From Projection to Mythopoiesis: How Meaning Takes Root Across Orders of Reality

In the systemic functional model of meaning, we’ve now clarified that projection is a specific kind of symbolic act: a verbal, cognitive, or desiderative process that produces a metaphenomenon—a clause, or more broadly, a meaning, symbolising the content of consciousness.

But projection is only the beginning of a longer journey.

If projection is how symbolic consciousness generates meaning, mythopoiesis is how meaning—once projected—grows roots, branches out, and takes on new life within collective semiotic ecologies. It is the process by which meanings become not only memorable but narratable, transmissible, and foundational.

Let’s follow this path.

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1. From Projection to Instantiation

When a symbolic process (e.g. “They believed the world was ending”) projects a meaning (the world was ending), that projection exists as a semiotic phenomenon—not yet materialised in the world. But it can be instantiated in many ways:

• spoken aloud in protest,

• painted into a mural,

• encoded in a sacred text,

• ritualised in annual observances.

Instantiation is how projected meaning becomes an instance of semiotic or material expression—an artefact, performance, or utterance. But once instantiated, meaning doesn’t stop moving.

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2. From Instantiation to Reconstrual

As meanings are instantiated, they are also available to others. An utterance can be remembered. A story can be retold. A symbol can be reinterpreted.

This opens the door to reconstrual—the re-symbolisation of meaning in a new context, for new purposes.

• A prayer becomes a poem.

• A law becomes a parable.

• A diagnosis becomes a prophecy.

Reconstrual is how projected meanings evolve across time, traditions, and communities. It is not replication; it is transformation. The original projection becomes the seed of something new.

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3. From Reconstrual to Mythopoiesis

When reconstrual becomes culturally recursive—when projected meanings are repeatedly instantiated, re-instantiated, and reconstrued—they begin to form mythopoietic patterns: symbolic constellations that structure how a community or culture construes experience itself.

Mythopoiesis is the process by which projected meaning becomes:

• Foundational (it explains how things came to be),

• Formative (it shapes social relations and ethical obligations), and

• Future-oriented (it anticipates fulfilment, return, or redemption).

In this sense, myth is not the opposite of science, but a different reconstrual of meaning: one that draws its energy not from verification but from semiotic resonance, narrative potency, and cultural transmission.

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Summary Table: From Projection to Mythopoiesis

Phase	Process	Description
Projection	Symbolic processing	Consciousness generates semiotic phenomena (metaphenomena)
Instantiation	Realisation in context	Projected meanings are actualised as texts, artefacts, rituals
Reconstrual	Re-symbolisation	Instantiated meanings are re-construed for new purposes
Mythopoiesis	Cultural embedding	Reconstrual becomes a generative symbolic structure within collective life

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Meaning Across Orders of Reality

Each phase of this trajectory corresponds to an unfolding of meaning across what we’ve called orders of reality:

• The first-order: material experience,

• The second-order: symbolic construal (e.g. projected meanings),

• The third-order: collective symbolic formations (e.g. myths, rituals, theories).

Mythopoiesis, then, is not a step backward into illusion, but a step further into collective meaning-making. It is the cultural memory of projected meanings, sedimented in narrative form.