Religion as a sphere of spiritual life.
The notion of Myth.
Major types of myth.
Myths of origin.
Myths of eschatology and destruction.
Myths of time and eternity.
Myths of providence and destiny.
Myths of rebirth and renewal.
Myths of memory and forgetting.
Myths of culture heroes and soteriological myths.
Myths of high beings and celestial gods.
Myths concerning founders of religions and other religious figures.
Myths of kings and ascetics.
Myths of transformation.
Religion is human beings' relation to that which they regard as holy, sacred, spiritual, or divine. Religion is commonly regarded as consisting of a person's relation to God or to gods or spirits. Worship is probably the most basic element of religion, but moral conduct, right belief, and participation in religious institutions are generally also constituent elements of the religious life as practiced by believers and worshipers and as commanded by religious sages and scriptures.
Every religion is based on myths. Myths are specific accounts of gods or superhuman beings involved in extraordinary events or circumstances in a time that is unspecified but which is understood as existing apart from ordinary human experience. The word myth derives from the Greek mythos, which has a range of meanings from “word,” through “saying” and “story,” to “fiction”; the unquestioned validity of mythos can be contrasted with logos, the word whose validity or truth can be argued and demonstrated. Because myths narrate fantastic events with no attempt at proof, it is sometimes assumed that they are simply stories with no factual basis, and the word has become a synonym for falsehood or, at best, misconception. In the study of religion, however, it is important to distinguish between myths and stories that are merely untrue.
Major types of myth

Myths of origin
Cosmogony and creation myth are used as synonyms, yet properly speaking, cosmogony is a preferable term because it refers to the origin of the world in a neutral fashion, whereas creation myth implies a creator and something created, an implication unsuited to a number of myths that, for example, speak of the origin of the world as a growth or emanation, rather than an act. Even the term origin should be used with caution for cosmogonic events (as well as for other myths purporting to describe the beginning of things), because the origin of the world hardly ever seems the focal point of a mythological narrative—as a mythological narrative is not a matter ofinquiry into the first cause of things. Instead, cosmogonic myths are concerned with origins in the sense of the foundation or validity of the world as it is. Creation stories in both primitive and advanced cultures frequently speak of the act of creation as a fashioning of the earth out of raw material that was already present. In African cosmogonies, especially, the earth is preexistent. A creation out of nothing occurs as a theme much less frequently, for all that such creation myths are more satisfying to the philosophical mind. Philosophical questions, however, are less important in the justificatory systems set up by myth.
In most cosmogonic traditions the final or culminating act is the creation of man. The condition of the cosmos prior to man's arrival is viewed as separate and distinct from the alterations that result from the beginning of the human cultural world. Creation is thus seen as a process of periods or stages, frequently in a three-stage model. The first stage consists of the world of gods or primordial beings; the second stage is the world of the ancestors of man; and the third stage is the world of man. The three stages are sometimes seen as interrelated; for example, the gods may be the creators of man or the ancestors of man, or ancestors may undergo a transformation to become men.
Myths of eschatology and destruction
Myths of eschatology deal with “the end.” The end is conceived of as the opposite of thecosmogony; it means first and foremost the origin of death but also, in a wider sense, the end of the world. Special forms of eschatology are prevalent in messianism (belief in a future salvation figure) and millenarianism (belief in a 1,000-year reign of the elect).
Expectations of a cataclysmic end of the world are also expressed by myths. A universal conflagration with a final battle and defeat of the gods is part of Germanic mythology and has parallels in other examples of Indo-European eschatological imagery. In many “primitive” religions specific expectations about the end of the world do occur, but