We live in a time where human beings can map galaxies, edit genes, and simulate intelligence, yet remain deeply uncertain about how to live with themselves. Modern science has transformed the way we understand the material universe. We can study matter at subatomic levels, trace the origins of stars, and observe biological systems with astonishing precision. And still, some of the oldest human questions remain unresolved.
What makes a life meaningful? What does power do to people? Why does suffering transform some individuals while breaks others? Why do human beings continue repeating the same patterns across centuries despite progress? And what exactly creates wisdom?
These questions have existed for far longer than modern civilization. Every culture has attempted to engage with them in some form. In many traditions, mythology became one of the ways through which these inquiries were preserved and transmitted across generations. This is why mythology still matters to me.
Ancient civilizations were not engaging with existence superficially. They were observing patterns – within nature, within human behaviour, within consciousness, within cycles of creation and destruction. Sometimes those observations emerged through mathematics and astronomy. Sometimes through philosophy. Sometimes through contemplative practice. And sometimes through stories powerful enough to survive for thousands of years.
One of the things modern discourses often struggles with is categorization. We tend to separate science, spirituality, philosophy, psychology, and cosmology into completely different compartments. Many older traditions did not always approach knowledge this way. In several Sanatana traditions, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, ecology, ritual, philosophy, and consciousness existed in conversation with one another. Inquiry into the external world and inquiry into the inner world were both considered meaningful pursuits.
This does not mean every sacred narrative should be treated as literal science. But dismissing these traditions as fantasy simply because they speak symbolically also feels deeply reductive.
I think we lose something important when we stop engaging with these stories seriously.
Why Human Beings Continue to Need Mythology.
Despite all our technological advancement, the inner landscape of human beings has not changed as dramatically as the external world has.
We still struggle with grief, loneliness, ego, ambition, jealousy, morality, desire, loss, and mortality. We still search for meaning. We still fear uncertainty. We still long for transcendence in one form or another.
Technology changes the conditions of life. Human consciousness moves far more slowly. This is probably why ancient narratives continue to endure. When Arjuna collapses on the battlefield in the Bhagavad Gita, people still recognize themselves in that moment. The confusion. The paralysis. The unbearable weight of responsibility. The fear of causing harm regardless of what choice is made. Similarly, when the Devi Mahatmyam speaks of the Goddess battling demonic forces, the narrative can be read at several levels at once – psychological, symbolic, social, spiritual, and existential. That layered way of thinking matters.
Modern culture increasingly pushes people toward literalism. Something is expected to be either historically factual or completely meaningless. Sacred narratives rarely functioned that way. They often encoded patterns of human experience through symbolism because some dimensions of existence are difficult to communicate through direct explanation alone. I think symbolic literacy is something modern societies are gradually losing. We are trained to consume information quickly, but not always to sit with layered meaning. We know how to process data, but many people struggle to interpret their own inner lives. Stories once helped human beings do that.
Why Human Beings Still Need Awe.
Mythologist Joseph Campbell once described mythology as serving mystical, cosmological, sociological, and psychological functions. While his framework emerged through comparative mythology, what interests me is how many traditional knowledge systems had already been engaging with these dimensions for centuries through philosophy, ritual, narrative, and contemplative practice.
One of mythology’s oldest functions is preserving a sense of awe before existence. Modern science explains extraordinary things about the universe. But explanation alone does not necessarily create intimacy with existence. Knowing how stars form is different from experiencing wonder before the cosmos itself. Ancient narratives often attempted to keep human beings connected to that sense of scale and mystery. To me, this is one reason sacred narratives survive. Human beings seem to need more than functional existence. We also seek meaning, relationship, symbolism, and emotional coherence.
In highly technological societies, life can slowly become reduced to productivity, efficiency, and measurable outcomes. Mythological thinking interrupts that reduction. It reminds people that existence contains dimensions that cannot always be quantified neatly. That does not weaken scientific inquiry. If anything, it deepens it.
Modern astrophysics now tells us that the elements composing human life were forged through ancient stellar processes. In many ways, this strengthens the ancient intuition that human beings are not separate from the cosmos but emerging from it. I often feel science and sacred inquiry become hostile only when either side becomes insecure.
Stories as Maps of Our Relationship with Existence.
Another reason mythology continues to matter is because it helps human beings locate themselves within existence itself. Ancient cultures constantly tried to understand where human life fit within the larger movement of the cosmos. Creation narratives, cyclical time, dissolution myths, stories of balance and imbalance – all of these attempted to position human beings within something larger than individual survival.
Many Indic traditions approached existence cyclically rather than linearly. Creation, preservation, dissolution, regeneration – these patterns appear repeatedly across texts, rituals, and philosophical systems.
Even today, that perspective feels relevant. Modern societies often operate through endless expansion – more growth, more production, more extraction, more consumption. Cyclical thinking changes how one relates to life. It introduces rhythm, interdependence, decay, renewal, and limitation into the conversation.
I think mythology sometimes preserves ecological intelligence in ways modern societies fail to recognize. The natural world in many sacred traditions was not imagined as dead matter existing purely for human use. Rivers became mothers. Mountains became living presences. Forests became spaces of transformation.
Whether one approaches these symbolically or spiritually, the underlying relationship with nature feels fundamentally different from industrial modernity. And perhaps that shift in relationship partly explains why modern societies often struggle so deeply with ecological destruction despite possessing enormous scientific knowledge.
Mythology, Society, and the Question of Power.
Sacred narratives also shape societies.
The Ramayana, for instance, is not simply an epic about Rama and Ravana. It carries conversations around governance, exile, loyalty, sacrifice, justice, duty, and moral complexity. Generations inherited ethical frameworks through such stories. At the same time, mythology should never be approached uncritically. Stories can preserve wisdom, but interpretations can also preserve power structures.
One of the things I find increasingly important is asking – Who interpreted these narratives?
Which voices became dominant? What was emphasized? What gradually disappeared? A large part of my own engagement with the Goddess tradition comes from this concern. Feminine dimensions of sacred traditions did not vanish entirely, but many became obscured through layers of patriarchal interpretation and colonial reframing. This is why mythology cannot remain frozen. Sacred narratives survive because each generation re-enters them differently. People continue arguing with them, reinterpreting them, resisting them, reclaiming them, and finding new meaning within them. That ongoing engagement is what keeps traditions alive.
Ancient Narratives and the Human Mind.
What fascinates me most about mythology is probably its psychological dimension. Ancient narratives repeatedly return to human patterns that remain startlingly recognizable even today. Ego. Attachment. Power. Greed. Desire. Transformation. Sacrifice. Fear. Inner dilemmas. These themes appear across civilizations because human beings continue struggling with them regardless of technological advancement.
Shiva withdrawing into stillness, Kali dissolving illusion, Sita enduring exile, Karna wrestling with identity and belonging – these are not merely narrative events. They are emotional and existential states human beings continue encountering internally.
This is where mythology becomes deeply personal. People often assume mythology survives because cultures remain emotionally attached to old stories. I think it survives because these stories continue revealing something about human consciousness itself. The external world changes rapidly. The human psyche carries remarkable continuity.
Why Modern Culture Still Creates Mythologies.
Even modern societies continue creating mythic structures, though they rarely describe them that way. Superhero films, fantasy epics, dystopian fiction, and science fiction repeatedly circle the same themes ancient civilizations explored – corruption, temptation, sacrifice, power, identity, destruction, exile, redemption, and transformation. That persistence tells us something important. Human beings still seek symbolic frameworks through which they can process fear, morality, technological change, and collective uncertainty. At the same time, I do think there is a difference between sacred civilizational memory preserved across centuries and commercial entertainment designed primarily for consumption. The two can overlap symbolically without becoming identical. Still, the continued popularity of archetypal storytelling reveals that mythology never disappeared. Its language simply evolved.
Why Science and Sacred Narratives Do Not Need to Compete
Modern conversations often force a conflict between science and mythology that feels unnecessarily rigid. Science remains one of humanity’s greatest achievements. It has transformed medicine, astronomy, communication, engineering, biology, and nearly every aspect of contemporary life. Rejecting science in the name of spirituality makes very little sense to me. At the same time, reducing reality only to what can currently be measured also creates limitations. Many ancient knowledge systems were not disengaged from scientific observation in the way modern discourse sometimes assumes. Indian traditions, for instance, produced sophisticated work in mathematics, astronomy, medicine, linguistics, metallurgy, architecture, and logic. Observing nature carefully was not seen as separate from philosophical or spiritual inquiry. This is one reason I find the modern separation between “scientific” and “sacred” thinking somewhat incomplete. Older civilizations often approached existence more holistically. The same culture that contemplated consciousness also studied planetary motion. The same civilization that produced metaphysical inquiry also developed systems of medicine, surgery and advanced mathematical frameworks. That also does not mean every sacred narrative should be reverse engineered into modern science. But it does suggest that these traditions were engaging seriously with reality – both externally and internally.
Many sacred traditions were exploring questions modern science still struggles to fully address
– What is consciousness? What creates inner suffering? Can human beings evolve psychologically? What happens when desire becomes limitless? How should power be used responsibly? Can external progress exist without inner balance? Some of these questions belong partly to science, partly to philosophy, partly to ethics, and partly to lived experience. And perhaps this is where older traditions still have something meaningful to offer. They remind us that intelligence can move in multiple directions at once – outward toward the universe, and inward toward consciousness itself. Modernity often excels at external advancement while neglecting inner cultivation. That imbalance has consequences.
Conclusion
To me, mythology remains relevant because human beings are still trying to understand themselves. The technologies surrounding us may change dramatically across centuries, but many inner struggles remain astonishingly familiar. Human beings still struggle with power. Grief still transforms people. Desire still destabilizes judgment. Human beings still search for meaning beyond survival and consumption.
Ancient narratives survived because they carried these observations forward. Some encoded philosophical insight. Some preserved psychological wisdom. Some reflected ecological understanding. Some attempted to position human beings within a larger cosmic relationship.
And many continue speaking differently to different generations. Perhaps that is why mythology never truly disappears. Human beings continue changing the language through which they search for meaning. The search itself remains.
Frequently Asked Questions
Because the questions it addresses do not expire. Mythology works on questions about meaning, identity, suffering, mortality, and ethical choice that every human being faces regardless of the era they live in. Science and technology change the material conditions of life but do not answer these questions. Mythology remains because it is built to hold exactly what modernity cannot contain.
To give human beings frameworks for understanding their experience at a depth that literal or empirical thinking alone cannot reach. Mythology maps the interior landscape of human life, naming the patterns of grief, transformation, moral crisis, and renewal that recur across every generation. It preserves civilisational wisdom in the only form durable enough to carry it across centuries.
Because the dominant frameworks of modern life, centred on information, achievement, and rational optimisation, are genuinely incomplete. They do not address what a person is to do with grief, with moral ambiguity, with the knowledge of their own mortality, with the desire for meaning that material comfort does not satisfy. Mythology addresses these directly, and a tradition as carefully refined as Sanatan Dharma does so with a precision that has not been surpassed.
Both consciously and unconsciously. The stories and films that last longest tend to be doing something mythological, mapping transformation, holding moral complexity, connecting individual experience to something larger. Within living traditions, mythology is engaged through practice, through the study of texts, through devotion, and through the kind of interpretive reading that asks what a story reveals rather than only what it says.
The deepest functions are the ones that address interiority: helping people understand what they are going through by showing that the territory has been crossed before, preserving alternative visions of what a good life looks like, cultivating the symbolic literacy to read experience at multiple levels simultaneously, and connecting the individual to something larger than personal circumstance.
These texts are Itihasa, meaning they carry civilisational memory in narrative form. Their connection to modern life is not metaphorical or nostalgic. The ethical situations they explore, the moral dilemmas, the cost of loyalty, the relationship between duty and love, the consequences of ego unchecked, are permanently human situations. They speak to the present because they were never only about the past.
Because human beings are meaning-making creatures who face questions that neither science nor daily practicality can answer. Mythology exists as the accumulated response of civilisations to those questions, encoded in the most durable form available: story. It exists because something in the human situation requires it, and the traditions that have lasted longest are the ones that understood this most clearly.
Continue Your Journey
About the Author
Priyanka Sharma Kaintura
Priyanka Sharma Kaintura is a mythology activist, author, and speaker dedicated to separating myth from mythology and excavating narratives buried by colonialism and patriarchy. After two decades in corporate communication, she now writes full-time, focusing especially on the Goddess tradition and challenging frameworks that diminish sacred narratives.
Her books include Mahadevi: The Unseen Truth Behind Existence and My Jiffies: Narration of Moments, Unadulterated and Unpackaged.
