We Call Life, 2003, p. 54)