Many references to ravens exist in world lore and literature. Most depictions allude to the appearance and behavior of the wide-ranging common raven (Corvus corax). Because of its black plumage, croaking call, and diet of carrion, the raven is often associated with loss and ill omen. Despite this, its symbolism is complex and alluring. As a talking bird, the raven also represents prophecy and insight, often acting as psychopomps in stories, connecting the spirit with the material world.
French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss proposed a structuralist theory that suggests the raven (like the coyote) obtained mythic status because it was a mediator animal between life and death.Structural Anthropology, p. 224 As a carrion bird, ravens became associated with the dead and with lost souls. In Swedish folklore, they are the ghosts of murdered people without Christian burials and, in German stories, damned souls.
Symbolism and mythology by culture
The Raven has appeared in the mythologies of many ancient peoples. Some of the more common stories are from those of Greek, Celtic, Norse, Pacific Northwest, and Roman mythology.
Greco-Roman antiquity In Greek mythology, ravens are associated with Apollo, the God of prophecy. They are said to be a symbol of bad luck, and were the gods' messengers in the mortal world. According to the mythological narration, the god Apollo once tasked a white raven to spy on his pregnant lover, Coronis. When the raven brought back the news that Coronis had been unfaithful to him, Apollo scorched the raven in his fury, turning the bird's feathers black.Ovid, Metamorphoses 2.536 and 2.596 In some versions, the raven had once been a man named Lycius who was transformed into a white raven by Apollo when savage donkeys attacked him and his family.Antoninus Liberalis, 20
According to Livy, the Roman general Marcus Valerius Corvus (c. 370–270 BC) had a raven settle on his helmet during a combat with a gigantic Gaul, which distracted the enemy's attention by flying in his face.Titus Livius. Periochae. Book 7:10.
Hebrew Bible and Judaism The raven (Hebrew: ; Koine Greek: ) is the first species of bird to be mentioned in the Hebrew Bible,See H. B. Tristram, Natural History Bible (9th ed.; London: Society Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1898), 198. and ravens are mentioned on numerous occasions thereafter: In the Book of Genesis, Noah releases a raven from the ark after the great flood to test whether the waters have receded (Genesis 8:6–7). In the following verses he also sends out a dove (Genesis 8:8-11). According to the Law of Moses, ravens are forbidden for food (Leviticus 11:15; Deuteronomy 14:14), a ruling which may have colored the perception of ravens in later sources. In the Book of Judges, one of the Kings of the Midianites defeated by Gideon is called "Orev" (), which means "Raven". In the Book of Kings 17:4–6, God commands the ravens to feed the prophet Elijah. The male lover in Song of Songs 5:11 is described as having hair as black as a raven. Ravens are an example of God's gracious provision for all His creatures in Psalm 147:9 and Job 38:41.
Philo of Alexandria (first century AD), who interpreted the Bible allegorically, stated that Noah's raven was a symbol of vice, whereas the dove was a symbol of virtue.Philo, Questions and Answers on Genesis 2, paragraph 35, accessed on 4 February 2026
In the Talmud, the raven is described as having been only one of three beings on Noah's Ark that copulated during the flood and so was punished.Sanhedrin, 108b The Rabbis believed that the male raven was forced to spit.b. Sanhedrin 108b. https://www.sefaria.org/Sanhedrin.108b?lang=bi Pirke De-Rabbi Eliezer (chapter 25) explains that the reason why the raven Noah released from the ark did not return to him was that the raven was feeding on the corpses of those who had drowned in the flood. This tradition is also preserved in the Byzantine composition Palaea Historica.See David Flusser, "Palaea Historica: An Unknown Source of Biblical Legends", Scripta Hieroslymitana 22 (1971): 48–79.
According to the Icelandic Landnámabók a story similar to Noah and the Ark Hrafna-Flóki Vilgerðarson used ravens to guide his ship from the Faroe Islands to Iceland.
New Testament In the New Testament, ravens, who "neither sow nor reap", are referred to by Jesus as an illustration of God's provision.: English Standard Version
Late antiquity and Christian Middle Ages
The name of the important Frankish King Guntram means "War Raven".
According to the legend of the fourth-century Iberian Christian martyr Saint Vincent of Saragossa, after St. Vincent was executed, ravens protected his body from being devoured by wild animals, until his followers could recover the body. His body was taken to what is now known as Cape St. Vincent in southern Portugal. A shrine was erected over his grave, which continued to be guarded by flocks of ravens. The Arab geographer Al-Idrisi noted this constant guard by ravens, for which the place was named by him كنيسة الغراب "Kanīsah al-Ghurāb" (Church of the Raven). King Afonso Henriques (1139–1185) had the body of the saint exhumed in 1173 and brought it by ship to Lisbon, still accompanied by the ravens. This transfer of the relics is depicted on the coat of arms of Lisbon.
A raven is also said to have protected Saint Benedict of Nursia by taking away a loaf of bread poisoned by jealous monks after he blessed it.
In the legends about the German Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, depicting him as sleeping along with his knights in a cave in the Kyffhäuser mountain in Thuringia or the Untersberg in Bavaria, it is told that when the ravens cease to fly around the mountain, he will awake and restore Germany to its ancient greatness. According to the story, the Emperor's eyes are half-closed in sleep, but now and then, he raises his hand and sends a boy out to see if the ravens have stopped flying.Brown, R. A., The Origins of Modern Europe, Boydell Press, 1972, p. 172
Middle East / Islamic culture In the Qur'an's version of the story of Cain and Abel, a raven is mentioned as the creature who taught Cain how to bury his murdered brother, in Al-Ma'ida (The Repast) 5:31. {Surah 5:27–31}
The story, as presented in the Quran and further postulated in the hadith, states that Cain, having murdered Abel, was bereft of a means of disposing of his brother's body. While scanning the surroundings for a solution, Cain noticed two ravens, one dead and the other alive. The still-living raven began digging the ground with its beak until a hole had been dug up, in which it buried its dead mate. Witnessing this, Cain discovered his solution, as indirectly revealed by God.
Germanic cultures and Viking Age
To the Germanic peoples, Odin was often associated with ravens. Examples include depictions of figures often identified as Odin appear flanked with two birds on a 6th-century bracteate and on a 7th-century helmet plate from Vendel, Sweden. In later Norse mythology, Odin is depicted as having two ravens Huginn and Muninn, serving as his eyes and ears – huginn meaning "thought" and muninn meaning "memory". Each day the ravens fly out from Hliðskjálf and bring Odin news from Midgard.
The Old English word for a raven was hræfn; in Old Norse it was hrafn; the word was frequently used in combinations as a kenning for bloodshed and battle. "Hrafn" was also used as a given name, or an element of a name like "Hrafnkell".
The raven was a common device used by the Vikings. Ragnar Lothbrok had a raven banner called Reafan, embroidered with the device of a raven. It was said that if this banner fluttered, Lothbrok would carry the day, but if it hung lifeless, the battle would be lost. King Harald Hardrada also had a raven banner, called Landeythan (land-waster). The bird also appears in the folklore of the Isle of Man, a former Viking colony, and it is used as a symbol on their coat of arms.
Medieval Britain and Ireland Welsh mythology
Ravens are prominent in early Welsh mythology, with the Medieval Welsh poem Y Gododdin repeatedly associating ravens with battles, bravery and death. The poem refers to the battlefield as the "ravens' feast", with descriptions of the ravens eating the dead bodies of the fallen warriors. In praising the bravery of a warrior named Gwawrddur, the poem's author references his affinity with ravens:
In the Middle Welsh text The Dream of Rhonabwy, King Arthur prepares for the Battle of Mount Badon with his knight Owain of Rheged, Owain is accompanied by a host of ravens and protests three times to the king that they are being attacked by the king's servants.
Ravens are prominent throughout medieval Welsh texts and several characters in Welsh mythology have names associated with corvids and ravens. Brân the Blessed and his sister, Branwen are two of the best known characters from the Mabinogion, both names derive from the Welsh word for raven. According to the Trioedd Ynys Prydein, following Brân's death he commands his men to cut off his head and carry it to "the White Mount, in London, and bury it there". This White mount is often associated with Tower Hill and the fortress that is now the Tower of London's White Tower."Branwen daughter of Llŷr". The Four Branches of the Mabinogi. Trans. for example by Patrick K. Ford, The Mabinogi and Other Medieval Welsh Tales (1977).Sax, Boria. City of Ravens: London, Its Tower, and Its Famous Birds. London: Duckworth, 2011, pp. 26–27.
Tower of London The Celtic legends around Brân and the tower may be the origin of the still-current practice of keeping ravens at the Tower of London. According to English legend, the Kingdom of England will fall if the ravens of the Tower of London are removed. It had been thought that there had been at least six ravens in residence at the tower for centuries. It was said that Charles II ordered their removal following complaints from John Flamsteed, the Royal Astronomer.Camelot Village: Tower of London However, they were not removed because Charles was then told of the legend. Charles, following the time of the English Civil War, superstition or not, was not prepared to take the chance, and instead had the observatory moved to Greenwich.
The earliest known reference to a Tower raven is a picture in the newspaper The Pictorial World in 1883,Boria Sax, "How Ravens Came to the Tower of London", Society and Animals 15, no. 3 (2007b), pp. 272–274. as well as a poem and illustration published the same year in the children's book London Town. This and scattered subsequent references, both literary and visual, which appear in the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century, place them near the monument commemorating those beheaded at the tower, popularly known as the "scaffold." This strongly suggests that the ravens, which are notorious for gathering at gallows, were originally used to dramatize tales of imprisonment and execution at the tower told to tourists by the Yeomen Warders.Boria Sax, "How Ravens Came to the Tower of London", Society and Animals 15, no. 3 (2007b), pp. 270–281. There is evidence that the original ravens were donated to the tower by the Earls of Dunraven, perhaps because of their association with the Celtic raven-god Bran. However, wild ravens, which were once abundant in London and often seen around meat markets (such as nearby Eastcheap) foraging for scraps, could have roosted at the Tower in earlier times.Jerome, Fiona. Tales from the Tower: 2006. pp. 148–149