Through a Jungian Lens

Water, ruins and a tree - a perfect setting for a mythological drama

I took a lot of photos when I was at Angkor Wat in Cambodia like any good camera-toting tourist. But I was looking for more that the classical scenes of ruins, I was looking for portals, doorways into another way to being in this world, doorways into other dimensions of time and place. This photo captures something of this sense of otherness for me, capturing the water which hints of depths while mirroring the presence in a manner that says, it really isn’t as it seems to our limited vision. hinting that reality is perhaps a figment of imagination. With the presence of the stones which try to hint of human efforts to tame the world, yet serve as evidence that human efforts are subject to a greater power, that of time and nature and the sun. And then there was this tree, larger than other trees with roots descending deep into the earth as if suckling at the breast of the Mother, roots feeding on the water buried in darkness below the surface – a Tree of Life that reaches up as if in prayer to the sun and the spirit of the Father.