The only critical text which attempts to deal directly with the mythical roots of magical realism is Graciela Ricci's Realismo mágico y conciencia mítica en América Latina (Magical Realism and Mythic Consciousness in Latin America, 1983). Unlike Seymour Menton in his Historia verdadera del realismo mágico (True History of Magical Realism, 1998) she accepts both the ‘marvelousness’ which is alleged to be inherent in external reality and the marvelousness which derives from the act of perception on the part of a certain category of viewers. Following Carpentier, in his famous prologue to El reino de este mundo (The Kingdom of This World, 1949) she affirms that the elements which compose the former are especially prominent in Latin America. But it is the latter which is her main concern; for she contends that the particular form of perception which Carpentier includes under the heading of ‘fé’ (faith) is in fact a special form of insight ‘un tipo de conocimiento sapiencial’ (a kind of cognitive knowledge, p. 32), even a ‘percepción de la Realidad Nouménica’ (perception of Noumenal Reality; Ricci, p. 33). She goes on to assert that this special faculty is deeply rooted in the collective Latin American psyche and manifests itself most visibly in magical-realist narrative. We are left, then, with the notion of a culturespecific pattern of writing in which certain myths are used to bring forth hidden truths. This is simply affirmed as a mystique, that is, without proof, and should not be taken at face value. An inspection of magical-realist narrative reveals something quite different: the mythical elements incorporated into it are not normally there for any truths intrinsic to the myths themselves. On the contrary, they are devices employed by the writers in question to function as a relatively new and effective way of expressing their own attitudes and ideas. This is a crucial distinction.

Jorge Luis Borges

On this basis one would normally expect that the myths which the Latin American magical-realist authors make use of would be borrowed from specifically Latin American (presumably indigenous or popular) sources. But this is not always the case. Depending on how comprehensive a view of magical realism one chooses to take, there are really three kinds of myth which come into play: Classical, Christian and indigenous Latin American.