Myth is the foundation of life; it is the timeless pattern, the pious formula, into which life flows when it reproduces its traits out of the unconscious.

Myth is more than a statement about how the world ought to work; its poetic and mystic dimensions indicate that it embodies a sense of reality that includes all human capacities, ideal or actual. These, broadly speaking, are the tendency to feel or emotively relate to experience and the tendency to intellectually organize it—the religious, aesthetic, and philosophical aspects of human cultures. Human beings need to belong to a tradition and equally need to know about the world in which they find themselves. Myth is a kind of story that allows a holistic image to pervade and shape consciousness, thus providing a coherent and empowering matrix for action and relationship. It is in this sense that myth is most significant, for it is this creative, ordering capacity of myth that frightens and attracts the rationalistic, other-centered mind, forcing it into thinly veiled pejoration of the mythic faculty, alienistic analysis of it, and counter myth-making of its own. Myth, then, is an expression of the tendency to make stories of power out of the life we live in imagination; from this faculty when it is engaged in ordinary states of consciousness come tales and stories. When it is engaged in nonordinary states, myth proper—that is, mystery mumblings—occur.

in the pre-modern world, when people wrote about the past they were more concerned with what an event had meant. A myth was an event which, in some sense, had happened once, but which also happened all the time. Because of our strictly chronological view of history, we have no word for such an occurrence, but mythology is an art form that points beyond history to what is timeless in human existence, helping us to get beyond the chaotic flux of random events, and glimpse the core of reality. An experience of transcendence has always been part of the human experience. We seek out moments of ecstasy, when we feel deeply touched within and lifted momentarily beyond ourselves. At such times, it seems that we are living more intensely than usual, firing on all cylinders, and inhabiting the whole of our humanity. Religion has been one of the most traditional ways of attaining ecstasy, but if people no longer find it in temples, synagogues, churches or mosques, they look for it elsewhere: in art, music, poetry, rock, dance, drugs, sex or sport. Like poetry and music, mythology should awaken us to rapture, even in the face of death and the despair we may feel at the prospect of annihilation. If a myth ceases to do that, it has died and outlived its usefulness.

Myth is an extremely complex cultural reality, which can be approached and interpreted from various and complementary viewpoints. Speaking for myself, the definition that seems least inadequate because most embracing is this: Myth narrates a sacred history; it relates an event that took place in primordial Time, the fabled time of the "beginnings." In other words myth tells how, through the deeds of Supernatural Beings, a reality came into existence, be it the whole of reality, the Cosmos, or only a fragment of reality — an island, a species of plant, a particular kind of human behavior, an institution. Myth, then, is always an account of a "creation"; it relates how something was produced, began to be. Myth tells only of that which really happened, which manifested itself completely. The actors in myths are Supernatural Beings. They are known primarily by what they did in the transcendent times of the "beginnings." hence myths disclose their creative activity and reveal the sacredness (or simply the "supernaturalness") of their works. In short, myths describe the various and sometimes dramatic breakthroughs of the sacred (or the "supernatural") into the World. It is this sudden breakthrough of the sacred that really establishes the World and makes it what it is today. Furthermore, it is as a result of the intervention of Supernatural Beings that man himself is what he is today, a mortal, sexed, and cultural being.

Myth is the system of basic metaphors, images, and stories that in-forms the perceptions, memories, and aspirations of a people; provides the rationale for its institutions, rituals and power structure; and gives a map of the purpose and stages of life.

Mythology is to relate found truth to the living of a life.

Myth functions as an affirmation of self that transcends the temporal. It guides our attention toward a view of ourselves, a possibility, that we might not otherwise encounter. It shows us our own ability to accept and allow the eternal to be part of our selves. It allows us to image a marriage between our conscious and unconscious, fusing the twin dimensions of mind and society into a coherent, meaningful whole. It allows us to adventure in distant, unfamiliar landscapes while remaining close to home. Thus myth shows us that it is possible to relate ourselves to the grand and mysterious universe that surrounds and informs our being; it makes us aware of other orders of reality and experience and in that awareness makes the universe our home. It is a magic: it is the area of relationship between all those parts of experience that commonly divide us from ourselves, our universe, and our fellows.

A myth is a way of making sense in a senseless world. Myths are narrative patterns that give significance to our existence.

Myths are universal and timeless stories that reflect and shape our lives – they explore our desires, our fears, our longings, and provide narratives that remind us what it means to be human.

Myth may be seen as a teleological statement, a shaped system of reference that allows us to order and thus comprehend perception and knowledge, as Mann suggests. The existence of mythic structures supposes a rational ordering of the universe. The presence of myth in a culture signifies a belief in the teleological nature of existence and indicates that powers other than those of material existence, or what Carlos Castaneda calls “ordinary reality,” guide and direct the universe and human participation in it. As such myth stands as an expression of human need for coherence and integration and as the mode whereby human beings might actively fill that need.

It is as if the eyes were trying to look at themselves directly, or as if one were trying to describe the color of a mirror in terms of colors reflected in the mirror. Just as sight is something more than all things seen, the foundation or “ground” of our existence and our awareness cannot be understood in terms of things that are known. We are forced, therefore, to speak of it through myth - that is, through special metaphors, analogies, and images which say what it is like as distinct from what it is. At one extreme of its meaning, “myth” is fable, falsehood, or superstition. But at another, “myth” is a useful and fruitful image by which we make sense of life in somewhat the same way that we can explain electrical forces by comparing them with the behavior of water or air. Yet “myth,” in this second sense, is not to be taken literally, just as electricity is not to be confused with air or water. Thus in using myth one must take care not to confuse image with fact, which would be like climbing up the signpost instead of following the road.

A myth is an image in terms of which we try to make sense of the world.

As adults, we create myths about ourselves and about our lives. We often use the myth to organize reality into a type of order. Anything that might contradict the myth seems to bring disorder that can feel disorienting. The myth forms a bias and matrix against which the person’s life experiences are evaluated. The sense of myth is often in sharp contrast to the macrostructural patterns that dominate our lives. The myths are often about the details of the events that happened, including who did what to whom. The pattern shows that the details are not causal but only orchestrative. If we describe the details, we see the uniqueness of the events that have taken place, and the story can seem like a one time deal. But if we describe the form and sequence of events, the critical moments, etc., we see how un-unique the story actually is. We can see that, yet again, the same damn thing has happened.

Myth is a story of a vision; it is a presentation of that vision told in terms of the vision’s symbols, characters, chronology, and import. It is a vehicle of transmission, of sharing, of renewal, and as such plays an integral part in the ongoing psychic life of a people.