A rainbow seen from the ground is a half-circle. A rainbow seen from an airplane is a full circle. The serpent-swallowing-its-tail iconography across Akan + Yoruba + Vodun + Kemetic traditions is therefore not metaphor — it is the actual geometric shape of the rainbow that the ground-observer cannot see. The traditions encode the true geometry of the rainbow (a closed circle whose lower half is hidden below the horizon) rather than the apparent geometry (the half-bow). The serpent-shape is faithful to the optics that practitioners-with-only-ground-perspective would not have access to.
The Live Wire: Does this suggest that the traditions had access to the full-circle geometry through some non-ground-observation route — perhaps through cosmological-vision experiences, perhaps through mathematical-derivation, perhaps through traditional empirical-physics that mainstream history-of-science has not catalogued? Or is the swallowing-tail iconography a fortunate accident that happens to match the optics? Either reading is provocative.
Cross-references: