Golden Age myths may operate on multiple levels at once:
- memory of primordial divine reality;
- memory of pre-catastrophe culture;
- memory of childhood consciousness;
- archetypal nostalgia for lost wholeness;
- actual cultural memory of earlier social orders.
Thus Zep Tepi, Eden, Satya Yuga, Hyperborea, Arcadia, etc. need not all refer to one literal historical event.
They can be different historical and mythic reflections of one deep Pattern:
We came from a world nearer to the gods, and something was lost.