The Rainbow: Icon, Symbol, and Index Across Time

Signs survive by gaining new meanings while also retaining old ones. The rainbow is a clear example of this phenomenon. In our time, the meaning of the rainbow is a point of debate and contention. Depending upon someone’s culture and previous experiences, the rainbow will differ from individual to individual, and it can be observed that interpretations have evolved throughout time. The human tendency to sacrifice nuance in the interest of retaining an easily understandable and sharable narrative that supports a particular worldview is present with the rainbow–it is often reduced to an icon, symbol, or index. Although meaning exists in individual minds forming collective ones, the rainbow cannot be simplified to any single one interpretation. This complexity is not a recent event, but layered meaning surrounding the rainbow has been present since the earliest recorded interpretation of its meaning.

Accordingly, the first appearance of the interpretation of the rainbow and a projection of meaning onto it is commonly thought to be a thousand or so years before the common era. The question of whether the rainbow existed before this time or not is not a relevant question, and the focus will be on the hermeneutics of the time. In the book of Genesis, the establishment of the rainbow as a sign of the covenant and as a reminder for God concerning the promise he gave to never again destroy the earth with a flood. The meaning of the rainbow according to this view has been a binding contract between God and all of the living creatures on the earth (New International Version, 2011, Genesis 9). The most common reduction of this is to say that this is only a sign that metaphorically transfers meaning in a more linear fashion, that is, only a symbol of covenant, instead of looking closer at other potential interpretations.

Furthermore, the other potential interpretations are those of icon and index. As an index, it points to the cessation of destruction through the appearance of the rainbow after the storm, signaling the stabilization of creation. The rainbow functioning as an index of atmospheric transition and as a sort of cosmic boundary is present across Western and tribal cultures, with the real difference lying in seeing it as dangerous liminality or stable order (Blust, 2021). As an icon, according to the “war bow thesis,” it has been argued that Eastern peoples viewed the rainbow as God hanging up his war bow, with another view saying that the bow is to be seen as drawn, as if God is about to engage in conflict. There are dissenting voices, who point out that needed context to support these theses is missing, and it is then argued that it more accurately represents a sign of the covenant as a literal barrier between the Earth and the firmament, holding back the waters (Turner, 1993). While cultures of antiquity and those of a more tribal nature interpreted the rainbow within the bounds of divinity, later periods relocated the meaning of it within natural philosophy.

Therefore, the meaning of the rainbow expanded to also include the empirically explainable rather than only the mysterious, while some argue that the rainbow lost the metaphysical that it had represented previously. Although there were others such as Descartes before Newton who examined the rainbow through this lens of observation and inference, Newton was the first to give reproducible knowledge during the early Enlightenment period demonstrating the composition of white light (Corradi, 2016). The poet John Keats rebuked the outcomes of this due to the appearance of the loss of a poetic or mystical interpretation surrounding the rainbow, hinting at a kind of elegy that gives way to civilizational grief: “Do not all charms fly / At the mere touch of cold philosophy? / There was an awful rainbow once in heaven: / Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings, / Unweave a rainbow,” (Keats, 1820). This lament corresponds to the changes in the way the rainbow was iterated as an icon, symbol, and index.

What emerges from this shift is not simply a new explanation, but rather a transformation in how meaning is itself assigned. As an icon, it represented a physical color spectrum, as a symbol, it portrayed the increasing trend of associating rational inquiry with the interpretation of the rainbow instead of a more mystical one, and as an index it constituted how refraction functions through physical processes. Even though Keats saw this development as a loss of wonder in broader society, this did not mean that it was a total loss, as meaning exists within the minds of individuals. Keats does accurately capture the undertone of the change of meaning due to a change in epistemology, which is present in the Enlightenment. It is a reaction to the movement of meaning being assigned on an impersonal granular level instead of a communal existential one.

More broadly, shifts in hermeneutics modify the methods through which meaning is produced, received, and transmitted. The Enlightenment did not remove meaning; it relocated and expanded it. In periods after, and even in contemporary contexts, meaning is still interpreted, as it must necessarily be, but the interpretation moves away from empirical observation, and towards conscious engineering for a particular purpose, due to the proliferation of opposing narratives and worldviews, and breakdown of communal coherence. The interpretative potential of the rainbow was not exhausted–it has been deliberately deployed across cultural, political, and ideological realms.

Arguably, the most widespread and common iteration of the rainbow in our contemporary context is that of a vessel for transmitting diversity and unity for a particular community (Day, 2022). The rainbow flag functions as a rallying point and a source of identity. In 1978, this flag was created by Gilbert Baker, who chose it because of the wide range of colors that it has, thus denoting diversity, which is the flag functioning as an icon. Depending upon the audience, when the flag is seen as an index, it often points to a safe place, community territory, or hostility and perversion (Wolowic, 2016). As a symbol, the collective cultural interpretation of society is that it represents queer identity. There is no strict transference of this view across all individuals, as generalization is impossible to perform with accuracy. While signs can have meaning attached to them through interpretation or reaction, as shown above, the inception of this particular meaning is attached to conscious design, and the rainbow flag is one the most successful attempts of our day. This portrays the durability of the rainbow as a sign.

Some potential reasons why the rainbow continues to persist as a sign could be rooted in how it is universally seen and understood. This aids in broad recognition and assigning meaning to it. Also, it has remained visually stable throughout time. The appearance of it is emotionally evocative in nature, and it often inspires a sense of wonder. When looking at interpretation, there is no easily assigned meaning to it, thus allowing for it to be open to a multitude of different interpretations. Signs that endure are not rigid, but adaptable.

The rainbow signals that the lifespan of signs does not depend upon a singular coherent fixed meaning, but rather the capacity for continual reinterpretation across different contexts. In each context, the rainbow functions as an icon, symbol, and index, and the manifestation of that is different, but not entirely replaced or eradicated, thus allowing for multiple iterations to be true at the same time depending upon held conceptual schemas. It is limiting to attempt to shrink the rainbow to any sort of singular point or meaning, and to ignore that other people hold other views is to sacrifice the potential of allowing them to see a different view. The rainbow will continue to gain new semantic differences, with the next being most plausibly found in the next hermeneutic shift. Sign categories are not permanent, but emerge through human interpretation.

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