The Meaning of Myth

    Myth comes via mythos from the Greek root meaning to make a sound with the mouth.  Thus, the meaning of the word to the Greeks was and is basic to human existence as we know it:  "In the beginning was the word."  It is the metaphorical, symbolical, or direct expression of the "unknown," or that which requires transcendence to grasp. 

    If we begin with these basic points and put aside the commonplace definition of myth as story with no basis in fact, we have a beginning toward a meaningful definition.

    In the twentieth century, the search for meaning   that transcends the "facts" of daily life has led to the study of mythology becoming more important than ever before. No longer is mythology approached primarily in conjunction with the study of classical or other literatures. Mythologists are now anthropologists, philologists, etiologists, ethnologists, and perhaps most of all, psychologists.  And crossing these disciplines are ritualists, diffusionists, structuralists, Jungians, Freudians, and culturalists, who, in turn, are not always mutually exclusive. 

    The basic questions that the student of mythology must ask are:  What makes something mythic?  What do mythic events and narratives have to do with us?

    C. G. Jung wrote:  "Myths are  original revelations of the pre-conscious psyche, involuntary statements about unconscious psychic happenings. . . ."  The point is not to search for the "facts" of myth, but for the meaning which is intrinsic in the myth itself, for myths, like dreams, are psychically real.  In fact, myths might be called the dreams of humankind.   Dreams serve as escape valves for individuals.  They represent wishes and fears.  Myths serve whole societies.

    Most of us have had dreams of falling from a great height, dreams of being lost or left behind, dreams of conquest.  Nearly every society has myths which express these themes on the group level.  There are themes--archetypes--which when we come across them, in literature, for instance, "strike a chord" for no apparent reason.  So myths spring from the particular problems and concerns of a given race or tribe, but on a deeper level their source is the universal soul of the human race itself.  Just as we can interpret dreams of an individual to gain insight into that particular psyche, just so can we study myths to better understand the humankind's psyche. 

    How do we approach the particular story or tale?   How do we determine what is myth and what is simply local color or "fill"?  We search, as we do in dreams, for recurrent themes and patterns.    The usefulness of searching for themes and patterns,  according to James Joyce, Joseph Campbell, and others, is to develop a mythic consciousness, to search for meaning in life which is actually the search for self. Although our modern age of reason and technocracy has done much to isolate each of us into a lack of meaning and belonging, our study is a step toward rediscovering and connecting to the larger, underlying relationships of the human family.