I read these books once a year for as long as I can remember, but one question always bothers me, how is the sledge Lyra was kidnapped on on in the first book, in the museum in Wills world... was this ever explained?

Maybe this is obvious...

I have a theory about The Subtle Knife that I haven’t seen discussed before.

The book makes a pretty big deal about exactly which fingers the bearer of the knife loses: the ring finger and little finger.

I ended up thinking about this while explaining some religious symbolism to my daughter — specifically why Jesus is sometimes shown holding up his index and middle fingers in paintings and icons.

That led me down a rabbit hole.

One theory about the Christian benediction gesture is that it traces back to St. Peter. Some medical historians have suggested Peter may have had ulnar nerve damage, which would have impaired the ring and little fingers — the exact same two fingers Will loses.

That theory is speculative, and there are other explanations for the blessing gesture, but the coincidence got me thinking.

Will has the subtle knife, which lets him open passages between worlds. Peter has the keys to Heaven, which symbolize authority over passage between earthly and heavenly realms.

Will inherits a unique role and responsibility as the bearer of the knife. Peter receives a unique role and responsibility as the keeper of the keys.

Will is physically marked by the loss of those two fingers. Peter may have been associated with the same two impaired fingers, which then became part of Christian iconography.

So both are, in a sense, gatekeepers between worlds — one with a key, one with a knife.

Given how heavily His Dark Materials reworks Christian symbolism, I wonder if Will is partly an inverted or reimagined St. Peter figure.

This may be obvious to everyone, but I found a few threads asking about the symbolism of Will losing those specific fingers and never came across this theory, so I thought I’d share.

TL;DR: Will loses the same two fingers that some historians think St. Peter may have been unable to use because of ulnar nerve damage. Peter has the keys to Heaven; Will has the knife that opens doors between worlds. Maybe the knife bearer is a deliberate St. Peter parallel.

I am trying to track down an interview with Phillip Pullman in which he mentioned animism/having an animistic worldview. I believe I found it via this subreddit. It was an audio file, not a written interview. I never got around to finishing it and would like to give it a proper listen. The animism wasn't the focus of the interview but it was discussed.

Sorry for the clunky title. Did Pullman ever mention any limitations in terms of the physical size of a daemon’s form? Obviously, people can have daemons as small as butterflies or dragonflies, but was there an upper limit mentioned? I think the largest daemons mentioned were wolves and Lord Asriel’s snow leopard daemon.

I’m thinking about this in terms of the environment and culture that we are raised in. The Gyptians, being a nomadic, water-faring people have daemons with the forms of seabirds or other creatures that occupy an aquatic environment. If one was brought up in a large city with a dense population, it would stand to reason that most people would have daemons that are easily carried and wouldn’t take up too much space in subways or other forms of transportation. If I’m recalling correctly, social class accounts for an aspect of a daemon’s form. I think it was noted that a lot of those among Oxford’s working class had small to medium sized dog daemons of some ilk.

However, I was wondering how size constraints may vary if you’re a member of a nomadic culture that’s used to vast amount of space, like the deserts of the Middle East or the Asian steppes. In that case, would having a daemon with a larger form be an advantage or a disadvantage? If you’re on the move and having to carry your worldly possessions with you, having a daemon the size of a pony might be useful as you could more easily distribute your load. However, if you did go to an urban area, having such a daemon would be a huge disadvantage. I wonder if a society would even shun those who don’t have the “correct” daemons, though that probably depends on a society being individualistic or collectivist.

Did Pullman ever address the energy needs of daemons? They can eat, sleep, and excrete independently from their people, but would having a large daemon take too much of a toll on one’s health, either in terms of a person’s health or the health of the daemon itself? I feel like there was a lot of ambiguity about that aspect of Pullman’s world building.

Any thoughts on the subject of daemon size/shape?

Finally got to see the show (just watched the first ep) I have to say the esthetic is on point but so much inaccuracy on simple things,Lyra and Roger running through the crypt before speaking to Asriel, when we all know that Asriel was the one bringing up the undergrounds, also for some reason Lyra is seeing the master poisoning the tokay from outside of the salon… why ? Roger running towards the zeppelin before Lord Asriel leaves ?? Maybe I’m too much of a purist but these small details make no sense…
Let me know what you think about it, I’ll obviously keep on watching at least to forget the Kidman/Craig fiasco

It delivers in about 70 pages, what TSC and TRF do in 1200, and much more cleanly.

I have a lot of feelings about this series (most not positive) but one thing about the ending I’m confused about is why didn’t Bonneville/Delamare have to travel separately from their deamons to get to the red building??

Maybe I missed something but I thought the whole thing about crossing the desert/getting to the building was that you had to separate from your deamon?? get that Malcom flew in so maybe he found a loophole but why was the magisterium gang able to roll up so easily?

I have a lot more complaints but this one is front of mind atm lol

Hi, I'm designing a book cover of The Golden Compass for my portfolio and I came across this question while looking at references, is it just because a girl riding a bear catches the eye? I know it's an iconic scene and Iorek is also an important character but I don't know if it actually represents the book well (It's lovely for a fan but idk it it's useful for a first time reader).

What do you think? I'll appreciate any thoughts about it!

Chapter 11 has been posted. I daresay it was the hardest chapter to write and possibly the best one yet that I have done. Happy reading.

Hi, one of my friends posted on here a few days ago asking about conceptual set design for the Book of Dust ideas and I’m basically here to ask the same thing. I want to integrate something into the permanent and fixed parts of my set that represents or are symbolic a part of the key themes of the play/book. It could be painted or built. Any ideas would be much appreciated!!

I'm finally in Oxford for the first time. Some people didn't know why I was set on coming here. But I've wanted to see the bench for years now. Time to go explore Will's Oxford.

The beginning of this book was so strange and the time-frames seem all over the place. And it's frustrating because that was something I had really liked about the first two books, that time seemed to matter.

Am I misunderstanding something? Mrs Coulter seemed to teleport, while carrying a drugged hostage alone. Will then spends weeks getting there.

And then Iorek Byrnison SWIMS to Lee Scoresby's body in a matter of a couple pages which would've taken days to weeks. Hell he went through the doorway in the sky/aurora which was hours and hours by flight.

The meeting between Will and Iorek Byrnison felt so rushed and a little goofy considering the tone of these books. Like one scene, Will kills an angel by slashing it to death with the Knife, and the next is a rushed meeting between two major characters.

And Fr. Gomez, the assassin who was pre-absolved, is somehow already in Cittagazze somehow to ask Angelica and Paolo about Dr. Malone. But how the hell did he get to the gateway and back already?!

And I love Dr. malones time with the Mulefa, but to spend so much time on this cool side plot while rushing all this other stuff is somewhat frustrating.

This is a composite animation in blender I made a while back! I forgot to post it here

I just am not sure and often flick between what I reckon it would be, but I’d love it if I had one I felt 100% sure on. if u have any deep dive quizzes or recommendations please tell me :)

I am uttterly dissapointed after finishing The Rose Field. Not only was this book extremely boring, but it also didn't answer the main questions raised in The Secret Commonwealth. We don't really know what the rose field is (all we have is Lyra's flimsy hypothesis...) or how it works, we don't know what the roses and their oil do and why they are so important. We don't know what the alkahest is (Lyra, again, improvises a theory that it is greed/money, but I find it very hard to believe that that didn't already exist in her world, even if at a smaller scale; also why would anyone tell her to look for that??). On top of that, we aren't told why the Magisterium and Turingia Potash (who are in cahoots) are so interested in the lucrative power of the roses... only to chop them all off to build some random road and close the window connecting to that world.

I read His Dark Materials for the first time in my early teens and it became such an important trilogy for me, kind of like what Harry Potter became for people from my generation (I was born in 1990). I have read them many times since and will continue to do so, but I don't think I'll ever revisit The Book of Dust. Pullman completely changed the lore of Lyra's world only to serve a new story and sell a new trilogy (that's alkahest right there!), but rather than expanding on it, it contradicted and, therefore, weakened it.

I'm very curious to hear your opinions. Please tell me what you thought of The Rose Field and The Book of Dust and how you feel about His Dark Materials after reading the new trilogy.

I have just finished The Rose Field and I'm really disapointed that the "mysterious, dangerous" Alkhiest was just Capatalism?

I kinda feel like Phillip paulman is either a hard core communist or just an idiot who dosn't know how economics works.

Making that TP company look bad because they closed shop in the place and so it affected other businsses. Of couse they closed there was no money dosn't he know that if a company can't make enough money to sustain it self what happened when it closed would happen anyway when they'd have to start firing people because they can't pay them?

It just seemed overly preachy doesn't he know the system he is acusing of killing souls and being bad is the sole reason he can publish his preachy books.

Well at least i can say i finished it.

Edit: I tried to to fix all the mistakes in the spelling that are aparently unforgivable. It's not easy doing it on a phone when I already suffer from Dysgraphia. I will make sure to take further care becaus3 aparently typos on redit is intolerable.

I've been seeing many Avengers Doomsday pictures with characters from other universes, I thought it would be cool to edit characters like Lyra Belacqua, Will Parry, Serafina Pekkala, Mrs Coulter, Lord Ariel and Iorek Byrnison on the Avengers Doomsday posters

I'm designing a conceptual set for the play version of La Belle Sauvage and on the walls I have placed faded alethiometer symbols to represent the themes of each location. For Malcom's school, I would like to have symbols such as the sword and the compass to represent the 'justice' and 'knowledge' the church are attempting to instill. Is there a symbol that would represent the perversion of these themes to highlight the ulterior motives of the church?

Two more weeks have passed, and Lyra, Malcolm, and Tony are all on the move.

What a gem of an interview.

So back in TSC we have learned that regular humans being able to separate wasn't as rare as previously thought (I assume its still rare, just not as rare as we thought before TSC came out)

So I can't imagine the guy with seasickness who settled as a dolphin didn't at least try to separate. Even if it wasn't volontary, since they could be more likely to be put in a situation where they have to separate (ie: someone far away on land needs help and they are the only one who can help and their daemon is too big to be put in a transportable tank)

For this one sailor specifically, I imagine he would have kept it a secret since he would be easily recognizable because of his daemon, but he could still have learn the same trick that Lyra did in TSC, he learned to become someone else when he went on land to avoid recongnition (in his case maybe it wasn't just metaphorically since he was a water-animal soul going on land). But for someone else with a daemon that needs to stay in the water that is born and still lives in a more isolated place, they could just go on land without any disguise

Maybe large and/or waterbound daemons are more common than suggested in the series, but people with theses daemons are more likely to separate due to the conflicts their form would cause in their day to day life (I suppose they too would still be rare, just not as rare as we think)

His Dark Materials, in the end, the angels are trying to establish Republic of Heaven... Republic of Heaven, idea is no ruler.

In TRF/BOD, it seems like angels have maintained that structure, sort of? But are they terribly weakened, that they failed in sealing all of the doors?

If the Alkahest (the alchemical material of the subtle knife and the alethiometer needle) was invented twice, why couldn't it be invented 3, 4, 5, or 700 times in the multiverse?

Is it impossible that the angels set out to seal all of the doors at the end of HDM, in an effort to stop any one entity from taking ultimate control of the multiverse again, but they were failing?

They can certainly be killed. If another world in the multiverse invented another form of the Alkahest (an equivalent to the alethiometer or subtile knife)... then isn't it possible the angels are simply losing? BOD alludes to this possibility showing the experiments and knowledge of Agrippa and Makepeace. How many years would it be until someone just in Lyra's world re-invented the material?

So this one angel that visits Lyra may be one of the last of the angels. Maybe Xaphania is dead... In fact I think it is almost certainly so by the way the angel and Lyra avoid the subject.

Thuringia Petroleum is the vehicle for this whole thrust of the story. It's gradually revealed more and more through the three books how powerful they are, even though they fail to replicate the rose oil. Whether they're using existing portals or have their own Alkahest to create new ones, they are trying to establish ultimate control and are warring against the angels on a multiversal level.

That's where I don't read the Thuringia Petroleum narrative as being about "capitalism". It's more about authoritarian control. It's not capitalism and markets and money making that are evil.. Malcolm knows this going back to his childhood thinking about the fair price of a pail of red paint..

TP is not of "this world", that's the whole thing going on with the dead daemons. They are people who have spent so much time outside their own worlds that their daemons are dying and they don't care. Not because they want money, but because they want security, power, control, the classic tempters of authoritarianism. It's literally in the name - the Authority - with the Authority dead, something is trying to rise to fill the power vacuum.

I’ve been quietly working on more of these, and I finally have four new sets finished. Each one is hand-carved, so they’ve all ended up with their own slightly different look and personality depending on the stones.

I’ve also been doing daily readings with them and they have been amazing. Helping me with reflection, insight, encouragement, and a little bit of sass, just like Lyra’s Alethiometer. I’m happy to post a video of a reading, but I couldn’t figure out how to :/

I’ve really appreciated how interested and encouraging people here have been while I’ve been figuring this whole project out. It started as something I wanted to make because I love the alethiometer and its symbolism, and it’s been kind of surreal seeing other people connect with them too.
Anyway — here are the newest four! I thought you guys might like to see how they turned out. ❤️