Dæmon (His Dark Materials) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

A dæmon is a manifestation of a person's soul

Soul

A soul in certain spiritual, philosophical, and psychological traditions is the incorporeal essence of a person or living thing or object. Many philosophical and spiritual systems teach that humans have souls, and others teach that all living things and even inanimate objects have souls. The...

in the Philip Pullman

Philip Pullman

Philip Pullman CBE, FRSL is an English writer from Norwich. He is the best-selling author of several books, most notably his trilogy of fantasy novels, His Dark Materials, and his fictionalised biography of Jesus, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ...

trilogy His Dark Materials
His Dark Materials
His Dark Materials is a trilogy of fantasy novels by Philip Pullman comprising Northern Lights , The Subtle Knife , and The Amber Spyglass...

. Humans in every universe are said to have dæmons, although in some universes they are visible as entities physically separate from their humans, and take the form of animals, while in other universes they are not. Dæmons have human intelligence, are capable of human speech—regardless of the form they take—and usually behave in all respects as though they are independent of their humans. Prepubescent children's dæmons can change form voluntarily, almost instantly, to become any creature, real or imagined, although there is an upper limit to the physical size they can attain. At some point during their adolescence a person's dæmon undergoes what is called "settling", in some universes, an event in which that person's dæmon permanently, involuntarily assumes the form of the animal which the person most resembles in character. Dæmons and their humans are almost invariably not of the same gender.

Although humans are physically separate from their dæmons, they are metaphysically connected, and most human-dæmon pairs cannot bear to be distanced by more than several yards; Lyra Belacqua showed significant discomfort when her dæmon flew up to the second story window of a tower while she was standing outside the building in question for only a couple of seconds, and another character expressed surprise when a shaman's dæmon was able to travel at least forty feet away from him. Such separation, sometimes called "pulling", causes extreme pain, as well as severe mental and emotional trauma. It is revealed in The Amber Spyglass
The Amber Spyglass
The Amber Spyglass is the third and final novel in the His Dark Materials series, written by English author Philip Pullman, and published in 2000....

that a person can achieve the lasting ability to separate painlessly from his or her dæmon by undergoing an initial voluntary separation over an implied distance of miles. Ordinarily this tortuous process is undertaken only by witches and shamans.

Although they physically mimic animals perfectly, and, to an extent, exhibit the usual behaviors of the animals they resemble, dæmons are not true animals, and humans, dæmons, and true animals are usually able to distinguish them on sight. The faculty or quality that makes this possible is not explained in the books, but it is demonstrated extensively, and is reliable enough to allow humans to distinguish a bird-shaped dæmon from a flock of birds in flight.

Intentional contact between a person and another person's dæmon is a gross breach of etiquette, and is avoided under almost any circumstances, even in combat. However dæmons frequently interact with each in other in ways that mirror the behavior of their humans, such as fighting one another when their humans are fighting, or nuzzling one another when their humans embrace, and such contact between dæmons is unremarkable.

Form

In Lyra

Lyra Belacqua

Lyra Belacqua , also known as Lyra Silvertongue, is the heroine of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Lyra is a young girl who inhabits a universe parallel to our own...

's world, the soul is physically manifested in the form of an animal called a dæmon. It has a separate identity from its respective human, despite being an integral part of the person (i.e. they are one entity, in two bodies).

In our universe and others, the books suggest that dæmons are integrated with the person, without any external or physical form. They have a natural physical manifestation only in Lyra's universe and a select few others. Dæmons that are already physical, such as Lyra's dæmon Pantalaimon, remain external manifestations when they visit universes with normally-internal dæmons, such as our own universe. Typically dæmons and their humans remain conscious and sleep at the same times, although the dæmons of witches and shamans—as revealed in The Amber Spyglass—can remain awake while their humans sleep, and it is implied in Northern Lights that cedarwood

Cedarwood

Cedarwood may refer to:*Cedar wood products of several types of tree, as in Cedar *HMCS Cedarwood , a ship...

can have a soporific effect on dæmons that allows them to sleep even if their humans remain conscious.

"The worst breach of etiquette imaginable" is for a human to touch another person's dæmon; even in battle, it is said, most soldiers would never touch an enemy's dæmon, though exceptions can be made (such as between lovers). The physical handling of a dæmon causes vulnerability and weakness in the person whose dæmon is being touched; establishing the sexual implications of human/dæmon contact, Lyra Belacqua

Lyra Belacqua

Lyra Belacqua , also known as Lyra Silvertongue, is the heroine of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Lyra is a young girl who inhabits a universe parallel to our own...

feels violated when doctors manhandle her dæmon into a machine intended to separate them, and later experiences a flush when Pantalaimon licks Will Parry's injuries while in an Irish wolfhound form to comfort him due to Will lacking a dæmon of his own. However, dæmons can touch other dæmons freely; interactions between dæmons usually accentuate and illuminate the relationships between the characters, and have also been used as a means of passing information between humans without being overheard.

A child's dæmon has no fixed form, and may instantly change into other animal shapes according to whim and circumstance. This "shape-shifting" ability, and the fact that a dæmon disappears instantly upon its human's death, would seem to imply that dæmons are less than completely corporeal. However, their bodies are solid, and they can interact fully with people and objects in the material world. In Northern Lights
Northern Lights (novel)
Northern Lights, known as The Golden Compass in North America, is the first novel in English novelist Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy...

(titled The Golden Compass in the US) and The Amber Spyglass
The Amber Spyglass
The Amber Spyglass is the third and final novel in the His Dark Materials series, written by English author Philip Pullman, and published in 2000....

, it is noted that Pantalaimon has a heartbeat of his own.

As children resolve their mature personalities (at approximately the age of puberty

Puberty

Puberty is the process of physical changes by which a child's body matures into an adult body capable of reproduction, as initiated by hormonal signals from the brain to the gonads; the ovaries in a girl, the testes in a boy...

), their dæmons "settle" into a form which reflects the person's personality. For example, a human with a dog dæmon may tend to follow authority—in Northern Lights it is noted that all servants have dog dæmons (although a maid was noted with a hen dæmon)—and likewise all witches' dæmons take the form of a bird of some kind. A person with a cat dæmon may be very independent. There is no mention that some extraordinary change in personality might cause a dæmon's form to later change. At the beginning of the trilogy, Lord Asriel

Lord Asriel

Lord Asriel is a major character in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series and one of the main protagonists of Northern Lights.Asriel is a member of the English aristocracy in a parallel universe dominated by the Church...

claims that the act of settling triggers Dust

Dust (His Dark Materials)

Dust in Philip Pullman's trilogy of novels His Dark Materials is a mysterious cosmic particle that is integral to the plot. In Northern Lights, Lord Asriel reveals the origins of the term "Dust" to be from a passage from the slightly alternate version of the Bible in Lyra's World: "In the sweat of...

to begin to be attracted to the person.

A person's dæmon is usually of the opposite sex

Sex

In biology, sex is a process of combining and mixing genetic traits, often resulting in the specialization of organisms into a male or female variety . Sexual reproduction involves combining specialized cells to form offspring that inherit traits from both parents...

to its human; however, in some cases it may be the same sex as the person. Pullman has admitted that the reason for this is unknown even to himself, but has admitted that despite rumored speculation, it does not represent homosexuality

Homosexuality

Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...

, but might indicate some other sort of gift or quality, such as second sight

Second sight

Second sight is a form of extrasensory perception, the supposed power to perceive things that are not present to the senses, whereby a person perceives information, in the form of a vision, about future events before they happen , or about things or events at remote locations...

. The single reference to such individuals is in Northern Lights, where their rarity is established. Fans of the series speculate that a person with a dæmon of the same sex may be transgendered, which would account for their rarity.

Lifespan

It is uncertain when or how a dæmon is "born" or into what form they are "born". When a person dies, their dæmon fades away, like "atom

Atom

The atom is a basic unit of matter that consists of a dense central nucleus surrounded by a cloud of negatively charged electrons. The atomic nucleus contains a mix of positively charged protons and electrically neutral neutrons...

s of smoke." (The books do suggest that this is Dust

Dust (His Dark Materials)

, because Mr. Scoresby finds his dæmon's Dust after he turns into Dust himself.) Likewise, if a dæmon is killed—the death being described as the dæmon bursting into golden light, although the violent nature of the death described may have contributed to this—their human dies. The origin of a dæmon's name was not given in the books, but clarified by Philip Pullman as normally given by the parents' dæmons. As Will Parry came from our world, his dæmon had no name initially and was named Kirjava (a Finnish word, meaning mottled or many-coloured) by Serafina Pekkala when she first met the dæmon.

Separation

Generally, a person and his or her dæmon must stay within a short distance of each other. Forcibly separating a person from his or her dæmon causes unimaginable physical and emotional pain

Pain

Pain is an unpleasant sensation often caused by intense or damaging stimuli such as stubbing a toe, burning a finger, putting iodine on a cut, and bumping the "funny bone."...

for both entities, often leading to death; however, some cultures have mastered techniques that allow the dæmon to gain wider mobility. For example, witches, as well as humans who commit to becoming shamans, must endure grueling, ritualistic ordeals that involve leaving their dæmon for a time as they embark on a spiritual quest, crossing an area of death where nothing may grow or live and leaving the dæmon behind. After rejoining their dæmon they gain the ability to separate from them to a far greater extent than was previously possible. Both witches and shamans retain their intimate bond with their dæmon; the only change is in the distance they can travel apart from each other.

In the trilogy, a special guillotine

Guillotine

The guillotine is a device used for carrying out :executions by decapitation. It consists of a tall upright frame from which an angled blade is suspended. This blade is raised with a rope and then allowed to drop, severing the head from the body...

is used by the General Oblation Board to separate people from their dæmon without killing them (intercision

Intercision

Intercision is a type of fictional operation in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy that separates an individual from their dæmon. In effect, the operation separates the person from his or her soul, while leaving the person alive, though having the behavioral and cognitive characteristics...

). However, unlike the ordeals undergone by witches and human shamans, the guillotine violently and permanently severs the bond between person and dæmon, and drastically reduces the person's creativity, intelligence, and will: the adults that have gone through the process seem blank and lifeless, and their dæmons seem subdued and incurious. The General Oblation Board continually perfects the process through experimentation, but Lyra encounters at least one boy who could not bear living without his dæmon and dies. When she finds dæmons that have been separated from their people, the creatures are insubstantial and needy: they cluster desperately, ignoring the contact taboo. The separation process also releases a huge burst of energy, which was used by Lord Asriel

Lord Asriel

to create a bridge into the world containing Cittàgazze.

Ghosts and deaths

Aside from dæmons, all people possess a ghost which lives on after they die, and a death that leads their ghosts to the underworld. For those with external dæmons, the ghost appears to represent the part of the person which inhabited their own body (as opposed to their dæmon, which dissipates upon death). Ghosts have vague forms resembling what the person looked like in life. Deaths can only be seen by their counterparts in certain worlds, like dæmons. They appear as plain and unfeatured, but kindly, figures, who move closer and closer to their persons as the time of death approaches.

Lyra is confronted with her death when she and Will enter the underworld in an attempt to contact the ghost of Lyra's dead friend, Roger. Although the dæmon dissipates upon a person's death, the ghost is led away by their death and would become, at the time, trapped indefinitely in the underworld. Will and Lyra rectify this problem by creating a process by which the ghosts can escape. Once the ghosts exit out into the real world, they can disintegrate and rejoin with their dæmons, as disconnected atoms reuniting with the rest of the universe.

In other languages

In the Norwegian

Norwegian language

Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...

, Danish

Danish language

Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...

, Serbian

Serbian language

Serbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....

, Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

, Swedish

Swedish language

Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...

and Finnish

Finnish language

Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...

editions of His Dark Materials

His Dark Materials

His Dark Materials is a trilogy of fantasy novels by Philip Pullman comprising Northern Lights , The Subtle Knife , and The Amber Spyglass...

the word "dæmon" is changed to "daimon". In Icelandic, the name "fylgja

Fylgja

In Norse mythology, a fylgja is a supernatural being or creature which accompanies a person in connection to their fate or fortune...

" (lit. follower), in reference to familiar spirits of folk lores is used. In the Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

edition, the term "dæmon" is changed to "daimonion". The Portuguese

Portuguese language

Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...

translation of the books render the word as "génio" in reference to the familiar spirits in Greco-Roman mythology, although Brazilian new versions use "dimon" (the old edition, from before the film, uses "dæmon") . In the Hungarian

Hungarian language

Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....

edition, the term is rendered as daimón. In the Hebrew edition, the term is translated phonetically, apart for the mock-bible excerpts quoted in chapter 21 of The Golden Compass; there, the word used for dæmon is "er'el", meaning angle

Angle

In geometry, an angle is the figure formed by two rays sharing a common endpoint, called the vertex of the angle.Angles are usually presumed to be in a Euclidean plane with the circle taken for standard with regard to direction. In fact, an angle is frequently viewed as a measure of an circular arc...

, resembling the biblical Hebrew word for foreign gods - "elil" (literally meaning "small deity"). This reminisces the Greek Septuagint translation of the Old Testament

Old Testament

The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...

, in which the word "elil" was made "daimon".

Non-Fiction

Mary Malone is taught that, with practice, it is possible to see nonphysical manifestations of dæmons in our universe of people who do not even know they have one. The suggestion is that we all have dæmons, but we have not learned to recognize and display them. Some people however, 'see' their dæmon as a separate part of their own consciousness, and project and talk to their dæmon. Possibly in a similar way as in the book The Daemon Page

Concepts similar to that of the dæmon can be found in several cultures' belief systems, such as Fylgja

Fylgja

In Norse mythology, a fylgja is a supernatural being or creature which accompanies a person in connection to their fate or fortune...

from Norse mythology

Norse mythology

Norse mythology, a subset of Germanic mythology, is the overall term for the myths, legends and beliefs about supernatural beings of Norse pagans. It flourished prior to the Christianization of Scandinavia, during the Early Middle Ages, and passed into Nordic folklore, with some aspects surviving...

, Nagual

Nagual

In Mesoamerican folk religion, a Nagual or Nahual is a human being who has the power to magically turn him- or herself into an animal form: most commonly a donkey, turkey, or dog, but also other and more powerful animals such as the jaguar and puma.Such a Nagual is believed to use his powers for...

s and Tonals

Tonal (Mythology)

Tonal is a concept within the study of Mesoamerican religion, myth, folklore and anthropology. It refers to the belief found in many indigenous Mesoamerican cultures that a person upon being born acquires a close spiritual link to an animal, a link that lasts throughout the lives of both creatures...

from Aztec mythology

Aztec mythology

The aztec civilization recognized a polytheistic mythology, which contained the many deities and supernatural creatures from their religious beliefs. "orlando"- History :...

, aku-aku

Aku-Aku

Aku-Aku, the Secret of Easter Island is a 1958 book by Thor Heyerdahl that described his research at Rano Raraku and Anakena on the many giant stone statues or moai found on Easter Island and the culture that created them....

from Easter Island

Easter Island

Easter Island is a Polynesian island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian triangle. A special territory of Chile that was annexed in 1888, Easter Island is famous for its 887 extant monumental statues, called moai, created by the early Rapanui people...

, and familiar spirit

Familiar spirit

In European folklore and folk-belief of the Medieval and Early Modern periods, familiar spirits were supernatural entities believed to assist witches and cunning folk in their practice of magic...

s from early modern English witchcraft

Witchcraft

Witchcraft, in historical, anthropological, religious, and mythological contexts, is the alleged use of supernatural or magical powers. A witch is a practitioner of witchcraft...

. Elsewhere, a parallel can be seen in the Jungian

Analytical psychology

Analytical psychology is the school of psychology originating from the ideas of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung. His theoretical orientation has been advanced by his students and other thinkers who followed in his tradition. Though they share similarities, analytical psychology is distinct from...

concept of the anima and animus. However, the most famous dæmon holder was Socrates

Socrates

Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...

, who claimed (metaphorically) that he could see and talk to it.

Dæmons in literature

Dæmon as a manifestation of a person's soul was described by American sci-fi writer C. L. Moore

C. L. Moore

Catherine Lucille Moore was an American science fiction and fantasy writer, as C. L. Moore. She was one of the first women to write in the genre, and paved the way for many other female writers in speculative fiction....

in a short story Dæmon (1946). Moore's dæmons were a human-shaped creatures of different colors, following a master wherever he/she goes. They were invisible for common people, but the protagonist, a boy with mental retardation

Mental retardation

Mental retardation is a generalized disorder appearing before adulthood, characterized by significantly impaired cognitive functioning and deficits in two or more adaptive behaviors...

, named Luis O'Bobo, was able to see other people's dæmons.

External links

Of Dæmons and Angels and Dæmonology, two Bridge to the Stars essays on dæmons

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