This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
A myth, in the atlas's use, is a traditional sacred narrative a culture holds to explain something fundamental, the origin of the world, of a people, of a natural feature, or of a religious practice, told and retold within a tradition rather than authored once by a single named writer. A myth is distinct from a legend, which typically concerns a specific, often semi historical figure or event, and from an ordinary folktale, which is not usually treated by its own tradition as sacred or foundational in the way a myth is.
An entry describes a myth's central narrative, its major figures and what the myth is understood within its own tradition to explain or establish, written from outside as description rather than as a retelling meant to stand in for the tradition's own telling. Where a myth belongs to a closed tradition that restricts who may recount it, in what setting, or in what detail, the entry states that restriction plainly rather than supplying the narrative's full ceremonial telling.
A single culture very often holds more than one account of the same origin, sometimes openly contradictory ones, and the atlas records that variation rather than smoothing several tellings into one composite version, since which telling a given community actually uses, and why more than one survives at all, is frequently as revealing as any one version's content on its own.