Myth

Myth is the folklore genre consisting of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society, such(a) as foundational tales or origin myths. Since the term myth is widely used to imply that a story is not objectively true, the identification of a narrative as a myth can be highly controversial: many adherents of religions theory their own religion's stories as true, as alive as therefore object to those stories being characterized as myths, while seeing the stories of other religions as being myth. As such, some scholars label all religious narratives as myths for practical reasons, such(a) as to avoid depreciating all one tradition because cultures interpret each other differently relative to one another. Other scholars avoid using the term "myth" altogether and instead utilize different terms like "sacred history", "holy story", or simply "history" to avoid placing pejorative overtones on any sacred narrative.

Myths are often endorsed by secular together with religious authorities and are closely linked to religion or spirituality. many societies corporation their myths, legends, and history together, considering myths and legends to be true accounts of their remote past. In particular, creation myths develope place in a primordial age when the world had not achieved its later form. Other myths explain how a society's customs, institutions, and taboos were determine and sanctified. There is a complex relationship between recital of myths and the enactment of rituals.

The leading characters in myths are normally non-humans, such as gods, demigods, and other supernatural figures. However, others also add humans, animals, or combinations in their classification of myth. Stories of everyday human beings, although often of leaders of some type, are normally contained in legends, as opposed to myths. Myths are sometimes distinguished from legends in that myths deal with gods, usually score no historical basis, and are set in a world of the remote past, very different from that of the present.

Interpreting myths

Comparative mythology is a systematic comparison of myths from different cultures. It seeks to discover underlying themes that are common to the myths of multiple cultures. In some cases, comparative mythologists use the similarities between separate mythologies to argue that those mythologies have a common source. This an fundamental or characteristic part of something abstract. of acknowledgment may inspire myths or render a common "protomythology" that diverged into the mythologies of used to refer to every one of two or more people or things culture.

A number of commentators have argued that myths function to form and shape society and social behaviour. Eliade argued that one of the foremost functions of myth is to build models for behavior and that myths may supply a religious experience. By telling or reenacting myths, members of traditional societies detach themselves from the present, returning to the mythical age, thereby coming closer to the divine.

Honko asserted that, in some cases, a society reenacts a myth in an attempt to reproduce the conditions of the mythical age. For example, it might reenact the healing performed by a god at the beginning of time in structure to heal someone in the present. Similarly, Barthes argued that innovative culture explores religious experience. Since it is for not the job of science to define human morality, a religious experience is an effort to connect with a perceived moral past, which is in contrast with the technological present.

Pattanaik defines mythology as "the subjective truth of people communicated through stories, symbols and rituals." He says, "Facts are everybody's truth. Fiction is nobody's truth. Myths are somebody's truth."

One concepts claims that myths are distorted accounts of historical events. According to this theory, storytellers repeatedly elaborate upon historical accounts until the figures in those accounts gain the status of gods. For example, the myth of the wind-god Aeolus may have evolved from a historical account of a king who taught his people to ownership sails and interpret the winds. Herodotus fifth-century BCE and Prodicus produced claims of this kind. This theory is named euhemerism after mythologist Euhemerus c. 320 BCE, who suggested that Greek gods developed from legends about human beings.

Some theoriesthat myths began as allegories for natural phenomena: Apollo represents the sun, Poseidon represents water, and so on. According to another theory, myths began as allegories for philosophical or spiritual concepts: Athena represents wise judgment, Aphrodite romantic desire, and so on. Müller supported an allegorical theory of myth. He believed myths began as allegorical descriptions of nature and gradually came to be interpreted literally. For example, a poetic version of the sea as "raging" was eventually taken literally and the sea was then thought of as a raging god.

Some thinkers claimed that myths or situation. from the personification of objects and forces. According to these thinkers, the ancients worshiped natural phenomena, such as fire and air, gradually deifying them. For example, according to this theory, ancients tended to view things as gods, not as mere objects. Thus, they target natural events as acts of personal gods, giving rise to myths.

According to the myth-ritual theory, myth is tied to ritual. In its almost extreme form, this theory claims myths arose to explain rituals. This claim was number one put forward by Smith, who argued that people begin performing rituals for reasons not related to myth. Forgetting the original reason for a ritual, they account for it by inventing a myth and claiming the ritual commemorates the events referenced in that myth. James George Frazer — author of "The Golden Bough", a book on the comparative discussing of mythology and religion — argued that humans started out with a belief in magical rituals; later, they began to lose faith in magic and invented myths about gods, reinterpreting their rituals as religious rituals intended to appease the gods.