Symbolism can also be ballast.

There is no need to be secretive about colors on icons. Icon painters in different periods never assigned the same meaning to colors, or none at all. And so we do not know what each meant by the colors, so we may not put it in. Therefore, no authority says anything about color symbolism on icons. That would immediately open the way for contradiction: is red now the color of suffering or of warmth?

A symbol is a sign that refers to a concept. The cross symbolizes the suffering of Christ. The nimbus around the head of the saints symbolizes their sojourn in the kingdom of God.

The specific iconography, the imagery, of icons is not particularly complicated or elaborate, but neither is it obvious. The cross in the hand of saints, a tangible object, symbolizes their martyrdom for Christ's sake. The scroll is the gospel. The red cloth lying over the roofs signifies that the scene takes place indoors. The hand with the ring finger and thumb together is the blessing hand. John the Baptist appears with wings, for he is angelos = messenger either angel.

Not specific to icons are the symbols that everyone understands because we also use them: the lily means purity. They are prescribed by the painters' manuals and would be better called attributes. Thus, Christ and Mary carry a scepter and globe, angels and saints staff, sword or spear, Mary Magdalene jar, Panteleimon medicine chest, Spiridon beehive and John the evangelist and Basil writing pen. The rose is an attribute of Mary, for she is poetically so invoked in the Akathistos hymn.

The three stars of virginity on Mary's garment, the four letters ICXC depicting the blessing hand of Christ, and the covering of the earthly or heavenly in the blue and red garments of Mary and Christ, they have become commonly accepted symbols in iconography. But it is conceivable that icon painters before 1950, when icon books became widespread, did not think of this. Simply painterly solutions may have been such things from the outset, as, for example, the filling with ornaments of lilies and globes of the Christ child's white robe - without these, the white robe would have been very bright, too bright, amidst the dark red of his mother's robe. Ditto the alternation of the colors of Christ and Mary and the golden stars on the large red area of Mary's robe: painterly interventions.

Christ really walked on this earthly paradise, not in a world of ideas. So to assign any symbolic significance to plants, trees, waters, mountains, houses, ships, fish, horses and other animals would be going too far. It would be good to include our sources and less to assign everything to icons as symbols. A person inspired by piety can see all sorts of things in them, and often it is very poetic too, and we get excited about it, but then the explanation is only our own personal opinion, thus speculation, at the risk of contradiction, or we quote someone else (but then who?). The Orthodox Church considers as fixed and true doctrine the Bible, the statements of the ecumenical councils and those of the Church Fathers, which are the teachers of the Church. Those are sources.