Raven Tattoos

What does a raven tattoo mean?

A raven tattoo is first about memory and foresight: the bird that flies out, sees everything and comes back to report. The death reading came later, from battlefields and from Poe. Two ravens almost always mean Odin's Huginn and Muninn, thought and memory; in the Eddic poem Grímnismál the god fears for Huginn but fears more for Muninn. In Irish myth the raven is the Morrígan herself, a war goddess in bird form, while Poe's 1845 poem turned the bird with Nevermore beneath it into a sign of grief. Details lock the meaning: a perched raven watches, a raven in flight is the messenger, a key means a secret kept, and a skull tips it toward mortality. Blackwork, black-and-grey realism and neo-traditional suit the bird; the forearm is the usual spot, and it should stay above about eight centimeters.

raven tattoo meaning