The crow's strong symbolism has long existed in people's minds. It's blackness suggests the night, darkness and mystery, but because it is a creature of the air it also comes to symbolise creativity and divine inspiration (the air being inseparable from sky and heaven and a belief in higher powers). Given that, it's easy to see why the old Celtic bards could regard the crow as a kind of muse figure. In the crow we find this Yin-Yang-like juxtaposition of forces: light in darkness, and darkness in light.
Many a faerie folk it was who once might appear as a crow or a raven. Sometimes even one of the old goddesses might take on such a form. The stuff of fairy tales now, but once upon a time part of a palpable mythic system, heeded as we now heed our own.
Among the Ancient Greeks and other European peoples crows were augurs-- they were consulted to divine the future and distant events. The caw of a crow was not something you could ignore lightly, charged as it was in the culture's belief system as a potent signal.
Because crows and ravens are so long-lived, the Greeks associated them with time, and their "father time", Chronos. The roots of the words for "time" and "crow" are intimately associated.
Crows were also intimately associated the Celtic crow god Bran as well as with the Indo-European Odin/Wotan/Thor-- Zeus/Apollo/Hercules types. Here they assumed the role of wizened spies, messengers and confidants. Some say that the ravens in the
Partly due to their association with Celtic fertility and war goddesses, and with what Christianised folk regarded as unwholesome paganism or witchcraft, crows and ravens gained an unsavoury reputation. Then they especially became omens of death or ill fortune.
Various indigenous North American peoples have regarded the crow as a great civiliser-- the harbinger of positive creative forces. But, he could also be a trickster. The crow's wicked intelligence could be used to aid the needy, or it could be used to chastise the wrong-headed. (askyewolfe)
