This is Joseph Campbell, summing up the psychic and cultural functions of myth:
The first (function) is what I have called the mystical function, to waken and maintain in the individual a sense of awe and gratitude in relation to the mystery dimension of the universe, not so that he lives in fear of it, but so that he recognizes that he participates in it, since the mystery of being is the mystery of his own being as well.
The second function of the living mythology is to offer an image of the universe that will be in accord with the knowledge of the time, the sciences and the fields of action of the folk to whom the mythology is addressed.
The third function of the living mythology is to validate, support, and imprint the norms of a given specific moral order-that, namely, of the society in which the individual is to live.
And the fourth is to guide him, stage by stage, in health, strength, and harmony of spirit, through the whole foreseeable course of a useful life.
Joseph Campbell, Myths to Live By (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972), pp. 214-215.
