Rainbow Hill

Rainbows shine through almost every window on Rainbow Hill.
It is always a delight to move from room to room and see slivers of the rainbow arcing across a room.

On Rainbow Hill, when it is not meandering around the world, you will find cats basking in pools of rainbow sunshine.

Loki and Kuri

 

Today’s focus on Rainbow Hill is because like most magical places, it has a few downsides. For The Hill it is brambles. One brave driveway cuts through the fairytale, head-high brambles like a magic sword, but the brambles have been on a winning streak.

I’m pleased to announce that the tide of the battle has turned. The ferociously aggressive brambles are now losing.
Our valiant warriors come from Planet Goats. www.joe.medalia@planetgoats.com. Eco-Friendly Brush Clearing Specialists.
Joe, Lead Goat Assistant, brings in the herd of twenty darling goats.

These goats, without flinching and with more effect than a magic sword, are making short work of the monstrous shield that surrounds the hill.

These friendly little warriors all have names and vastly different personalities, but all are dedicated to the job at hand. Joe will tell you the story of each goat, many of which are rescue goats who have found their dream job.

In a few weeks a much more civilized hill will once again be meandering around the world. While we wait, just a few more goat pictures. & thank you Planet Goats.
~lisa

Bye Bye Brambles

R = Rainbows

 

R=Rockwell extra bold is modeled on a 1910 font that was originally called Litho Antique. It was revived in the 1920’s and then re-published under its current name in 1934 by Monotype (Frank Hinman Pierpont)

Rainbows

“The true harvest of my life is intangible – a little star dust caught, a portion of the rainbow I have clutched.” – Henry David Thoreau

Life on Rainbow Hill is almost always suffused with rainbows. This seems like the most natural subject for today’s “R” post in the A-Z challenge.  This post was going to be in all the colors of the rainbow, but yellow does not read very well so I’ve settled for a more random spectrum sampling.

Rainbows are the sun’s rays refracted or reflected by rain or mist into an arc of color. These rainbow arcs always have their colors in the same sequence: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.

A well-known English Mnemonic is “Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain” and the less interesting American English of “ROY G BIV”.

Languages all around the world have their own mnemonics for remembering the order of colors in the rainbow.

I recommend this site not only for its great information on all aspects of rainbows, but also for the best exploration of the global range of mnemonics for remembering rainbow color order. http://www.folklore.ee/folklore/vol6/rainbow.htm

See http://www.fi.edu/color/rainbow.html for a more scientific explanation of the continuum of rainbow colors.

Rainbows come many different guises under many different names:
Twinned Rainbow, Double Rainbow, Primary Rainbow, Secondary Rainbow, Tertiary Rainbow, Quaternary rainbows, Alexander’s Band, Higher-order Rainbows, A Supernumerary Rainbow—also known as a Stacker Rainbow, Reflected Rainbow, Reflection Rainbow, Monochrome Rainbow, Moonbows, Fogbow, Spraybow, and Glory, etc.

Now on to the mythology which is rich and replete with more stories than I can incorporate into in one post. I will eventually get to all of them in future posts.

There are very few cultures that do not have a rainbow in their mythology. I’m still looking to see if I can find one that has a mythology lacking in some sort of rainbow. Please tell me, which mythologies do not have rainbows?

Due to the popularity of the Marvel Thor movies, the Norse Bifrost (Rainbow Bridge) is probably the third most-known rainbow mythology after that of Noah and the Ark and the Irish tales of a leprechauns and pots of gold.

Some translations of the “The Epic of Gilgamesh” describe the rainbow’s mass of colors as a divine sanction for war and a rainbow crown was worn by the Sumerian god Ninurta.

Persian mythology uses rainbows for divination.

In Greek Mythology, Iris who is a messenger of the gods who dresses in rainbow hues.

Australian Aboriginal mythology focuses on the Rainbow Serpent. In Japan the rainbow also represents snakes.

In Arabian mythology the rainbow is a bow for Quzah, an Arabian god of weather http://www.mythologydictionary.com/arabian-mythology.html. And the Hindu god Indra also uses the rainbow as a bow.

In Bhuddism the rainbow is just one step below Nirvana.

For the Karens in Burma, the rainbow is a demon that eats children. The Karens are a most interesting people with a very rich background. The Karens have long been engaged in a civil war and have been the subject of ethnic cleansing. This is one of the most neutral accounts I’ve found of the conflict. http://asianhistory.about.com/od/glossaryko/g/Who-Are-The-Karen-People.htm

For the romantics in the crowd, Chinese folklore has star-crossed lovers that are colors of the rainbow waiting for it to shine so they can be together.

My favorite so far is that in Bulgarian legends you will change genders if you walk under a rainbow. I think that may be worthy of a story or two. http://bnr.bg/en/post/100151281/the-rainbow-bulgarian-legends-and-beliefs

So many rainbow sites.

Here is a small sampling to choose from:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_Judeo-Christian_symbolic_meaning_of_the_rainbow
http://www.scribd.com/doc/18966481/Rainbows-in-Mythology
http://voices.yahoo.com/the-rainbow-various-myths-surrounding-it-688718.html?cat=34
http://www.mythologydictionary.com/rainbow-mythology.html
http://www.hawaiianlife.com/content/meaning-rainbow

“Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud.” – Maya Angelou

~lisa