Hidden in plain sight.
Did you know that myths are stories that are true and false at the same time?
When can a story be true and false? When it's a metaphor.
A metaphor is a figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance, as in a sea of troubles or in Hamlet's line, All the world's a stage. In a metaphor, one thing is conceived as representing another; one thing is used to mean something else. A metaphor is an emblem, a symbol of something else that's not meant to be taken literally.
A myth is like that. A myth is a metaphor, an invented story or theme whose characters and events not only represent themselves; they also represent something else.
As with any invented story, a myth may contain elements that are both true and false.
In other words, a myth is part fact, part fiction, and part metaphor. A mythic audience may have faith and believe in its literal truth, or it may not. If not, apparent fact or fiction can legitimately be asserted to be truth even though the author or the audience knows or suspects one or both actually to be false. Truth can be manhandled in this way because the apparent fact and fiction in a myth are vehicles whose objective is expression of the metaphor.
A myth is a single story that tells two stories at once. One story consists of what the words say and mean when they are taken at face value; the other story consists of what's said between the lines, or as contemporary writers like to phrase this idea, what's said in the subtext.
Read between the lines!
Sources : www.electricka.com