Modern people usually treat myths as primitive stories that have been replaced by science and history. That view is itself a symptom of the age.
In a Traditional perspective, myth is a language that can carry truths of a higher order. These are truths about the structure of reality, the possibilities of the human type, and the relationship between the visible and the invisible. A myth does not need to be historically accurate in the modern sense in order to be true in a deeper sense. Hyperborea, for example, is the name given in certain traditions to a primordial northern center associated with a pure solar and polar origin of Tradition. Whether or not it existed as a physical place is secondary. The image itself still carries meaning for a man capable of responding to it.
When we speak of the solar king, of the hero who ascends, or of the age of gold, we are dealing with images that can still awaken something. The loss of this way of understanding is one of the signs that the vertical dimension has been forgotten. You will be told that taking myth seriously is a regression. The people who say this usually treat the most recent opinions of their own age as the final measure of truth. That is a smaller and more provincial stance than they realize.
Myth is one of the tools Tradition used to transmit what discursive language often cannot. Learning to read it again is part of recovering orientation.