On a gray morning in November 1861, the French corvette Alecton encountered something in the Atlantic south of the Canary Islands. The crew saw a huge body at the surface, dark red, with arms writhing above the water. They fired cannonballs, harpooned it, and tried to haul it aboard. The mass broke apart, and only a 20‑kilogram fragment of tail reached the deck. The French Academy of Sciences dismissed the sighting as “a fable.” The Kraken and the giant squid are not the same thing. The Kraken is a legendary sea monster from Nordic folklore, described as an island‑sized creature that drags ships into whirlpools. The giant squid (Architeuthis dux) is a real, documented animal, the largest invertebrate on Earth, reaching 12 to 13 meters. They share a deep‑sea habitat and an aura of terror, but the Kraken’s supernatural traits have no basis in squid biology.
What We Mean by “Kraken” and “Giant Squid”
The Kraken belongs to the realm of legend. It appears in Norse sagas and later natural histories as a creature that could be mistaken for a floating island, surrounded by shoals of fish, and capable of creating a maelstrom when it sank back into the depths. Its arms were said to be as thick as a ship’s mast.
The giant squid (Architeuthis dux) is a physical animal. It has eight arms, two longer feeding tentacles, and a body shaped like a torpedo. Its eyes are the size of dinner plates. No giant squid has ever been confirmed to attack a vessel, and its habitat is the deep ocean, where it hunts fish and other squid using bioluminescent lures. It was first scientifically described in 1857 by the Danish zoologist Japetus Steenstrup.
In the esoteric tradition, both occupy the same symbolic space as guardians of the abyss, but their origins pull in different directions: one from oral folklore, the other from specimen jars.
History and Origins: A Tale of Two Seas
The earliest written mention of the Kraken comes from the 13th‑century Icelandic saga Örvar‑Oddr. In it, the monster called hafgufa (“sea‑mist”) or lyngbakr (“heather‑back”) is described as so large that explorers land on it thinking it is an island. The creature submerges, drowning the unwary. The name “Kraken” first appears in print in Carl Linnaeus’s 1735 edition of Systema Naturae, where it is classified as Microcosmus marinus — a category Linnaeus later abandoned. Linnaeus listed it under “mythological,” but its inclusion gave the monster an air of scientific respectability.
The definitive description came from the Norwegian bishop Erich Pontoppidan in his 1755 Det første Forsøg paa Norges naturlige Historie (The Natural History of Norway). Pontoppidan claimed the Kraken was the size of a floating island, its back a mile and a half in circumference. He wrote that fishermen knew of its presence because the waters above it teemed with fish. When the Kraken submerged, the water rushed into the void, creating a whirlpool that could sink any ship. Pontoppidan emphasized that the creature never attacked directly — the danger was the vortex.
The giant squid’s documented history is younger. The oldest known reference to a “giant squid” is by Olaus Magnus in his 1555 Carta Marina, which depicts a sea monster that attacks a ship with long arms — a composite of many creatures, not a specific description. Pliny the Elder wrote of an “ariston” with arms 30 cubits long, but the species is uncertain. The first physical evidence arrived in 1857, when Steenstrup examined a severed tentacle washed ashore in Denmark and formally named the animal. The French Alecton encounter in 1861 provided the first convincing sighting, though the scientific community remained skeptical until a complete specimen washed up in New Zealand in 1879.
Symbolism and Meaning: The Abyss in Two Forms
In esoteric thought, the Kraken represents chaos made physical, the uncontrollable, indifferent power of the deep. It is an elemental force of water that does not hate or love, only consumes. Some occult interpretations link the Kraken to the Qliphothic shell of Thaumiel (opposition), a formless power that emerges when order breaks down. The whirlpool it creates symbolizes the maelstrom of the subconscious, the place where ego dissolves.
The giant squid, by contrast, carries the symbolism of the hidden made visible. For centuries it was a cryptid, a creature of rumor and half‑shredded tentacles. Its eventual confirmation by science mirrors the occult principle that what is most secret is eventually known. In grimoire traditions, the giant squid has been adopted as a totem for seekers who venture into the depths of the unknown. Its bioluminescence, photophores that produce blue light, is seen as a form of inner illumination, a light that only burns in the dark.
Both creatures appear as guardians of thresholds. The Kraken guards the passage between the known world and the abyss. The giant squid guards the boundary between myth and reality.
Practices and Traditions: How They Are Used
Sailors in the North Atlantic developed a loose tradition regarding the Kraken. According to Pontoppidan, fishermen would watch for a patch of water that appeared unusually shallow or broken, where the fish were especially abundant. They called this the “Kraken’s bank.” If they saw the water begin to churn, they rowed away, not to fight the monster, but to avoid the vortex. The practice was not one of veneration but of avoidance. No offerings were made. The Kraken was not a deity to be placated; it was a natural hazard, like a storm.
In modern occult practice, the Kraken appears in solitary workings focused on facing personal chaos. Some practitioners use its image in meditation to descend into the subconscious. No widespread rituals exist, it is far less common than figures like Leviathan or Tiamat.
The giant squid, because of its recent scientific confirmation, is used more often as a symbol in cryptozoological magic and in deep‑sea pathworkings. A practitioner might visualize the giant squid as a guide through the layers of the ocean, each depth representing a layer of psyche. Bioluminescent patterns are sometimes drawn on candles or in journals to invoke the animal’s energy of quiet, patient hunting.
No historical magical traditions exist for either creature; their use in contemporary occultism draws from modern mythology and the writings of authors like Kenneth Grant, who referenced the Kraken in his Typhonian Trilogies.
Comparisons: What They Share and What Sets Them Apart
| Trait | Kraken | Giant Squid |
|---|---|---|
| Origin | Norse oral tradition (13th‑century sagas) | Scientific documentation (19th‑century) |
| Size | Island‑sized (circumference reported in miles) | Maximum reliably measured: 13 meters (43 feet) |
| Habitat | Surface of the sea, described as creating islands | Deep ocean (300–1000 meters) |
| Behavior | Creates whirlpools when submerging | No documented surface disturbance |
| Diet | Fish attracted to its back (fishermen exploited this) | Fish, smaller squid |
| Supernatural? | Yes: island‑like appearance, whirlpools | No: natural animal |
| First description | Carl Linnaeus 1735 (mythological) | Japetus Steenstrup 1857 (zoological) |
| Aggression | Danger via vortex, not direct attack | No recorded attacks on humans |
The two are often conflated, but the Kraken predates any knowledge of giant squid by at least five centuries. The giant squid provides a biological basis that explains some Kraken stories, a large animal at the surface could be mistaken for an island, and its thrashing could churn the water, but the whirlpool element is pure folklore.
In 1870, the French author Jules Verne merged the two in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, where the submarine Nautilus battles a giant squid that wraps its arms around the vessel. Verne borrowed traits from both: the squid’s tentacles and the Kraken’s ability to threaten a ship. That single scene is the point where the two become permanently tangled in popular culture.
Common Misconceptions
The Kraken is just an exaggerated giant squid. Not quite. The Kraken was described as an island, not a squid. Its arms were rarely mentioned; the focus was on its back. Pontoppidan wrote that the Kraken’s arms were “the largest sort of animal in the world,” but he compared them to the polypus (octopus), not a squid. The Kraken is a composite of several sea‑monster traditions, not a single misidentified squid.
Giant squids attack ships. They do not. Giant squids live deep and only come to the surface when dead or dying. The Alecton encounter involved a sick or dying specimen. No evidence exists of a giant squid attacking a vessel.
They are the same creature. As shown above, they differ in origin, size, behavior, and physical description. The confusion is modern, driven by film and fiction.
The Kraken can be found in the Bible. Some have tried to equate the Kraken with the Leviathan of Job 41, but Leviathan is a fire‑breathing serpent-like creature, not an island‑sized cephalopod. The identification is unsupported.
FAQ
Q: Are the Kraken and giant squid the same creature?
A: No. The Kraken is a legendary monster from Norse folklore. The giant squid is a real animal first documented in 1857.
Q: Could the Kraken be a giant squid that was misidentified?
A: Possibly, but the Kraken’s described behaviors (creating whirlpools, appearing as an island) do not match any known squid biology. The two are likely separate legends that converged.
Q: How big can giant squids actually get?
A: The largest reliably recorded specimen measured 13 meters from tentacle tip to tail. Unverified reports claim lengths up to 20 meters.
Q: Has the Kraken ever been proven to exist?
A: No credible evidence exists. All alleged Kraken sightings that can be investigated have been attributed to giant squids, large octopuses, or hoaxes.
The Kraken and the giant squid live in the same sea but in different worlds: one born of fear and the imagination, the other of flesh and the deep. Understanding their differences clarifies how humans map the unknown. For more on the creatures that dwell at the edge of knowledge, see our guide to mythical sea creatures, the glossary entry on Architeuthis, and our exploration of the Leviathan’s role in esoteric cosmology.