Mythology by its nature seeks to explain how the world works and how it came to work that way, and therefore includes a culture’s “theory of origins.” We sometimes label certain literature as “myth” because we do not believe that the world works that way. The label is a way of holding it at arm’s length so as to clarify that we do not share that belief—particularly as it refers to involvement and activities of the gods. But for the people to whom that mythology belonged, it was a real description of deep beliefs.
