1042. A bow I have put in the cloud symbolizes the circumstances of a spiritual person who has been reborn, which resemble a rainbow.
It might be hard to believe that a bow in the cloud — a rainbow — is taken as a sign of a pact in the Word, when a rainbow is nothing but the effect that results when rays of sunlight are modified as they pass through raindrops. Unlike other signs of the pact in the church (discussed just above [§1038]), it is nothing more than a physical phenomenon.
No one can recognize that a bow in the cloud represents regeneration — and symbolizes the circumstances of a spiritual person who has regenerated — except a person who has been permitted to see and learn how matters stand.
In the other world, when spiritual angels (all of whom were once regenerate people of the spiritual church) are so presented to view, a kind of rainbow appears around their head. The rainbows that appear, though, are simply an expression of the angels' state. This allows their nature to be recognized in heaven and in the world of spirits.
The reason this iridescent display appears is that those angels' earthly-type attributes, corresponding to spiritual ones, present this image. It is a modification of spiritual light from the Lord as received in their earthly characteristics. 1 These angels are the ones said to be reborn of water and the spirit [John 3:5]; heavenly angels, though, are reborn of fire [Matthew 3:11; Luke 3:16].
[2] In the world of nature, this is how it works: For color to exist, there has to be dark and light, or black and white. When sunlight falls on the dark and light (or black and white), variations in the balance of the two modify the rays in such a way as to create color. Some colors partake more or less of dark and black, some more or less of light, or white. That is what produces different colors. 2
The situation in the realm of spirit is comparable. There, a dark color is intellectual conceit, or wrong thinking, while black is self-will, or evil, which absorbs and blots out rays of light. But a light color and white are the true and good things we imagine we do on our own, which reflect rays of light and bounce them back. The rays of light that fall on those colors and seemingly change them come from the Lord in his manifestation as a sun composed of wisdom and understanding. That is exactly what spiritual light rays are and exactly where they come from.
Earthly objects correspond to spiritual entities, and this is why something like a bow in a cloud appears (when the sight is presented in the other life) around a spiritual person who has been reborn. The bow is a representation of spiritual attributes within that person's earthly capacities.
People who are regenerate and spiritual have the sense that their power of understanding is their own, and into this intellectual selfhood the Lord instills innocence, kindness, and mercy. The way they receive these gifts determines how their rainbow looks, when displayed, and the more their self-will has been moved out of the way, conquered, and reduced to obedience, the more beautiful it is.
[3] When prophets were experiencing visions of God, they too saw a bow like that in the cloud. In Ezekiel, for instance:
Above the expanse that was over the head of the guardian beings was a seeming appearance of sapphire stone, like a throne, and what looked like the appearance of a person on it, high above. And I saw the seeming form of an ember, gleaming with the appearance of fire, within the form, all around, from the appearance of his hips and above. And from the appearance of his hips and below I saw the seeming appearance of fire, which had a brilliance all around. Like the appearance of a bow when it is in a cloud on a rainy day, so was the appearance of brilliance all around. This was the appearance of the likeness of Jehovah's glory. (Ezekiel 1:26-27, 28)
Anyone can see that it was the Lord who was seen in this way, and that he was then representing heaven, because he is heaven; in other words, he is the all-in-all of heaven. He is the person described in these verses; the throne is heaven; the ember gleaming with the appearance of fire from his hips and above is the heavenly quality of love; the brilliance of the fire all around from his hips and below, like a bow in a cloud, is a heavenly-spiritual quality. So the heavenly heaven, or the heaven of heavenly angels, was represented by the pelvic area and what was above it, while the spiritual heaven, or the heaven of spiritual angels, was represented by the pelvic area and what was below it. In the universal human, the lower extremities from the pelvis down through the feet to the soles symbolize earthly elements.
This also shows that our earthly traits appear in the form of a bow in the cloud when spiritual light from the Lord illuminates them in this way.
A rainbow also appeared to John, as described in Revelation 4:2-3; 10:1.
Footnotes:
1. See Spiritual Experiences (Swedenborg 1998-2002) §§2347-2349 for a more exhaustive discussion of this rainbow display. [RS]
2. Swedenborg makes similar statements about black and white at §§731, 2519, and 4530. Apparently this theory of colors stems from Aristotle, specifically his Sense and Sensibilia 439b (Aristotle 1984, 698), in which colors are hypothesized to arise from mixtures of white and black in specific ratios. And in fact, in Dynamics of the Soul's Domain (Swedenborg [1740-1741] 1955), part 1, §86, Swedenborg makes a tentative claim to have determined experimentally "the ratios of shades and lights by which individual colors may be designated." The theory is not without the support of appearances: after all, colors do become visible as night gives way to daylight, or, as Swedenborg puts it, color appears "where shade perceptibly begins to distinguish itself from light" (Dynamics of the Soul's Domain [Swedenborg [1740-1741] 1955], part 1, §86). This color logic can still be seen in palettes today that range from white through various colors to black. Aristotle's conjectures were repeated with various modifications by influential theorists such as François d'Aguilon (1567-1617) and the polymathic Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680), two of whose books Swedenborg had in his personal library. Isaac Newton (1642-1727), in his fourth edition of Opticks, book 1, part 2, proposition 1, theorem 1, specifically denied the validity of this "light and shadow" theory of color, but it persisted into the 1800s, attracting even such a brilliant proponent as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). (In Swedenborg's Spiritual Experiences [Swedenborg 1978] §6064, Newton informs Swedenborg in a conversation in the afterlife that all colors arise from white, red, and black. Compare Draft of "Supplements" [Swedenborg 1997] §291, in which Newton recants the theory of color he published in his lifetime on earth.) Swedenborg's own theory of colors varied considerably over his scientific career and was never set out definitively there; the portion of his last work touching on the topic, Draft on the Five Senses (Swedenborg 1976b) §§335-377, 415, is barely more than an outline, and thus is for the most part highly obscure. For his other writings on color, see Draft on Fire and Colors (Swedenborg 1992, 9-16); Chemistry and Physics (Swedenborg [1721] 1976d, 127-132); Basic Principles of Nature, part 3, chapter 5, §§20-21 (Swedenborg [1734] 1988; 2:295-299). For red and white as fundamental colors in the afterlife, see Secrets of Heaven 9467:1-2, 9833, 9865:2; Divine Love and Wisdom 380. [SS]
