Seeing a rainbow
A rainbow appears only when the sun is behind you and rain is in front, and no two people see exactly the same one, a nudge to ask what becomes visible only from where you happen to stand.
What it may mean
A rainbow is not a thing hanging in a fixed place. It forms where sunlight enters raindrops and comes back toward you at a particular angle, so you can see one only with the sun behind you, and it always circles the point opposite the sun, where the shadow of your head falls. Move, and it moves with you. A friend beside you is seeing a slightly different rainbow, made by different drops. Each one is a personal view of shared weather. Some things in your own situation can also be seen only from where you are standing, and you would miss them if you waited for someone else to describe them. People have read rainbows as the gods' road and as good omens, and in Shropshire it was even unlucky to point at one.
Depending on how you saw it
A rainbow at the end of a stormy afternoon
Storms that clear late in the day often leave the brightest rainbows, because the sun is low in the west while the rain moves off to the east. The light returns before the clouds have gone. Which good thing are you already seeing while some of the trouble is still on the horizon?
A rainbow in the spray of a garden hose
Spray from a hose in bright sunshine makes a small rainbow you can walk around and control, as long as the sun is at your back. It is the same physics at a scale you can play with. Which big idea could you test first in a small, playful way?
Wanting to point at it
In Shropshire, pointing at a rainbow was thought unlucky. These days most people reach for a phone instead. What would you notice if you watched the next one for a full minute without photographing it?
A full circle seen from a plane
From high above, a rainbow can appear as a complete circle, because no ground cuts off its lower half. The arc seen from a street is only part of the shape. What looks incomplete from ground level and whole from a little higher up?
Why it happens in nature
A rainbow forms when sunlight enters raindrops, bends, reflects off the back of each drop and comes out split into colors, at about 42 degrees from the point directly opposite the sun. That is why you see one only with the sun behind you and rain ahead, most often in the morning or late afternoon, while the sun sits low.
What folk beliefs say
England (Shropshire)
It was a well-known belief in Shropshire, the 1903 collection says, that pointing at a rainbow brings bad fortune.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 979. View the page
Wales (Montgomeryshire)
A Montgomeryshire superstition held that a "stean" of money lies where the rainbow comes down to earth.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 979. View the page
Dahomey (Benin, West Africa)
In Dahomey, seeing a rainbow was lucky: it was Dauh, the heavenly serpent, and a harbinger of happiness.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 980. View the page
Scandinavia (Norse myth)
In Norse mythology, the rainbow was called the gods' path.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 980. View the page
To reflect on
What can you see clearly from where you stand that others nearby might be missing?