From Projection to Mythopoiesis: Genesis and the Making of Meaning

One of the clearest ways to understand the journey from symbolic processing to mythopoiesis is to trace it through the opening lines of Genesis: "In the beginning, God said, 'Let there be light.'" Here we can see in distilled form the full arc of semogenesis, from projection to co-instantiation, reconstrual, and finally, mythopoiesis.

In Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), projection refers to a logico-semantic relation in which a verbal, cognitive, or desiderative process symbolically enacts another meaning. A verbal process such as "God said" projects a locution: "Let there be light." This clause, then, is not merely a report of action but an instance of symbolic consciousness—a symbolic act that enacts a world.

Through instantiation, this symbolic act becomes an actualised meaning instance. It enters the cultural record—first orally, then textually, ritually, visually. It is read aloud in worship, illustrated in sacred art, memorised in childhood, inscribed in the psyche of traditions. This meaning instance is not simply expressed once, but becomes co-instantiated across generations and situations, each time drawing anew on the meaning potential of the tradition.

Over time, these repeated instantiations invite reconstrual. Readers and listeners reinterpret the phrase according to their historical, cosmological, or personal contexts. The light becomes metaphorical (knowledge, wisdom), ethical (goodness, truth), or scientific (the origin of the cosmos). Each reconstrual expands the interpretive space of the text, allowing it to inhabit multiple orders of reality.

Eventually, this process results in mythopoiesis: the symbolic act becomes foundational to a worldview. It transcends its textual status to structure entire domains of thought, identity, and experience. "Let there be light" is no longer just a projected clause—it becomes the beginning of time, of language, of order. It frames not only a cosmology but also a semiotic ecology: a way of making meaning in which divine speech is the creative force of the world.

In this trajectory, we see that myth is not the opposite of reason but its semiotic ancestor. Mythopoiesis is not a regression from science or philosophy, but a mode of meaning-making in which projected symbolic consciousness becomes co-instantiated across bodies, generations, and systems of value. Through projection, instantiation, reconstrual, and co-instantiation, meaning becomes myth.