MEMORIAL MYTHS AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF PRIMORDIAL MEMORY IN THE UNIVERSAL IMAGINARY
MEMORIAL MYTHS AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF PRIMORDIAL MEMORY IN THE UNIVERSAL IMAGINARY

Summary/Abstract: This study explores the category of memorial myths as fundamental structures within the universal mythological imaginary. If myth represents a foundational narrative form through which culture organizes its primordial experience, memorial myths preserve and transmit the symbolic memory of beginnings. They do not merely recount events situated in an indistinct archaic past, but articulate paradigmatic configurations that define the human condition in relation to divinity, nature, and cosmic order.Across major mythological traditions, the figure of the primordial human, the myth of the Golden Age, the initial revelation of love and self-knowledge, celestial conflicts, and cataclysmic events such as the Flood function as narrative matrices that encode collective experiences of rupture, transformation, and reconstruction. These myths conserve the memory of decisive existential thresholds: the passage from innocence to awareness, from harmony to conflict, from unity to differentiation.Rather than approaching these narratives as isolated motifs, the present analysis interprets them as interconnected expressions of an archetypal paradigm that structures cultural consciousness. By examining their symbolic logic and comparative recurrence, this paper argues that memorial myths constitute an archive of primordial memory that underlies subsequent mythological, religious, and literary developments. In this sense, they reveal not only how humanity imagined its beginnings, but also how it conceptualized loss, destiny, and the continuous effort to restore order within the world.

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