Myth is a story, or narrative that is told over and over again. A traditional narrative possessing explanatory resilience regardless of its veracity; any authenticity lies in the repetition of the narrative not its verity.

"a story that is a most precious possession because it is sacred, exemplary, significant."

Mircea Eliade, Myth and Reality. Trans. Willard R. Trask. New York: Harper & Row, 1963.

Kirk admits that "on the whole I felt that the attempt to isolate some central specific quality of myths is misdirected. There are too many obvious exceptions."

(Greek Myths, 27).

Rows of Torii aligned in a series in Kyoto demarcate sacred space in Shinto tradition.

However, he goes on to say that the distinguishing features of myth must be "not just one such characteristic like sacredness in some sense, but a whole range of possibilities" (27).

Among the phrases Kirk [consideration of the work of G.S. Kirk, a well-known classicist and contemporary of Mircea Eliade's] uses to describe the possible distinguishing features of myth are:

1. Narrative force, power or character
2. Offering an explanation for some important phenomenon or custom.
4. Recording and establishing a useful institution.
5. Expressing an emotion in some way that satisfies some need in the individual.
6. Reinforcing a religious feeling.
7. Acting as a powerful support or precedent for an established ritual or cult practice.

Eliade's attitude seems to generally agree with Kirk's analysis thus far:

First, the force or charm of the narrative can be assimilated to Eliade's concept of the "truth" of the narrative.
Secondly, he positively insists on the etiological aspect of myth.
Explanation, recording, and support flow together in the positive valorization of the etiological myth.

To tell how things came into existence is to explain them and at the same time indirectly to answer another question: Why did they come into existence?

Sacred and Profane, p. 97.

Thus, transmitting the mythic origins of an institution or phenomenon performs all three functions.

Paradoxically, myth tends to re-establish itself as a fable, an illusion. As in the story of Visnu and Narada (Images and Symbols, 70f), what is the ultimately seductive fault is accepting one's own myths as real, and yet in order to reach this conclusion, we had to begin with the recognition that the myth is the true story par excellence. Perhaps the paradox can be resolved in the recognition that the myth is a true representation of reality in the sense that it is honest and has integrity and excellence but it is not a reiteration of reality itself.

The hearer of myth, regardless of his level of culture, when he is listening to a myth, forgets, as it were, his particular situation and is projected into another world, into another universe which is no longer his poor little universe of every day. . . . The myths are true because they are sacred, because they tell him about sacred beings and events. Consequently, in reciting or listening to a myth, one resumes contact with the sacred and with reality, and in so doing one transcends the profane condition, the "historical situation."

In other words one goes beyond the temporal condition and the dull self-sufficiency which is the lot of every human being simply because every human being is "ignorant"--in the sense that he is identifying himself, and Reality, with his own particular situation. And ignorance is, first of all, this false identification of Reality with what each one of us appears to be or to possess. (Images and Symbols, 59)

As he makes clear later on, this does not deny the relevance of the historical situation, or the reality of personal experience. In Indian terms he points out that

"the great cosmic illusion is a hierophany.... One is devoured by Time, not because one lives in Time, but because one believes in its reality, and therefore forgets or despises eternity". (90-91)

Kronos devouring Rhea's and his child. Peter Paul Ruebens, Oil on Canvass

In other words, the primary fault is not in perception itself, but in mistakenly assuming perception to be itself the Real rather than a secondary manifestation, a representation or imitation of the real, to mistake the perception for the perceived."

Bryan Rennie,

Bryan S. Rennie: Reconstructing Eliade: Making Sense of Religion. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996. CHAPTER 7: "Myths and Mythology"