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A creation myth is a symbolic narrative of how the world began and how people first came to inhabit it.〔, "Creation myths are symbolic stories describing how the universe and its inhabitants came to be. Creation myths develop through oral traditions and therefore typically have multiple versions."〕 While in popular usage the term ''myth'' often refers to false or fanciful stories, formally, it does not imply falsehood. Cultures generally regard their creation myths as true.〔 "In common usage the word 'myth' refers to narratives or beliefs that are untrue or merely fanciful; the stories that make up national or ethnic mythologies describe characters and events that common sense and experience tell us are impossible. Nevertheless, all cultures celebrate such myths and attribute to them various degrees of literal or symbolic ''truth''." ()〕 In the society in which it is told, a creation myth is usually regarded as conveying profound truths, metaphorically, symbolically and sometimes in a historical or literal sense.〔 They are commonly, although not always, considered cosmogonical myths—that is, they describe the ordering of the cosmos from a state of chaos or amorphousness.〔''See:'' * * * * 〕 Creation myths often share a number of features. They often are considered sacred accounts and can be found in nearly all known religious traditions. They are all stories with a plot and characters who are either deities, human-like figures, or animals, who often speak and transform easily.〔''See:'' * * * *〕 They are often set in a dim and nonspecific past that historian of religion Mircea Eliade termed ''in illo tempore'' ("at that time").〔 Creation myths address questions deeply meaningful to the society that shares them, revealing their central worldview and the framework for the self-identity of the culture and individual in a universal context.〔''See:'' * * * * 〕 Creation myths develop in oral traditions and therefore typically have multiple versions;〔 found throughout human culture, they are the most common form of myth. ==Definitions== Creation myth definitions from modern references: * A "symbolic narrative of the beginning of the world as understood in a particular tradition and community. Creation myths are of central importance for the valuation of the world, for the orientation of humans in the universe, and for the basic patterns of life and culture." * "Creation myths tell us how things began. All cultures have creation myths; they are our primary myths, the first stage in what might be called the psychic life of the species. As cultures, we identify ourselves through the collective dreams we call creation myths, or cosmogonies. … Creation myths explain in metaphorical terms our sense of who we are in the context of the world, and in so doing they reveal our real priorities, as well as our real prejudices. Our images of creation say a great deal about who we are." * A "philosophical and theological elaboration of the primal myth of creation within a religious community. The term myth here refers to the imaginative expression in narrative form of what is experienced or apprehended as basic reality … The term creation refers to the beginning of things, whether by the will and act of a transcendent being, by emanation from some ultimate source, or in any other way."〔(creation myth ), ''Enyclopædia Britannica'' (2009)〕 Religion professor Mircea Eliade defined the word ''myth'' in terms of creation:
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