School of Iconography

• First waved:In May 1978 in San Francisco, California, USA.
• Why?At San Francisco's annual Freedom Day Parade. Now used the world over as a symbol of the diversity and unity of the lesbian and gay community.
• Where is it now?Hanging from the roof of San Francisco's gay centre.
• Designed by:Gilbert Baker, a San Franciscan local activist and designer.
• Inspired by:The five-colour Flag of Race
• Size:62 by 48 feet.
• Made from:Organic cotton.
• How it was dyed:By hand, in trash cans (refuse bins).
• How it was rinsed:With water drained from San Francisco's fire hydrants.
• Original colours:Eight stripes: red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, indigo, violet, and pink.
• Colours of common replicas:Six stripes: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet.
• Traditional symbolism of the colours:Red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sun, green for nature, blue for art, indigo for harmony, violet for spirit, and pink for sexuality.

A shrine to Mother Earth at Delphi was founded by the Cretans who left their sacred music, ritual, dances, and calender as a legacy to the Hellenes. Mother Earth's Cretan sceptre, thelabrys, or double-axe gave its name to the priestly corporation at Delphi, the Labryadae, the men of the axe.

Arthur Evans(1851-1941), the archaeologist, put forward the controversial view that scholars had been mistaken to derive the word labyrinth, in accordance with ancient tradition, from the Egyptionloperohunt, meaning "e;palace (or temple) by the lake"e; (that is, Lake Moeris). He believed that the labyrinth of Amenemhet III at Medinet el Fayum in Egypt, described by Herodotus and Strabo, could not have been the original source of the term "e;labyrinth"e;, but that it originated at the Palace of Knossos in Crete. Here double axes, orlabrys, were found everywhere as religious symbols. Evans argued that "e;labyrinth"e; means something like "e;palace of the double axes"e;. However the Egyption labyrinth was known by that name long before the rediscovery of the Palace of Knossos, and was known by that name in classical antiquity, but no double axes have been found there or anywhere along the Nile.

Thelabrysis shown in art as one of the weapons of theAmazons.

In 1970, after theStonewall Rebellion, the Gay Activist Alliance of New York City selected the Greek letter lambda as an emblem. Member of the Alliance,Tom Doerr, suggested it because of its use in physics to designate kinetic potential. Its emergence after the Rebellion may give it militant associations. In 1974 lambda was adopted as the international symbol for lesbian and gay rights by the International Gay Rights Congress meeting in Edinburgh, Scotland.

TheLightning Lambdabadge was first available in the UK in 1979 at 15p each.

There is uncertainty about how the word came to be applied to male homosexuals or effeminate men. Eric Partridge'sDictionary of Slang and Unconventional Englishnotes that the word 'daisy' has been used in the same sense since the 1950s. He suggests that 'pansy' may have taken on the same meaning because of its rhyming with 'nancy', which along with 'nancy boy' and 'Miss Nancy' has been around for a while as a slang term for 'catamite', that is, 'a boy kept by a pederast'. ('Catamite' comes from 'Ganymede', the name of a Trojan boy whom Zeus carried off to serve as his personal cupbearer.)

Judy Grahn inAnother Mother Tonguesuggests that the connection between pansies and gay men may have its origins in the sixteenth century, when men and women signaled their intent never to marry by wearing a sprig of violets. The pansy is a cultivated variety of violet; its scientific name, 'Viola tricolor', means 'three-colour violet'. The Italians call the flower 'la viola del pensiero', 'the violet of thought'.