But myths are more than mere stories and they serve a more profound purpose in ancient and modern cultures. Myths are sacred tales that explain the world and man’s experience. Myths are as relevant to us today as they were to the ancients. Myths answer timeless questions and serve as a compass to each generation.

It is this pedagogical function of mythology that carries the individual through the various stages and crises of life, from childhood dependency, to the responsibilities of maturity, to the reflection of old age, and finally, to death.

Mythology serves four functions: The Metaphysical, Cosmological, Sociological, and Pedagogical.

Function 1: The Mystical Function Campbell believed myth helped people to express what it felt like to live in awe of the universe — what it meant to be human in the midst of so many unknowns. This function serves for providing scale.

The third function of a mythological order is to validate and maintain a certain sociological system: a shared set of rights and wrongs, proprieties or improprieties, on which your particular social unit depends for its existence.

The most obvious function of myths is the explanation of facts, whether natural or cultural.

Campbell’s best-known work is his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), in which he discusses his theory of the journey of the archetypal hero shared by world mythologies, termed the monomyth….

Throughout his life, he traveled extensively and wrote prolifically, authoring many books, including the four-volume series The Masks of God, Myths to Live By, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space and The Historical Atlas of World Mythology.

This paper covers what I feel after my study of Greek mythology and religion are the eight functions of mythology: history, education, explanation – both of the natural world and the culture of each society, legality, genesis, what happens after death, and entertainment; as well as the two function of religion: civic …

But in the first instance the essential function of myth is to validate and justify, conserve and safeguard the fundamental realities and values, customs and beliefs on which depend the stability and continuance of a given way of life.

Explanation. The most obvious function of myths is the explanation of facts, whether natural or cultural.

“A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself,” according to Campbell’s definition. Anyone can become a hero—on purpose or even accidentally. But it involves a painful evolution that is a prerequisite to greatness.

Campbell’s Four Functions of Myth 1 The Metaphysical function serves to awaken the consciousness of its consumers to a reality lying just beyond the veil… 2 The second function of mythology is the Cosmological . The Cosmological function provides the boundary conditions of… More

This is a spiritual and religious purpose meant to inspire a sense of awe and reverence to the great mystery of existence. Campbell spoke of this classification also as a mystical one. Myth seeks to lead all to the fundamental conviction that there is unity in the universe.

The Pedagogical function of mythology serves the psychological sphere of human existence. By establishing rites of passage into critical stages of life, from dependency to maturity, old age, and finally death, myth provides guideposts and beacons to serve as a reminder that there is a purpose.

The second function of mythology is the Cosmological . The Cosmological function provides the boundary conditions of the universe, explaining the origins, shape, size, location, and birth and death dates of things such as time, space, matter, energy, biological organisms, and the universe as a whole.