What is mythology?
Myths come usually tale according to tradition and legend designed to explain a universal & local beginnings ("creation myths" and "founding myths"), natural phenomena, inexplicable ethnical conventions, & anything else for which there is no elementary explanation presents itself. Non altogether myths want keep close at hand this explicatory purpose, nevertheless. Also, virtually all myths require the supernatural inflict or even deity, but several elementary legends & story passed down orally from either generation to generation keep around mythologic content. A Brothers Grimm demonstrated that there is fabulous content embedded possibly in the least promising fairy tales.

Around most common idiom, the myth is usually considered the "mere story" — that is, a story that holds meaning for population, however the tale of which is untrue. Within folkloristics, which is concerned by having a survey of each lay & sacred tale (a latter existence myths), a myth besides derives occasionally of its power from either existence believed & deeply held when admittedly; to folklorists, totally sacred traditions own myths, & there exists nothing dislogistic or even dismissive all about the term when there exists within most common usage.

This wide truth diarrhea deeper than a advent of critical history which can, or even might not, survive when within an authoritative written form which becomes "the story" (Preliterate unwritten traditions vanish when a written word becomes "the story" & a literate person turn into "the authority"). Nonetheless, when Lucian Lévi-Bruhl puts it, "The primitive mentality is a condition of the human mind, and not a stage in its historical development." (Mâche 1992, p.Viii) Virtually all typically a term refers specifically to ancient tales from either super old cultures, like Greek mythology or Roman mythology. Occasionally myths descended originally when a share of an unwritten tradition & were sole down the road written down, & several of the two survive around multiple versions.

Based on data from a eighth chapter of F. W. J. Schelling's Introduction to Philosophy and Mythology, "Mythological representations have been neither invented nor freely accepted. The products of a process independent of thought and will, they were, for the consciousness which underwent them, of an irrefutable and incontestable reality. Peoples and individuals are only the instruments of this process, which goes beyond their horizon and which they serve without understanding."

Religion and mythology

Mythology numbers conspicuously within virtually all religions, and virtually all mythology is attached to at least 1 religion. A select few utilise a words myth & mythology to portray a stories of a single or even even supplementary religions when treacherously, or dubious at the best. When 100% lexicon include this definition, "myth" doesn't universally indicate that the story is either faithlessly or even confessedly. A term is virtually all typically utilized therein feel to describe religions founded by ancient societies whose belief systems come about out. All the same, these are significant to keep inside mind that spell occasionally learn from myths when only stories, others can hang on to the children as a religion. By extension, numbers of population don't regard a tales surrounding a origin & development of modern dominant religions when literal accounts of cases, however instead regard the children when nonliteral representations of their belief systems. Numerous modern day rabbis & priests inside a additional liberal Jewish & Christian movements, also when virtually all Neopagans, have there is no condition viewing their religious texts when containing myth. It understand their sacred texts when indeed containing religious truths, divinely inspired however delivered in the language of humans. Others separate their beliefs retired from either a similar stories of more cultures & refer to the two when history. These humans object to the apply of the word myth to describe what it imagine.

For even a purposes of this article, so, the word mythology is utilized to refer to stories that, patch it can or might not become strictly factual, reveal fundamental truths & insights all about person nature and severity, typically through the apply of archetypes. Likewise, a stories discussed express a viewpoints & beliefs of the united states, period, culture, and/or religion which gave birth to the babies. Of these could speak of a Jewish mythology, the Christian mythology, or even an Islamic mythology, where 1 describes the mythologic elements inside these faiths forgoing speaking to the veracity of the faith's dogma or even claims all about its history.

Classifications

Ritual myths show you the performance of a certain religious practices or patterns & associated using temples or centers of worship. Origin myths describe the beginnings of a custom, title or even object. Cult myths are typically seen when explanations for elaborate festivals that magnify a power of the deity. Prestigiousness myths come commonly associated using the divinely chosen hero, city, or even humans. Eschatological myths come stories which describe ruinous ceases to the present globe the correct sequence of the writers. These extend beyond any likely historical scope, & so may just exist as described inside mythical terms. A select few myths concord supplementary than a single category.

Related concepts

The fairy tale itself is non the myth. Myths are non a equivalent when fables, legends, folktales, fairy tales, anecdotes or fiction, but sloppy usage has blurred a distinctions inside several humans's minds. A term myth is periodically utilized pejoratively around information to most common beliefs of the culture or even for the beliefs of the religion to imply that a story is two fanciful & fancied. Myth is typically wont to refer to the normally held however erroneous belief or even the misconception.

More examples of stories that come non mythology however are often confused using myth: Philosophical allegory Sentimental or even moral fable, parable or anecdote Cupid and Psyche Prodigal Son Cornelia's jewels Romance Cultural propaganda Betsy Ross "Rationalized" explications of myths that come there is no hanker understood This is an approach attributed to Euhemerus Heroic saga and epic Narrative drama Enriched history Song of Roland

Formation of myths

What forces produce myths? Robert Graves said of Greek myth: "True myth may be defined as the reduction to narrative shorthand of ritual mime performed on public festivals, and in many cases recorded pictorially." (The Greek Myths, Introduction). Graves was deeply influenced, mayhap as well strongly, by Sir James George Frazer's mythography The Golden Bough, and he would keep close at hand agreed that myths come generated by several ethnical needs (supplementary on the forces that generate myth is required).

Myths authorize the ethnical institutions of the tribe, the city, or even a united states by connecting the babies by having universal truths. Myths justify the todays occupation of the territory by a humans, e.g..

Everthing cultures have developed across period their own myths, consisting of story of their history, their religions, & their heroes. A swell power of the emblematical meaning one stories for the culture occurs when major understanding how come it hold up when yearn as it launder, another time for hundreds to thousands of years. Mâche (1992, p.Xx) distinguishes between "myth, in the sense of this primary psychic image, with some kind of mytho-logy, or a system of words trying with varying success to ensure a certain coherence between these images.

A collection of myths is called a mythos, e.g. 'the Roman mythos.' A collection of those is called a mythoi, e.g. 'the Greek and Roman mythoi.' One notable type is the creation myth, which describes how that culture believes the universe was created. Another is the Trickster myth, which concerns itself with the pranks or tricks played by gods or heroes.

Joseph Campbell was considered by some people to be the world's leading authority on myth and the history of spirituality. Roger Caillois (1972) contrasts myths of situations determined from outside by historical events with myths of heroes determined from inside by their psychic life. However Mâche (1992, p.10) argues that, "on this level he [Caillois] refers lone to the presentation of images around the form of stories, which in themselves come supplementary ancient than stories, non however submitted to this kinda distinction."

Myths as depictions of historical events
Although myths are often considered to be accounts of events that have not happened, many historians consider that myths can also be accounts of actual events that have become highly imbued with symbolic meaning, or that have been transformed, shifted in time or place, or even reversed. One way of conceptualizing this process is to view 'myths' as lying at the far end of a continuum ranging from a 'dispassionate account' to 'legendary occurrence' to 'mythical status'. As an event progresses towards the mythical end of this continuum, what people think, feel and say about the event takes on progressively greater historical significance while the facts become less important. By the time one reaches the mythical end of the spectrum the story has taken on a life of its own and the facts of the original event have become almost irrelevant.

This method or technique of interpreting myths as accounts of actual events, euhemerist exegesis, dates from antiguity and can be traced back (from Spencer) to Evhémère's Histoire sacrée (300 BCE) which describes the inhabitants of the island of Panchaia, Everything-Good, in the Indian Ocean as normal people deified by popular naivety. As Roland Barthes affirms, "Myth occurs as word chosen by history. It may not came from either a nature and severity of items" (Mâche 1992, p.20).

This process occurs in part because the events described become detached from their original context and new context is substituted, often through analogy with current or recent events. Some Greek myths originated in Classical times to provide explanations for inexplicable features of local cult practices, to account for the local epithet of one of the Olympian gods, to interpret depictions of half-remembered figures, events, or account for the deities' attributes or entheogens, even to make sense of ancient icons, much as myths are invented to "tell you" heraldic charges, the origins of which has become arcane with the passing of time. Conversely, descriptions of recent events are re-emphasised to make them seem to be analogous with the commonly known story. This technique has been used by some religious conservatives in America with text from the Bible, notably referencing the many prophecies in the Book of Revelation. It was also used during the Russian Communist era in propaganda about political situations with misleading references to class struggles. Until WWII the fitness of the Emperor of Japan was linked to his mythical distant descent from the Amaterasu, the goddess of the sun.

Mâche (1992, p.10) argues that euhemerist exegesis, "was applied to capture & attach by inflict of understanding qualities of thought, which eluded it in each side." This process, he argues, often leads to interpretation of myths as "masked propaganda in the service of right people," and that the purpose of myths in this view is to allow the "social sequentially" to establish "its permanency on the illusion of the natural sequentially." He argues against this interpretation, saying that "what puts an prevent to this caricature of certaaround speeches from either Might 1968 is, among more items, precisely the fact that roles are non distributed conclusively in myths, when would become a pack in case it were a variant of the idea of an 'opium of the humans.'"

Contra Barthes (quote above) Mâche (1992) argues that, "myth so seems to explore history, like than exist as chosen by it" (p.21), "beyond words & stories, myth seems further such as the psychic contented from either which words, gestures, & musics radiate. History merely chooses for it around becoming fabric. & these contents surge forth all a thomas more smartly from either the nature and severity of items after cause seeks to repress the children. Whatever the roles & comment sustaining which such & such a socio-historic movement decks out a mythical image, the latter endures a largely autonomous life which high-pressure fascinates humanity. To denounce archaicism merely add up as the work of a 'progressive' ideology, which itself begins to show the certain archaicism & an conspicuous naiveness." (p.20)

Other theories
"For Lévi-Strauss, myth is a integrated rules of signifiers, whose internal networks of relationships come utilized to 'map' a structure of more sets of relationships; a 'content' is infinitely variable & comparatively unimportant." (Middleton 1990, p.222)

A modern interpretation of myths, primarily as indicators of astrononomical events, has been put forward in such works as ''Hamlet's Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge And It's Transmission Through Myth by Giorgio De Santillana, Hertha Von Dechend (ISBN: 0879232153), and serves as a counterpoint to numerous Jungian (often psychological or mystical) interpretations as put forward by Joseph Campbell.

Catastrophists such as Immanuel Velikovsky believe that myths are derived from the oral histories of ancient cultures that witnessed cosmic catastrophes. For example, Velikovsky believe the dragon represented a fiery cosmic object such as a comet. Believers in catastrophism are only a small minority within the field of mythology.

Modern mythology
Television and book series like Star Trek and Tarzan have strong mythological aspects that sometimes develop into deep and intricate philosophical systems. These items are not mythology, but contain mythic themes that, for some people, meet the same psychological needs. An excellent example is that developed by J. R. R. Tolkien in The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings''.

Fiction, however, does not reach the level of actual mythology until people believe that it really happened. For example, some people believe that fiction author Clive Barker's Candyman was based upon a true story, and new stories have grown up around the figure. The same can be said for the Blair Witch and many other stories.

Mythology is alive and well in the modern age through urban legends, New Age beliefs, certain aspects of religion and so forth. In the 1950s Roland Barthes published a series of essays examining modern myths and the process of their creation in his book Mythologies. Swiss psychologist Carl Jung (1873-1961) and his followers also tried to understand the psychology behind world myths.

Myths by region

Africa
Asia (non-Middle East)
Australia and Oceania
Europe
Middle East
North America
South America and Mesoamerica
Mythological archetypes
culture hero Earth Mother first man or woman hero life-death-rebirth deity lunar deity psychopomp sky father solar deity trickster underworld

Mythological creatures
legendary creature list of species in folklore and mythology list of species in folklore and mythology by type list of species in fantasy fiction

Books on mythology
''Bulfinch's Mythology by Thomas Bulfinch The Golden Bough by James George Frazer The Hero with a Thousand Faces and other titles by Joseph Campbell Mythology by Edith Hamilton Mythology '' by Anne Birrell