Mythology was the bed-rock of ancient religious and cultural norms. For example, different Greek communities had different gods. Athena was the goddess of Athens; Apollo was the god of Delphi, Hera of Argos and Demeter of Elesius. But Zeus was the king of the gods in the Greek mythology. In Egyptian, Babylonian, Scandinavian mythologies etc there are gods with different names, but who in their performances were more or less parallels or equivalents of the gods in Greek mythology. The old stories about the gods were treasured. Some were forgotten as to their real meaning and legends or real happenings such as the siege of Troy were added to them as well as a few complete fairy tales. Then the poets from Homer onwards began to weave them into magnificent plays, stories, poems and sages which men have told their children all along. Tales of the making of the world, the advent of the gods, the wars between the gods old and new, the creation of mankind, wars between gods and superhuman men and monsters and man’s search for El Dorado, beyond death.

To find the stories like that of Cronos swallowing his children, we have to go to the most primitive savages of Central Australia hundred years ago. But the wonder of and loveliness of the hills and valleys and streams of Greece call up fancies of nymphs and fairies, of Apollo with his lyre and the muses singing on mount Helicon, we may not exactly believe them but we understand them and feel that these stories stand for something real to revel or conceal some rich esoteric wisdom.

Man, in his struggle against hunger or heat and drought, imagined and invented evil beings who were the things or their causes; in just the same way as he made the good things and instincts into animate beings about whom myths were made. When the sun grew dim and the terrible cold of the arctic regions came over the earth, the Scandinavians told how Loki had killed Baldur, the sun -god. When the flowers and corn grew suddenly out of a barren earth and the beautiful spring of Greece spread over the hills and valleys, the Greeks said Persephone came up out of the domain of Hades to comfort her sorrowing mother Demeter. Mythology shows the way to truth, making us search for what reason can not explain. Some of these stories came from ancient Egypt, Babylon, and Phoenicia. Many were told by Greeks. A few were by the Hittites, the Cretans and the Phrygians. These myths are not just for the fun of it but to provoke some poetic and divine stir in our minds and fish out some hidden message.