"Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science – it is killed. It is never difficult to demonstrate that as science and history, mythology is absurd. When a civilization begins to interpret its mythology in this way, the life goes out of it. Temples become museums, and the link between the two perspectives is dissolved. To bring the images back to life, one has to seek – not interesting applications to modern affairs, but illuminating hints from the inspired past."

- Joseph Campbell, "The Hero with a Thousand Faces"