Dreaming about
rainbows

A rainbow only appears when the sun and the rain are out at the same time, with the sun behind you and the rain in front. That's why it's the picture so many people reach for when something hard is ending, and dreaming about rainbows usually points to hope, relief or a promise you're waiting to see kept. You're most likely to have it while one part of your life is still wet and gray and another has started to clear.

What you did with the rainbow changes the reading. Watching one from a window is not the same as chasing it across a field, and a rainbow that fades as you look is a different feeling again. Your situation counts too, since a rainbow after a breakup, an illness or a long stretch of bad news means something particular to you, and the details of your own dream decide which.

What dreaming about rainbows means

Rainbows are made of ordinary sunlight split by drops of water, and they can't be touched, kept or reached. Each of those facts gives a reading, and most rainbow dreams lean on one of the three below.

Relief after a storm

The plainest rainbow dream is about something difficult passing, much like a rain dream that ends in sunshine. People have it after exams, after a diagnosis turns out fine, after a fight is finally made up. But if the rain was still falling in your dream, the hard part may not be over yet, though you can already see where it ends. A rainbow over a place you know, your home or your old school, points to where the relief is coming.

A promise you're waiting on

In the story of Noah, the rainbow is a promise, the sign that the flood won't come again.^[1] Many rainbow dreams have that feeling, of a commitment made to you that you want to believe. Has someone promised you something lately, a partner, a boss, a doctor, or yourself? The dream may be about how much you trust it.

Something lovely you can't hold

A rainbow lasts a few minutes and vanishes the moment the sun goes in, and nobody has ever reached one, which dreams use too. Did it feel out of reach, or disappear while you were looking? Then think about what in your life feels beautiful and fleeting at the same time. A new relationship, a good season at work and your children being small all fit.

Dreaming about a double rainbow

A double rainbow is two arcs, the second fainter, with its colors in the reverse order and a darker band of sky between them. In a dream it doubles the hope. It can feel like good news confirmed, and some people read it as a second chance, or as good things coming in pairs. And if the two bows felt like two people, the dream may be about a relationship where you mirror each other, alike but turned the other way round.

Dreaming about a rainbow at night

Rainbows at night are real. Moonlight makes them instead of sunlight, and they're so faint they usually look white to the eye. A dream of one is often about hope in a dark time, the kind you have to look hard to see. It tends to come in the middle of something difficult, when the end isn't in sight yet but there's just enough light to keep going, like a slow recovery or a long divorce. If the night rainbow surprised you, the dream may be about noticing something good where you didn't expect it.

Dreaming about finding the end of a rainbow

Irish folklore puts a leprechaun's pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. You can never get there, because a rainbow moves as you move (each of us sees our own, made by a different set of raindrops). Chasing the end of one in a dream is usually about a goal that keeps slipping away, like a promotion, a house or a relationship that seems one step off. If you reached the end, the dream may be about wanting to believe the effort will pay off, and if there was nothing there, ask whether the thing you're chasing is the thing you want.

Dreaming about walking on a rainbow

In Norse myth, the gods' world was linked to ours by a burning rainbow bridge called Bifröst. Walking on a rainbow in a dream is often about crossing from one part of your life to another, such as leaving home, starting over or moving into a new role. It can feel thrilling or frightening, depending on how solid the bridge felt under you. If you were afraid of falling, the change may feel too good to be safe.

Dreaming about a rainbow disappearing

A rainbow that fades as you watch is about losing a good feeling, or fearing you will. It often comes after a moment of hope that didn't last, like news that turned out to be wrong or a reunion that went flat. But a rainbow disappearing is also just the sun moving on, and the dream may be telling you that the hope was real even if the moment wasn't permanent.

Dreaming about a rainbow flag

The rainbow flag has been the symbol of LGBTQ pride since the late 1970s, so for many people a rainbow means belonging, coming out or standing with someone. So a dream of the flag can be about your own identity, about a friend or family member, or about where you feel free to be yourself. It says nothing fixed about who you are or who you love. What matters is how you felt in the dream, whether proud, curious, unsure or at home.

Dreaming about rainbows according to Jung and Freud

Rainbows are missing from both men's lists, but a rainbow sits close to some of their ideas.

Jung: an arc of the circle

Jung found the Self, his word for the whole person you're growing into, in circles and other round, complete shapes.^[2] A rainbow is an arc of one (from a plane it can be a full ring), and it holds every color of light in a single curve. Applied here, a rainbow may be a picture of the parts of your life starting to fit. He'd want your own associations before any of that, and whether the rainbow stood over your home or over a place you've never been is a better start.

Freud: the wish and the weather

Freud's method would begin with the day before, a storm, a wet walk, a child's drawing, a rainbow flag in the news.^[3] Then it would ask what the rainbow grants, because in his view every dream is a wish in disguise. A rainbow is the sky keeping a promise after bad weather, so the wish may be for the hard stretch to count for something. One you can't reach would be the same wish with the granting held back.

The biblical and spiritual meaning of rainbows in dreams

Two texts give the rainbow a place, one as a promise and one as an omen.

The rainbow in the Bible

After the flood, God sets the bow in the clouds and promises that the waters will never again destroy all flesh, and says he'll remember the covenant when he sees it.^[1] If your rainbow dream felt spiritual, the tradition reads it as a promise kept after a disaster, mercy after judgment. It's a description of the text, not a forecast of your life.

The rainbow in the Matsya Purana

The Matsya Purana, a Hindu text whose dream chapter answers a question about what a king might see before he sets out, counts catching hold of a rainbow among the good dreams.^[4] It's a list of omens written for a ruler and not a reading of your dream.

Questions to ask about your rainbow dream

A rainbow dream turns on what came before it and what you did when you saw it, so these are worth asking yourself:

• Was it raining, clearing, or already sunny when the rainbow appeared?
• Did you watch it, chase it, reach it or walk on it?
• Where was it, over your home, the sea, a place from your past?
• What hard thing in your life has just ended, or feels close to ending?
• Who has promised you something, and do you believe them?

Oniri asks about the storm before the rainbow when it reads your dream, which is often where the real meaning sits.