Mythology is not the same as myth. Mythology is a collection of stories that attempt to portray the myths, the deep patterns, that we live in our ordinary lives. Just as stories of childhood and family evoke the myths that we live as adults, so cultural mythologies evoke mythic patterns that we may trace in modern life. A mythology from a foreign culture can still help us imagine factors we are dealing with at the deepest levels every day. Mythology teaches us how to imagine more profoundly than sociological or psychological categories allow. This, by the way, is one reason I am cautious about psychological interpretations of mythology: we don’t want to reduce the mysteries contained in myth to modern language and concepts that are already insufficient for investigations into our experience.

Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life