Rainbow

The rainbow is an atmospheric-optical meteorological phenomenon that appears as a luminous circular arc-shaped band shining in the seven colours of the rainbow in the sky when the observer looks at a wall of rain with the sun behind him. In addition to this primary rainbow, a paler secondary rainbow with a reversed colour sequence is often visible.

Rainbow colours

The colour sequence of this primary rainbow begins internally with violet, which then lightens (via indigo) to blue; green appears in the middle of the colour band, changing to yellow, orange and red towards the outside. The colour zones are not sharply delineated from each other, but more or less glide inside each other. The bright circular disc inside the colour fringe appears brighter than the sky outside and is a pale, somewhat blurred image of the sun. After a broader dark transition zone, which is an image of the rain-covered sky and is called Alexander's dark band after its discoverer, the ancient philosopher Alexander of Aphrodisias, a secondary rainbow, which is not always clearly visible, with a reversed colour sequence, connects to the outside. Outside the broad dark zone, the sky appears somewhat brighter again. From a physical point of view, the raindrops act like small prisms which cause colour fringes at the border between the bright image of the solar disk and the dark image of the surrounding sky. Reflection inside the raindrops causes the image of this colour-fringed border to be reflected back into the observer's eye at an angle of about 42°. This makes the primary rainbow visible. By reflecting twice in the drops, the corresponding much weaker secondary rainbow is reflected back to the observer at an angle of about 51°.

„You know the ordinary rainbow. The rainbow has a red band, then that changes to orange and yellow, then the band becomes green, then blue, then the band becomes a slightly darker blue, indigo blue and then the band becomes violet. So we get a number of seven colours approximately that the rainbow has in itself (see plate 6 drawing). Of course, people have always observed these seven colours and explained them in various ways, because actually these seven colours that you get from the rainbow are the most beautiful colours that you can see in nature.

And besides, you must know that these colours are as if they were floating freely. They are created, as you know, when the Sun is shining somewhere and there is rain in front of the Sun. Then the rainbow appears on the other side of the sky. So when you see a rainbow somewhere, you have to say: Where is the weather now? Yes, on the opposite side, on the side facing away from the rain, must be the Sun. - That is how the order must be. That is how these seven colours of the rainbow come into being.“ (Lit.:GA 350, p. 70f)

Primary and secondary rainbow form a whole

Drawing from GA 321, p. 142

„But if we consider the whole spectrum, the whole field of colour phenomena, we can think of this spectrum as being formed from the really complete series of the twelve colours, which can only be characterised on a circle which has green at the bottom, peach blossom at the top and the other colours in between. And we can imagine that this circle now enlarges more and more; that peach blossom is lost to us here towards the top, and on the one hand runs here towards the red, on the other towards the violet, and beyond both. So in the ordinary spectrum we actually have a part of what would be there if the completeness of the colours could appear through the world of appearance surrounding man. We have only a part of it.

Now there is something that is most curious. I believe that if you take the usual descriptions of optics in physics books and move on to what is usually given there as an explanation of a special spectral phenomenon, namely the rainbow, you will feel a little uneasy if you like to stick to clear concepts. For the explanations of the rainbow are really given in such a way that one is left without a bow. One is compelled to take refuge in the raindrop and to follow all kinds of paths of the rays of light inside the raindrop, and one is then compelled to assemble this rather uniform picture of the rainbow from all kinds of little pictures which are still particularly dependent on the way in which one stands to it, pictures which actually arise through raindrops. In short, you have in these explanations something of an atomistic conception of an appearance that acts rather as a unity in our environment. But we can become even more uncomfortable than with the rainbow, that is, with the spectrum that nature itself conjures up before us, when we realise that this rainbow of which we speak never actually appears alone. No matter how much it is hidden, there is always a second rainbow. And what belongs together cannot be kept apart. The two rainbows, one of which is only more indistinct than the other, necessarily belong together, and in the field of explanations for the emergence of the rainbow one must not even attempt to explain only the one colour stripe, but one must be clear about the fact that the totality of the appearance - the relative totality - is precisely something which is now something else in the middle and has two marginal bands. One edge band is the somewhat clearer rainbow, the other the less clear arch. We are dealing with an image which appears to us in the great natural world and which, in fact, is almost a part of the whole universe. We must regard it as something unified. Now, if we watch closely, we will become quite aware that the second rainbow, the secondary rainbow, is actually an inversion of the first, that the second can actually be understood in a certain way as a kind of mirror image of the first, that it mirrors, as it were, the first, clearer rainbow. As soon as we pass over from the partial phenomena that occur in our surroundings to a relative totality, which we are confronted with when we see our whole Earth in relation to the cosmic system, we have something that actually changes its face completely. First of all, I only want to point out this phenomenon. We will come closer to these phenomena in the course of our consideration.

But because the second rainbow appears to us, the thing that appears there (see drawing page 142) becomes a closed system, so to speak. The system is only unclosed as long as I stand in front of the spectrum that appears specifically here in my environment. And the appearance of the rainbow should actually tempt me to think that, if I set this spectrum before my eyes by means of an experiment, I am only holding nature at one end, that something is lost to me somewhere at the opposite end; that there is still something there somewhere in the unknown, that I actually need the secondary rainbow in addition to every seven-coloured spectrum.“ (Lit.:GA 321, p. 142ff)

Twinned rainbow

The very rare twined rainbow consists of two separate concentric arcs, but the colours in the second arc appear in the same order as in the primary rainbow, instead of reversing as in a secondary rainbow. Such twined rainbows have often been observed during heavy rainstorms, but at present there is no consistent explanation for them. It is possible that they are caused by a mixture of raindrops and ice spheres, or by non-spherical raindrops.

The rainbow become visible only in the post-Atlantean period

„If you had passed through the old Atlantis over in the west, you would not have experienced such a distribution of rain, fog, air and sunshine as you have now in our present country areas. Especially the northern regions west of Scandinavia were then permeated with fog. The people who lived where Ireland is today - and further west of it - never saw rain and sunshine distributed in the way they do today in ancient Atlantis. They were always embedded in fog, and it was only with the Atlantean flood that the time came when the masses of fog also dissipated from the air and settled down. You could have explored the whole of ancient Atlantis and you would not have found a phenomenon there that is known to you all today as a wonderful natural phenomenon - it would be impossible for you to find the rainbow! This is only possible with such a distribution of rain and sunshine as can be in the atmosphere today. In the Atlantis, before the Atlantic Flood, you would not find a rainbow. Only gradually, after the Atlantean Flood, did the appearance of the rainbow occur, that is, it became physically possible. If you are informed of this from secret science and remember that the Atlantean Flood is preserved in the various legends and myths as the Flood, that Noah comes forth and after the Flood first sees the rainbow, then you will get an idea of how deeply true, literally true, the religious documents are. It is true that it was only after the Atlantean flood that men first saw the rainbow.“ (Lit.:GA 103, p. 138f)