Mythos refers to myths, which express deep symbolic truths and provide an intuitive understanding of the world.
It stands in contrast to logos, insofar as the latter is reduced to reason and discursive thinking governed by logic.

More precisely

Mythos is not a “false tale” or a mere product of imagination.
It constitutes a symbolic mode of knowledge that predates rational discourse.
It conveys, through narrative form, metaphysical, cosmological, and anthropological truths that surpass conceptual thought.

Through symbolism, myth mediates between the sensible world and invisible realities.
Rather than explaining, myth manifests:
it unveils the order of the world, its principles, its origin, and its finality.
By means of images and stories, it renders intelligible realities that cannot be reduced to doctrinal abstraction.

From the traditional point of view, myth is true:
— not because it recounts historical facts,
— but because it expresses the essential in symbolic form.

It belongs to symbolic intelligence, which grasps the unity of meaning through the multiplicity of symbolic figures.

Its opposition to logos applies only when the latter is restricted to discursive reason.
In its original Greek and Christian sense, Logos is the principle of intelligibility and revelation, fully compatible with mythos and even its foundation.
It is modern rationalism that separated them.

Far from being naïve or irrational, myth enables a unitive knowledge in which the subject participates in the truth received.
It is not an archaic residue but a fundamental dimension of human consciousness.

For further reading

  • Hesiod, Theogony — Greek cosmogony and the structure of the divine.
  • Plato, Phaedo; Symposium; Republic (Myth of Er) — Philosophical use of myth as a vehicle of truth.
  • Aristotle, Poetics — On mythos as the organizing principle of narrative meaning.
  • Plotinus, Enneads — Symbolic reading of divine stories.
  • Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae — Articulation between the Logos and symbolic forms.
  • Mircea Eliade, Aspects of Myth — Myth as expression of the sacred.
  • Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil; The Symbol Gives Rise to Thought — Myth and symbol as languages of meaning.
  • Jean Borella, La crise du symbolisme religieux, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2008 — On symbolic function and the meaning of myth.
  • Bruno Bérard, Metaphysics for Everyone (Angelico Press)
    — fr. Métaphysique pour tous (Paris, L’Harmattan, 2022)
    — it. Sui sentieri della metafisica
    — es. ¿Qué es la metafísica?
    — de. Was ist Metaphysik?
    On the relation between myth, symbol, intelligence, and the complementarity of mythos / logos.