What is Myth?

The word "myth" is often used as a synonym to "a lie."

Usually, however, just the opposite is true. A myth is often very similar to an allegorical narrative: a story told through symbols point by point to come to some general meaning, usually with a moral. Nathaniel Hawthorne, for example, often wrote allegories.

The ancient myths are often a distillation of  a long, long passage of time mixed with   the experiences of thousands of people.  Think of a mythological story as expressing this kind of meaning:  take millions of rose blooms and distill them and distill them until you have one tiny bottle of perfume from all those roses.  In one sense, that bottle holds all the essence of those flowers. They just can't be seen with the eye anymore.  That bottle is truer than A rose; it holds "roseness." Weird, huh.

Please see these links for meaning in myth and some specifics on "myth" and "symbols."