Raven Eye

 

In myth and legend, the raven is many things: trickster and creator, messenger and seer, personification of ravening greed, harbinger of death, companion or form of the Goddess. Here I want to speak about raven as an oracle bird, one that can lend us his or her sight. 

Odin sees far with the help of twin ravens, named Huginn and Muninn, Thought and Memory. They fly all over this Middle World, returning with information. In the Prose Edda, Odin is called "raven god" because of his close association with these birds. 

The raven has an equal role in the legends of Celtic seership. The raven is also the seeing-bird of Apollo, the owner of the most famous oracle of the ancient world, at Delphi. In the Greek story the raven was white until it brought the god the news of the infidelity of his mate Coronis (the Crow-Woman); his fury blasted it until it was black. 

In dreams and journeys over many years, I have found the raven an impeccable ally when there is a need to see into dark places or see into the future. It has served as an ally in shamanic healing, plucking out the cells of disease. When I look into the raven's eye, I see a screen like a television monitor on which images of things I need to know appear; sometimes I can also travel through the screen, to explore a scene beyond it. 

In seership trainings in my Active Dreaming workshops, I suggest to participants - after they have done some foundation work - that they can borrow the keen sight of twin ravens named Thought and Memory to go scouting the possible future. They don't have to rely on their own intuition or intelligence; they are to let the birds do the work. The quality of the information gathered by raven trackers in these exercises is often remarkable, even when the scouts have had no prior experience of doing anything remotely like this. 

Despite their literary reputation, ravens aren't solitary birds, unless forced to be; they mate for life.  

Here's a poem I wrote to honor some of Raven's gifts:

 

Sun Stealer  

They say you stole the sun. 
This is inexact. 
You hid the light in darkness 
where the light-killers could not find it 
so the sun could shine brighter than before. 

They say you are black
because you are evil and unkind.
They do not say you swallowed
your own shadow and mastered it
at the price of wearing its colors.

Shivering, they call you death-knell,
Death-eater, bad omen, flying banshee
because you feed on death that feeds on men.
You strip what rots from what remains. 
You give us the purity of the bones. 

Trickster, they call you. 
Oh yes, you'll do your wickedest
to ensure our way is never routine 
and we are forced to improvise and transform. 
You won't let us swap our souls for a plan. 

At least they don't accuse you of minor crimes.
I praise and claim your gifts 
of putting on darkness to come and go safely 
in the darkest places, jesting with Death.

Illustration: "Two Ravens" by Robert Moss