I thought a paradoxical but fitting title for this post is The Myth of Myth. It captures the errant assumption that governs most modern usage: myth means something false. But myth does not mean false. In fact, if one were forced to assign an initial truth-value to myth, it would be closer to transcendent truth—truth about ultimate reality, meaning, and moral order—or at least an attempt to apprehend and communicate such truth when direct description reaches its limits. Karen Armstrong explains this transcendence well: “A myth was an event which, in some sense, had happened once, but which also happened all the time. Because of our strictly chronological view of history, we have no word for such an occurrence, but mythology is an art form that points beyond history to what is timeless in human existence, helping us to get beyond the chaotic flux of random events, and glimpse the core of reality.” (A Short History of Myth)
Myth aims at transcendence because it also aims at prescription. It tells us how we are meant to behave, how we are meant to interpret the world, and how we are meant to understand ourselves within it. And no one builds their life around what they believe to be false behavior, incorrect interpretation, or deliberate misunderstanding. Whatever else myths are, they are not disposable stories. They are meaning-bearing structures people stake their lives on.
This is why phrases like “that’s just a myth” are so misleading. Even the otherwise enjoyable series, the unfortunate title MythBusters unintentionally reinforces the assumption that myth belongs to a pre-scientific stage of human development—a set of comforting stories we relied on before facts arrived. But myths have not disappeared in the age of science. They are everywhere. What has disappeared, in many places, are the primal components that once gave myth its weight. And now modern myths tend to be thin, innocuous, and impotent.
When people say “that’s just a myth”, they usually mean “that’s comforting fiction.” But that usage is historically late and rhetorically loaded. In the classical and anthropological sense, myth is closer to a society’s deep grammar: the narrative structure that tells a people what the world is, what went wrong, what matters most, and what salvation would even look like. Myth is not opposed to truth; it is often the vessel a culture uses to carry what it believes is most true. Mythology is a story (or more aptly a narrative) about the most important things in life.
The confusion comes from a category mistake. Modern readers often treat story as though it were competing with scientific description on the same field and by the same rules—as if myth were a failed attempt at chemistry or physics. But myth has never primarily attempted to be false history or primitive science. Myth is a mode of communication—a language— aimed at the kind of truth that shapes conscience, vision, and allegiance—truth that can be stated, but not exhausted, by propositions.
This is why Joseph Campbell can describe mythology as a symbolic way of pointing toward realities that exceed literal description: “... mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth—penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words.” (The Power of Myth) “Metaphorical” here does not mean false, but indirect—truth conveyed through symbol when direct language reaches its limit.
At the same time, myth should not be reduced to mere psychology or private feeling. Bruno Bettelheim observes that fairy tales are largely unconcerned with delivering technical information about the external world. Their primary task is formation—especially the inner formation of the person. But an interior effect does not imply subjectivity or illusion. Myth forms the inner life precisely because it is oriented toward realities deeper than surface facts. (The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales)
Charlie Starr sharpens this insight further when he argues that myth is not merely a pattern about reality, but an actual taste of reality itself—a sub-created, concrete experience that allows us to participate, however briefly, in the structure of being behind appearances. Myth draws the imagination toward concrete knowing in a world increasingly prone to abstraction. (Meaning, Meanings, and Epistemology in C. S. Lewis)
This is why Tolkien remains so useful. When Tolkien defines the fairy-story, he refuses to do so by cataloging fairies and elves. Instead, he grounds it in the nature of Faërie—the Perilous Realm—a reality with its own atmosphere, weight, and seriousness. (On Fairy-Stories) Such stories belong to a mode of meaning that cannot be reduced without being ruined. Myth works the same way. If one begins by assuming myth means false, one has already made the very mistake the word exists to correct.
If myth is a society’s deep grammar, then creation myth is its first syntax. Creation myths tell us what reality is made of, what humans are, why anything exists at all, and what the world is for. From that first story, everything downstream follows: what counts as sacred, what counts as profane, what we treat as heavy, what we treat as sand, what we call evil, what we call good, and what we expect from life and death.
This is why creation myths are never optional. They may be denied, disguised, or renamed, but they cannot be escaped. Modern people still live by them—often unconsciously—whether the agent is the Self, the State, or Nature itself. And while these myths differ wildly in content, they share a consistent architecture. Across cultures and centuries, creation myths exhibit four essential features (I will flesh out these ideas over the next few blogs):
Beauty, Non-Function, and Fall (Pathos): An Act of Beauty that both solves and causes problems. All creation myths contain, implicitly or explicitly, an essential non-function of the universe (earth) and a fall or failure of moral agents. Since states of nothingness and states of chaos are both states of non-function, they are equally impotent, as neither are useful. Falls, either natural or volitional, are a significant or persistent moral failure or act of evil. The Act of Beauty is an artistic, alluring, and dramatic boast of “using the useless”—either matter or moral agents.
Agent/Catalyst (Logos): The Catalyst that fixes the non-function. The Catalyst, implicitly or explicitly, becomes the standard for beauty, truth, and goodness. The nature of the Catalyst—or, in most instances, “the Agent”—is determined with a series of dichotomies: infinite (immaterial) or finite (material), intentional or non-intentional, personal or non-personal, moral or non-moral. The Agent is responsible for the creation of the universe (earth) and the creation of man. Due to the nature of myth, the Agent may change throughout a given meta-narrative. The Agent is either the source, narrator, or hero of the meta-narrative.
Proper Function (Ethos): The Act of Beauty is a boast of power meant to gain attention. The boast is one of authorship and therefore also one of authority. Because the Agent fixes the non-function of the universe, the Agent (or meta-narrative) claims authority to fix or explain the non-function or fall of humanity. The Agent becomes the metric for a normative ethic, which informs humans how they ought to behave. The meta-narrative explains the nature of the Agent, humans (or other moral agents), the universe (earth), or flora and fauna.
Promise (Mythos): The primary and underlying messages of the creation myth, the meta-narrative, as well as the myths and rituals that follow. The promise is the ritualistic telling of the Act of Beauty, while also providing the interpretation and application of it to a group of adherents. The promise may take the form of parables of caution or praise, pure exposition of teachings, or myths of the “heroes of the faith.” The promise is the code or mantra of the Agent, ideal hero, and the adherents. The code is a summary of the meta-narrative. Lastly, the promise is the promise of hope: it is meaning, and what humans should expect from life and death.
This series will use that framework as a field guide for reading modern culture. Because the real question is not whether we live by myths. The question is which myths we live by—and whether they are thick enough to carry the weight of being human.
And that is where the Christian claim becomes unavoidable. Christianity does not merely offer moral advice or spiritual sentiment; it presents itself as the interpretive key to reality. This is why the Bible—and the incarnation of Jesus Christ in particular—are so relevant. If we wish to understand myth rightly, we must study the True Myth. As Mircea Eliade succinctly explains, “In short, our best chance of understanding the structure of mythical thought is to study cultures where myth is a ‘living thing,’ where it constitutes the very ground of the religious life; in other words, where myth, far from indicating a fiction, is considered to reveal the truth par excellence.” (Cosmogonic Myth and Sacred History) Thus, to understand the true nature of myth, one must know the Bible—and understand it not as either history or myth, but as history, myth, and something more.
Christianity represents the pinnacle of myth because it represents the pinnacle of reality. This pinnacle begins with a creation myth—and insists it is true: a story in which the Agent is personal and holy, the fall is real, the promise is costly, and the Author does not remain distant, but enters the story Himself to become the best possible hero—the hero who can defeat sin and death.
That claim deserves to be examined carefully.
Matt, thanks for the inspiration to apply this perspective with Basque mythology. I am not a polished writer like yourself but here is a draft AI wrote framing Basque mythology with your post.
"If myth is dismissed as false, then cultures are left with facts but no grammar—information without orientation, description without meaning. Yet the enduring power of myth, whether in ancient Basque tradition or in the great religious narratives of the West, suggests something very different: myth persists because it carries the kind of truth human beings cannot live without. It tells us not merely what the world is made of, but what the world means, what demands our reverence, and how we are meant to stand within it.
Basque mythology offers a particularly instructive example. It does not begin with a tidy account of origins, but with land, light, and transformation. Its creation story is not confined to the past; it unfolds wherever the old world recognizes the arrival of the new sun and yields without resentment. In the disappearance of the Jentilak, in the descent of Olentzero, and in the turning of darkness toward light, we see myth operating precisely as it should: not as failed science or fanciful history, but as a mode of truth-telling that reveals the structure of reality and humanity’s place within it.
This is why Christianity, when it encounters such myth, does not simply erase it. The Incarnation does not abolish myth; it fulfills it. The Christian claim is not that myth was wrong, but that the deepest hopes myth carried have stepped into history. What myth gestures toward—renewal, illumination, reconciliation—Christian theology dares to name. In this sense, Christianity is not the enemy of myth but its vindication, the moment when the symbolic grammar of the world becomes flesh.
To recover myth, then, is not to retreat from truth but to recover its depth. It is to remember that some realities must be narrated before they can be analyzed, inhabited before they can be explained. Myth is not the opposite of fact; it is the framework that tells us which facts matter, and why. And when myth is allowed to bear its proper weight, it does what it has always done best: it trains the imagination to recognize the light when it arrives—and to make room for it when it does."