ABSTRACT
A myth relates a sacred story, that is to say, it recounts a primordial event that occurred at the beginning of time. The myth proclaims the advent of a new cosmic situation or narrates a primordial event, and so it is always the story of a "creation"; it tells how something has been effectuated, has begun to be. Each myth tells how a reality came into being, whether it be a total reality like the cosmos or merely a fragment: an island, a species of vegetable, a human institution. The dominant function of the myth is therefore to fix the models for all the rites and significant human activities, subsistence or marriage as well as work, education, art, or knowledge. In all the pre-Judaic religions sacred time was the time of the myth, primordial time, in which the exemplary acts of the gods were accomplished. The cosmogonic myth reveals to him how to rediscover this primordial holiness of the world.
