Myths are truth spoken of by allegory, metaphor, and symbolism. Myths are illustrations of spiritual principles. They are not the principles themselves. They were created by those who had an insight to demonstrate those principles which such people already had some understanding of, not to become dogma themselves.
I prefer to take the tack that what is, is. I enjoy reading the myths and folklore, but if they do not sync with my actual spiritual experiences well then, I am going to take my own personal experiences over anything else, because the sun is right there and it's the sun, and the ground is right here beneath my feet and it is what is.
I think the Gaelic and Brythonic myths of my ancestors as we have them are valuable, but I would never trust them enough to believe that they are automatically more correct than my own personal experiences, especially considering that they were still written down by Christian monks, and although the Bible is at least 1700 years old, I think it is pretty much wrong on most things of consequence to me, so appeals to written authority don't really hold as much weight with me.
I would rather study the myths of my ancestors, but translate into modern English words every thing or being my experience by using modern English to create epithets, etc. If I feel that my experience of a being coincides with the mythological descriptions of particular deities, etc. then great.
I think if more people would actually translate the names of the gods as much as possible into modern English so that we can really understand what the epithet meant, and use that modern English phrase instead of the deity's "name", then we might come to a better understanding of what our ancestors thought about them, because they were not for the most part using foreign language to describe their deities. They were using the everyday language that they intimately understood and were raised with. I certainly agree with the value of studying Celtic languages, I study Finnish, Norwegian, Old Norse, Old English, Welsh and Scottish Gaelic myself and have even studied at Sabhal Mor Ostaig, but we should never forget that it was our ancestors' actual experience with their own present that we are reading about. As a language teacher I can tell you it certainly can get in the way, especially a foreign and romanticized one.
Some may wonder what happens when one's personal experience is at great odds with a detail of the myths, and I suppose the answer would be complex and would depend on the specific discrepancy and it's degree, whether or not the discrepancy were covered by another related people to show a possible other interpretation that existed but didn't get attested, whether we know enough about that topic that there is absolutely no debate at all among scholars of the subject for there to be a "correct" interpretation or answer, etc. I think though, that the fact that learned scholars can't agree on some things means in and of itself that no one view can be authoritative regarding those topics, and in a way would make every belief a kind of personally favored myth-inspired UPG.
The Celtic and Germanic tribes are but two groups of many tribes descended from whom scholars typically name the Indo-Europeans and that their language, which all European languages but four descend from, is called by them Proto-Indo-European, and that many deity names are co-arisen from common PIE root names. I fully agree that different peoples came to understand the gods in their own unique ways, but no matter how long the centuries and the miles and the language slang innovations that turned into dialects and then separate languages, the sun each generation looked upon was the same, and they only ever taught their children a combination of what their parents taught them coupled with their own experience.
I also try to think about the individual and small community life experiences back then. I don't think most people's considerations of the gods extended beyond their experienced world.
If they had a concept of a deity that was everywhere and represented a certain set of powers, experiences, or what-have-you's, and they moved to a new area already populated, did that god come with them? Are they more intuitive than the indigenous population to detect a deity that was already there that the indigenous inhabitants didn't notice? Would they have said "oh, you call her that? Well, we call him this"?
If they moved to an area where there used to be a people who worshipped a certain deity, but those people were long gone without a trace, would that deity cease to exist because the new people worshipped their version or whatever instead? Would they intuit that god there as different even though each culture considered their own deity present everywhere they were and used different names?
I'm one who believes there are many gods, but only so many, not a soft polytheist who believes that all gods are one god, and not a hard polytheist who believes that every mention of every single god name*has* to represent a completely separate being. You might say that I am an "al dente" polytheist, just soft enough, just hard enough, for my taste anyway. I think all things have their individual spirit, but that the gods are omnipresent in all things in the way that they are, that there is no part of anything that is not "of the gods".
I'm not 100% pure hard polytheist because then I'd have internal conflict trying to decide if Odin only created the first Germanic people while Zeus and Prometheus made the first Greeks. That's why I say that my experience weighs just as heavily for me as the myths, because for me the gods are so much more vast than any people in any time could have defined completely. The All Father is the All Father, not the Some Father.
If the creation myths can be assumed to be metaphorical without specifically telling us so, then how is it so easy to say that all people aren't talking about the same great powers as manifested through their own story telling and understanding? Why would we feel free to take the myths as definitively saying that all the father gods of all the pantheons are different beings, but then be wary of taking the rest too literally? In my opinion, it is simply better to take it all as metaphor, speaking a truth symbolically, rather than literally.
I am the same person, acting always from my same core, and yet my wife and my mother know me differently by the very nature of my interaction with them and their perception of my actions. If they didn't know each other, and described me to each other in the checkout line, would they possibly think they were talking about different people who happened to have *some* commonalities?
Myths are the lived experiences of a spiritual reality, not an objective observation of a spiritually lifeless universe.
Myths may be the bricks and tiles comprising the walls and roof, the shape of which define a way or culture, but the principles that inform those myths are the same ground and foundation for everyone, and from which everything is born equally.
