Types of Myths and Their Functions

(NOTE: One myth can have multiple functions)

• Disguised history (historical and political layers)
  • Examples: the Trojan War; Zeus marrying many wives may be an integration of two belief systems at that time; Celtic epic: Táin Bó Cúailnge (Cattle Raid of Cooley); war between Ulster and Connacht (Queen Medb and Cuchulainn)
• Allegory:
  • Examples: Kukulkan, Mesoamerican serpent deity or Aztec Quetzalcoatl, “Feathered Serpent“, the creator god; his name is an allegory for the ‘wisest of men’; Zeus swallowing Metis to assume her wisdom; the brown and white bulls in the Táin.
• Moral truths: cautionary; (fables; folklore connection); most taboos and prohibitions
  • Example: Midas, Persephone, Norse, Baldr
• Origin tales, (also called aetiological–causal precedent) (pre-scientific)
  • Example: Creation myths—Norse creation myth; Sumerian creation myth (most are related to geographical layer in myth onion));
• Charter myths: customs, beliefs, social institutions: validate social customs and are often connected to rituals and myths about seasonal changes
  • Example: Buffalo Calf Woman myth
• Metaphor for the unknown (spiritual layer): to maintain the divine order of the world; such as seasons. Many cultures have certain ‘places,’ that become the center/navel of their world; these places become pilgrimages. Joseph Campbell says, this “unknown” is located in two places:  in the spiritual realm and in the depths of the human psyche.  They express our experience of something beyond the human.
  • Example: for example, the Oracle at Delhi;
• Rituals; four kinds: sacrifice, initiation (mysteries), purification, and seasonal renewal
• Psychological archetypes: (psychological layer)
  • Example: the most common is Joseph Campbell’s monomyth of the hero.
  • Campbell says, in his ‘journey’, the hero learns about his true inner nature and identity, and about the ultimate reality beyond the physical, i.e., “God.”  For Campbell, the hero’s inner and outer journey symbolizes psychic and religious discoveries that all humans ought to make, and hero myths can function even today as guides for humans through various stages of life.
• Trickster: Often, they advance culture, or bring about ‘change’; like Enki (Sumerian) or Coyote (Native American); they can also be socially disruptive characters like Loki (Norse); they can be mediators, such as Prometheus
• Structural Conflicts (French anthropologist, Claude Lévi-Strauss); contradictions or problems in the structure of the myth which no society can resolve.  (Examples:  why is incest forbidden when most creation myths have parents procreating with their children). They are often coded in myth as opposites—light and dark, male vs female, sky gods vs gods of the netherworld, etc.

Source:   Ways of Interpreting Myth.