🧅 The Layers of the Myth Onion

Different thinkers and educators organize these layers slightly differently, but here’s a widely accepted multi-layered structure:

1. Literal/Historical Layer

What it says: The surface-level story plot, characters, and events.

Purpose: Provides entertainment, oral tradition, and cultural standards and identity.

Interpretation: Early explanations of natural events or historical memory (e.g., natural disasters, celestial phenomena).

2. Allegorical/Symbolic Layer

What it means metaphorically: Each character or event represents abstract ideas.

Purpose: Encodes values, conflict, ethics, or philosophical principles in symbolic terms.

Interpretation: Seen in moral teachings or cultural codes embedded in the story. What is the right and/or okay thing to do.

3. Psychological Layer

What it reflects about the human mind: Myths express archetypes or internal struggles.

Purpose: Offers a roadmap for personal growth, ego, identity, or emotions connected to action. Recurring events in the lives of participants show “purpose.”

Interpretation: Myths as dreams of a culture or reflections of the collective unconscious.

4. Social/Political Layer

What it says about society: Myths justify or challenge social structures and norms.

Example: The divine right of certain gods to hold power.

Purpose: Reinforce, repeat, or critique power structures, gender roles, or economic systems.

Interpretation: Myths as tools of ideological control or subversion.

5. Spiritual/Transcendent Layer

What it teaches about the sacred or the divine: Myths as expressions of mystical truth.

Purpose: Connect people to the divine, the sacred, how our universe and humans came to be.

Interpretation: Myths as pathways to spiritual insight or religious experience.

Why the Onion Metaphor Works

Multiple truths can coexist: A myth might be historically false but psychologically or spiritually true.

Flexible interpretation: Different audiences (children, priests, scholars) can engage with different layers.

Cultural endurance: The myth’s ability to speak across time comes from these many embedded meanings.