What Is Modern Mythology? Can We Create Myths Today?

“The image of the cosmos must change with the development of the mind and knowledge; otherwise, the mythic statement is lost.”

Joseph Campbell

When we think of mythology, we tend to look backwards. We think of the gods of ancient Greece, the Norse sagas, the stories of ancient Egypt, the legends of King Arthur or the epic traditions of India. These stories have survived for centuries, sometimes for thousands of years, and we have given them a name: mythology.

But what if mythology isn’t something that belongs exclusively to the past? What if modern mythology is something human beings are still creating today?

The modern world may appear very different from the worlds that produced Zeus, Odin, Isis and Arthur. We live among computers, satellites, artificial intelligence and technologies that would have seemed like magic to previous generations. Yet we continue to tell stories about heroes and villains, gods and monsters, creation and destruction, good and evil, death and resurrection. We have created Jedi and Sith, superheroes and supervillains, Middle-earth and Arrakis. We build vast fictional universes in books, films, comics, games and tabletop role-playing games. Some of these stories become cultural phenomena, passed from one generation to another and continually reinterpreted by their audiences.

Are these simply works of fiction? Or could some of them represent something closer to a modern mythology?

The question becomes even more interesting when we consider what mythology has traditionally done for human beings. Myths were not simply entertaining stories about imaginary characters. They provided ways of thinking about existence. They gave symbolic form to questions about creation, consciousness, morality, death, destiny and humanity’s place within the cosmos. Science has transformed our understanding of the physical universe, but it has not eliminated our desire to explore those deeper questions. Perhaps that is why myth has never really disappeared. As I have discussed before, it has simply changed its clothing. The stories may now arrive as novels, films, graphic art, computer games or fantastical worlds rather than being passed around an ancient fire. The gods may have become superheroes, cosmic entities or characters travelling between worlds. The heroic quest may take place in a galaxy far, far away rather than on Mount Olympus. But beneath the technology and the spectacle, we may still recognise something very old. The human desire to make meaning through story.

What Actually Is a Myth?

Before we can talk about modern mythology, we need to answer a deceptively simple question: what is a myth? The word itself has become confusing. In everyday language, we often use myth to mean something that isn’t true. If someone says, “That’s just a myth,” they usually mean that the story is a misconception or a false belief. But this is a relatively narrow modern use of the word. The myths of ancient cultures were not simply collections of false stories. They were ways of understanding the world. As I have discussed before, a myth could explain the origin of the cosmos, the changing of the seasons, the nature of death, the relationship between humanity and the gods, or the consequences of human actions. It could provide a symbolic language for things that were difficult, or perhaps impossible, to express literally. This is why mythology has survived. These questions appear repeatedly throughout human history. That is one reason myths from very different cultures can sometimes feel strangely familiar. A myth does not necessarily have to be literally believed. What matters is the role the story plays and the deeper meanings that it carries.

Mythology Was Never Just About the Past

There is a strange distance in the way we talk about mythology. We speak of Greek mythology, Norse mythology or Egyptian mythology as though the people who created these stories knew that they were producing something that would endure. Then eventually be placed in a museum, studied by academics and printed in beautifully illustrated books. They didn’t. To the people who told these stories, they were not necessarily ancient myths. They were stories belonging to their own world. Imagine an ancient Greek standing before a temple dedicated to Athena. The goddess belonged to a living cultural landscape of stories, rituals, beliefs, art and traditions. Mythology developed through generations of storytelling, reinterpretation and artistic expression. Stories changed as they were retold. Characters acquired new meanings. Different versions of the same story could coexist. Artists, poets and storytellers continually reshaped inherited traditions. It was a living process. This is easy to forget because we encounter many ancient mythologies after they have already become historical subjects. We see the mythology. We don’t see the mythmaking.

Therefore, perhaps every culture has the capacity to create mythology while it is still living through its own history. The setting has changed, but the questions remain. The patterns or questions posed in ancient mythology are not confined to ancient literature. They appear in fantasy, science fiction, comics, cinema, television, games and even the stories we create around our own identities. The modern world may therefore be less mythless than it first appears. Perhaps we have simply become so accustomed to our own mythology that we no longer recognise it as mythology. For me one of the most influential stories that identifies with this is Star Wars.

Modern Mythology Is Already Around Us

Let’s consider Star Wars. When George Lucas created the original film in 1977, he drew upon a remarkable mixture of influences: mythology, religion, folklore, science fiction, westerns, samurai films and the work of mythologist Joseph Campbell. The result was not simply another science-fiction adventure. It created a symbolic universe populated by heroes, mentors, villains, supernatural forces, ancient orders and a struggle between opposing aspects of existence. The Force became more than a fictional technology. It became a way of talking about something invisible that connects living beings. The Jedi became more than space-faring warriors. They represented an ideal of discipline, wisdom and responsibility, while the Sith represented the temptation to use power for domination. Luke Skywalker’s journey was not simply a journey across the galaxy. It was a journey of transformation. The story worked because it connected futuristic technology with ideas that were much older than cinema.

Star Wars is not alone. J.R.R. Tolkien created an entire mythology around Middle-earth, complete with its own creation story, languages, histories, peoples, cosmology and legendary figures. The Lord of the Rings may be categorised as fantasy literature, but Tolkien’s project was far more ambitious than simply inventing a fictional setting. He was creating a world with the depth and internal history of a mythology. The same pattern can be seen in superhero stories. Superman arrives from another world and becomes a protector of humanity. Wonder Woman emerges from a world populated by figures derived from Greek mythology. Thor, originally a figure from Norse mythology, has been transformed into a modern cultural icon through comics and cinema. These characters exist in a strange space between ancient mythology and modern popular culture. They are fictional characters, but they carry archetypal meanings that are much older than the media through which we encounter them.

Myth turns the invisible into something we can see. The modern mythmaker therefore has an extraordinary range of tools available: the novel, the painting, the comic book, the film, the video game and the virtual world.

The medium through which we tell myths has changed so dramatically: television, cinema, social media, digital art, novels, audiobooks, podcasts. Therefore, we have simply acquired new ways of doing something human beings have always done.

My Own Experiment in Modern Mythmaking

The idea of modern mythology is not simply an academic question for me. It is something I have been exploring through my own writing and artwork. The Chronicles of the Charon began as a fantasy story so I could illustrate my own characters, but as the world developed, it became increasingly concerned with questions that seemed much larger than the plot itself. What is consciousness? What is the relationship between time and existence? Is reality limited to what we can perceive? What happens to the self when our familiar understanding of reality begins to break down? And what might exist beyond the physical universe? These questions gradually became part of the architecture of the story. The result is a fictional universe in which mythology, philosophy, fantasy, science fiction and metaphysical ideas overlap.

At the centre of that universe is the Omnisoul, the creator of the cosmos, and beyond the Omnisoul is the Eversoul, a higher principle from which creation itself emerges. The Charon are seven immortal beings associated with different aspects of existence. They occupy a major position within this cosmology, while artefacts such as the Book of Consciousness, the Book of Shadows, the Singing Bowl and the Flaming Celestial Pearl become symbolic objects as well as elements of the story. These aren’t simply pieces of fictional worldbuilding. They are attempts to give physical and narrative form to abstract ideas.

The Book of Consciousness, for example, emerged from my fascination with Theosophy and the writings associated with H. P. Blavatsky, particularly the idea of an ancient and indestructible record containing knowledge of cosmic history. I took that idea and transformed it into something fictional, a book that contains the story of everything that has happened, is happening and may happen within the cosmos. The object becomes a symbol. The symbol becomes part of the story. And the story becomes a way of exploring an idea that would otherwise be difficult to express.

This is one of the things that interests me about fantasy. Fantasy allows philosophical concepts to become tangible. Instead of discussing consciousness purely as an abstraction, I can create a Book of Consciousness. Instead of describing different levels of reality through philosophical terminology, I can construct planes of existence. Instead of simply writing about the relationship between time and consciousness, I can create characters who experience time in ways that challenge the ordinary assumption that the past, present and future are completely separate. The fictional world becomes a laboratory for ideas. This is also why visual art has always been important to the project. A mythology is not created through words alone. I have therefore approached the world of Ignatius and Indigo as both a writer and an artist. Characters, weapons, artefacts and environments are not merely illustrations of the narrative. They are part of the mythology of the fictional world. The aim is not to reproduce an ancient mythology. It is to ask whether some of the methods through which mythology has always operated can still be used today. That is why I think of The Chronicles of the Charon as an experiment in modern mythmaking.

I am not suggesting that a modern author can simply announce that they have created a mythology. Nor can I know what the stories might mean to readers decades from now. That is not for the creator to decide. What I can do is create the stories, symbols, characters and questions, build the world and give the ideas a visual and narrative language. What happens afterwards belongs to the reader.

Conclusion

Mythology isn’t something that belongs only to the ancient world. We are still creating myths today, through books, films, art, games and stories. The technology has changed, but our need to explore the mysteries of existence has not. Perhaps modern mythology is simply the way we continue an ancient human tradition: using stories to make sense of who we are and the world around
us.