A Storytelling of Ravens

Abstract

The author describes the behavior of a nesting pair of ravens and their young, which frequented her home for a number of years. She suggests that the ravens' high intelligence and unusual capacity to relate to humans in a variety of contexts over thousands of years shaped the raven archetype. Ravens' current behaviors and interactions with humans are reminiscent of the behaviors that early humans and ravens must have experienced. The raven-wolf and raven-hunter pairing can still be observed, and the archetypal resonance of the raven is activated when a human and raven have an ongoing relationship.

Keywords:

• alchemy
• archetype
• Common Raven
• Corvus corax
• coyote
• death
• hunter
• C. G. Jung
• myth
• Native American
• raven
• warrior
• wolf

Notes

^1. Although not cited specifically in the text, these sources taught me much about ravens: Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant, The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols (Penguin Books, 1996); John E. Cushing, Jr., “Winter Behavior of Ravens at Tomales Bay, California,” in The Condor, vol. 43 (March–April 1941); William W. Fitzhugh and Susan A. Kaplan, Inua: Spirit World of the Bering Sea Eskimo (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1982); C. G. Jung, “The Psychology of the Trickster-Figure,” The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, CW 9,1; Daniel Merkur, Powers Which We Do Not Know: The Gods and Spirits of the Inuit (University of Idaho Press, 1991); Gail Robinson and Joanna Troughton, Raven the Trickster: Legends of the North American Indians (Atheneum, 1982); Candace Savage, Bird Brains: The Intelligence of Crows, Ravens, Magpies, and Jays (Sierra Club Books, 1997); William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality, and the Origins of Culture (St. Martin's Press, 1981); and Ravens, part of the Nature series of programs, produced by WNET (Channel 13, New York).

^2. Immature ravens have blue eyes.

^3. Both Heinrich (1999, 299) and Angell (1978, 82) have observed exceptional ravens stacking crackers, grasping the stacked crackers with their mandibles, and flying away.

^4. Kilham notes that his hand-raised raven engaged in attention-getting behavior (1989, 203). He also suggests that the destructiveness of young ravens might be practice for tearing apart carcasses (210).

^5. Edinger discusses this image from Philosophia Reformata (1985, 165).

^6. The Story of India mentions mantrams that have been passed down orally from father to son in Kerala, India, for thousands of years (Wood 2008). Scientists who have recently studied the mantrams have discovered that the mantrams are in no known language and cannot be written down. The mantrams most resemble bird song. Humans have only had spoken language for 10,000 to 15,000 years. Perhaps the raven and other birds led early humans to vocalize and, ultimately, to construct languages.

References to The Collected Works of C. G. Jung are cited in the text as CW, volume number, and paragraph number. The Collected Works are published in English by Routledge (UK) and Princeton University Press (USA).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Betty Coon Wheelwright

For John, who took me into the raven's world