Raven

The Thief of Light

Domain: Creation, Cunning & Transformation
Alignment: Chaotic Good
Element: Air
Relics of Power: Box of Daylight

Speak with Raven

The People

People

Native American peoples

Region

North America

Period

pre-colonial – present

These spirits and deities were worshipped by the many Native peoples of North America, from the Lakota to the Navajo and Iroquois. Their beliefs bind humans to the Great Spirit, to totem animals, and to balance with the land. Passed down orally, they survive in the Indigenous nations that endured colonization.

The Sun Dance gathered the Plains nations in fasting and sacrifice around the sacred tree. The Hopi dance with the kachinas, masked spirits of the rains, and the sacred pipe seals prayers and treaties — ceremonies still alive in today's nations.

The Sacred Scrolls

Raven is the great creator-trickster of the Northwest Coast peoples, such as the Haida, Tlingit and Tsimshian. Clever, gluttonous and shape-shifting, he brought light into the world, filled the rivers with fish and shaped humanity, always driven by his own desires. He is culture hero and trickster in a single body of black feathers. As The Thief of Light, this deity occupies a position of supreme prestige in the nativos pantheon. Their domains over Creation, Cunning & Transformation reflect ancestral cosmic order maintained across millennia. In classical iconography, they are depicted with an aura of unshakeable majesty and sacred attributes that inspired reverence in emperors and peasants alike. Their influence extended beyond earthly boundaries, governing fates and harmony between the visible and invisible worlds. For ancient devotees, contemplating their essence was to understand the very fundamental forces of nature and human existence.

Sacred Symbols

The black raven, the box of light, the freed sun and the totem pole

Divine Lineage

Central figure of the Raven clans in the social organization of the Northwest Coast.

The Legendary Myth

In the beginning the world was dark, for a selfish old man kept the sun, the moon and the stars in boxes. Raven turned himself into a pine needle, was swallowed by the elder's daughter and was reborn as his grandson, thu…

Legends & Deeds

A celebrated secondary legend preserved in the oral traditions of the nativos recounts the journey when Raven intervened directly in the lives of mortals.