The final authority on daemons, of course, is Pullman and he never really does explain. In any event, the word is Greek and Socrates (cited by Plato and Xenophon) used it when speaking of an advising spirit which had an animal form. But the idea probably owes a great deal to Jung's anima/animus (I just looked it up). Jung used this pair of terms to describe a kind of gateway to the collective human unconscious, an image of an idealized soul; always of the opposite sex as the person themself. My sense is that touching a daemon is undue intimacy in most circumstances. Hence, Mrs. Coulter's (I have to keep reminding myself not to write Ann Coulter) daemon has a form with hands; Mrs. Coulter is manipulative person (Pullman is very fond of bitch-mothers as characters; they occur in other books of his.) BTW, Lord Asriel's name is probably a reference to Azrael, who is the angel of death in Judaism and Islam, but it's also a biblical name, though not commonly given by English-speakers.
BTW, there was not a single papal inquisition, and not all inquisitions were as horrible as the Spanish. There were secular elements in the Spanish Inquisition and anti-Catholicism plays some role in the various inquisitions's reputation; Protestant countries also had brutal religious repression in those times, but this is often glossed over in predominantly Protestant countries like the USA.
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Date: 2007-12-17 03:28 am (UTC)The final authority on daemons, of course, is Pullman and he never really does explain. In any event, the word is Greek and Socrates (cited by Plato and Xenophon) used it when speaking of an advising spirit which had an animal form. But the idea probably owes a great deal to Jung's anima/animus (I just looked it up). Jung used this pair of terms to describe a kind of gateway to the collective human unconscious, an image of an idealized soul; always of the opposite sex as the person themself. My sense is that touching a daemon is undue intimacy in most circumstances. Hence, Mrs. Coulter's (I have to keep reminding myself not to write Ann Coulter) daemon has a form with hands; Mrs. Coulter is manipulative person (Pullman is very fond of bitch-mothers as characters; they occur in other books of his.) BTW, Lord Asriel's name is probably a reference to Azrael, who is the angel of death in Judaism and Islam, but it's also a biblical name, though not commonly given by English-speakers.
BTW, there was not a single papal inquisition, and not all inquisitions were as horrible as the Spanish. There were secular elements in the Spanish Inquisition and anti-Catholicism plays some role in the various inquisitions's reputation; Protestant countries also had brutal religious repression in those times, but this is often glossed over in predominantly Protestant countries like the USA.