Myths are the first stories.
Myths are the backbone of literature, the meaning of history, the subsoil of language.
The epics and romances, the fairy stories, hero stories, trickster tales, ballads and folklore of any culture are the lens through which that culture views and understands its world.
A world becomes a world,
All else beside,
When sensuous poets in their pride
Invent
Emblems for the soulís consent
That speak the meanings man can never know,
But man-imagined images can show.
It perishes when those images,
Though seen,
No longer mean.
Archibald MacLeishWhat is Myth?
To define myth is as pointless as it is difficult, since definitions are by nature exclusive, and will inevitably leave out some facet of human belief that someone considers as myth. Conversely, any definition that seeks to include all facets will be so broad as to be useless in any concentrated discussion. So lets forget definitions and focus instead on the uses of myth. Joseph Campbell offer four major uses of myth: Cosmological, Transcendental, Socio-political, and Psychological.
Myths, the possessions of specific cultures in specific times, have a half-life. They are born out of experience, they evolve to meet the needs and organize the world of the mother culture, and they diminish in force as the culture loses energy over time.There is no Myth, only myths.
There is no myth without a culture, as there is no culture without a myth.
There can be no myth without language, as there can be no language without myth and culture.
Myth does not explain. It names and it arranges, but it does not explain. The splendid mythic resonance of Genesis 1, in which God created the world by speaking it into existence, does not explain either the How or the Why of that world, or God's motive for making it.