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A dæmon /ˈdiːmən/ is a type of fictional being in the Philip Pullman fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials. Dæmons are the external physical manifestation of a person's 'inner-self' that takes the form of an animal. Dæmons have human intelligence, are capable of human speech—regardless of the form they take—and usually behave as though they are independent of their humans. Pre-pubescent children's dæmons can change form voluntarily, almost instantaneously, to become any creature, real or imaginary. During their adolescence a person's dæmon undergoes "settling", an event in which that person's dæmon permanently and involuntarily assumes the form of the animal which the person most resembles in character. Dæmons and their humans are almost always of different genders.

Although dæmons mimic the appearance and behaviour of the animals they resemble perfectly, dæmons are not true animals, and humans, other dæmons, and true animals are 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 within a flock of birds in flight.

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's world, every human or witch has a dæmon which manifests itself as an animal. It is separate from, and outside its human, despite being an integral part of that person (i.e. they are one entity in two bodies).

Humans in every universe are said to have dæmons, although only in some universes are they visible, in our universe, the books suggest, dæmons are integrated within the person, with no external form. They have a naturally occurring physical manifestation only in Lyra's universe and some others. Dæmons that are already physical, such as Lyra's dæmon Pantalaimon, remain external even when they visit universes with normally-internal dæmons, such as our own universe. Typically dæmons and their humans are conscious or sleep at the same time as each other. However, 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 can have a soporific effect on dæmons that allows them to sleep even if their humans are awake.

"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, suggesting sexual implications of human-dæmon contact. Lyra Belacqua 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 can also be used as a means of passing information between humans without being overheard.

A child's dæmon has no fixed form, and may suddenly change into another animal's shape according to whim and circumstance. This "shape-shifting" ability, and the fact that a dæmon disappears instantly upon its human's death, implies that dæmons are not completely corporeal. However, their bodies are solid, and they can interact fully with people and objects in the material world. In Northern Lights (titled The Golden Compass in the US) and The Amber Spyglass, it is noted that Pantalaimon has a heartbeat of his own.

As children develop their mature personalities, (during puberty), 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 claims that the act of settling triggers Dust to begin to be attracted to the person.

A person's dæmon is usually of the opposite sex to its human; however, very occasionally, it may be the same sex as the person. Pullman has admitted that the reason for this is unknown even to himself, and has agreed that it may also indicate some other gift or quality, such as second sight, or that the person is homosexual, adding "There are plenty of things about my worlds I don’t know, and that’s one of them". The single reference to such individuals is in Northern Lights, where their rarity is established.

Mary Malone is taught that, with practice, it is possible to see non-physical manifestations of dæmons in her (our) universe of people who do not even know that they have them. The suggestion is that we all have dæmons, but we have not learned to recognize and display them.

Separation

Normally, a person and his or her dæmon must stay within a few yards of each other, Lyra Belacqua shows significant discomfort when her dæmon flies up to the second story window of a tower while she is standing outside the building. Another character expresses surprise when a shaman's dæmon is able to travel over forty feet from him. Such separation from one's dæmon - sometimes called "pulling" - causes extreme pain, as well as great distress for both human and dæmon and often leads to death.

It is revealed in The Amber Spyglass that a person can achieve the ability to separate painlessly from his or her dæmon by undergoing an initial voluntary separation which must be done at a specific place, for the witches this is at a canyon underneath the earth in Lyra's world. Shamans endure grueling ordeals that involve leaving their dæmon as they embark on a spiritual quest, crossing an area of death where nothing may grow or live. 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 regain their intimate bond with their dæmon, the only change is in the distance they can travel from each other. Lyra and Will achieve the ability to be distant from their dæmons by going through the World Of The Dead.

In the trilogy, a special guillotine is used by the General Oblation Board to separate people from their dæmon without killing them (intercision). However, unlike the ordeals undergone by witches and human shamans, the guillotine 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 a boy who could not bear living without his dæmon and who dies. When she finds dæmons that have been separated from their people, the creatures are insubstantial and needy: they cluster desperately, held back only by the contact taboo. The separation process also releases a huge burst of energy, which is used by Lord Asriel to create a bridge into the world containing Cittàgazze at the end of Northern Lights.

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 "atoms of smoke." (The books do suggest that this is Dust, because Mr. Scoresby finds his dæmon's Dust after he turns into Dust himself). Likewise, if a dæmon is killed, their human dies as well. 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 (meaning mottled in Finnish) by Serafina Pekkala when she first met the dæmon.

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. Ghosts have vague forms resembling the person when alive. Like dæmons, deaths can only be seen by their human counterparts in certain worlds. They appear as plain, un-featured, but kindly figures. They generally avoid being seen in order not to cause distress, and they move 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 become trapped indefinitely in the underworld. Will and Lyra rectify this by creating a process by which the ghosts can escape. Once the ghosts exit into the real world, they disintegrate and rejoin with their dæmons as disconnected atoms reuniting with the rest of the universe.

In other languages

In the Norwegian, Danish, Serbian, Italian, Swedish and Finnish editions of His Dark Materials the word "dæmon" is changed to "daimon". In Polish it is dajmon. In Icelandic, the name "fylgja" (lit. follower), in reference to familiar spirits of folk lores is used. In the Spanish edition, the term "dæmon" is changed to "daimonion". The Portuguese 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 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 Northern Lights; there, the word used for dæmon is "er'el", meaning angel, resembling the biblical Hebrew word for foreign gods - "elil" (literally meaning "small deity"). This reminisces the Greek Septuagint translation of the Old Testament, in which the word "elil" was made "daimon".

The use of the æ digraph or ligature (a and e rendered together as one letter) in dæmon is taken from Scandinavian languages such as Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian, but probably used because the Latin word for demon is daemon (which is pronounced somewhat like dæmon). The word "dæmon" is the Danish word for demon.

Dæmons in other literature

Dæmon as a manifestation of a person's soul was described by American sci-fi writer C. L. Moore in a short story Dæmon (1946). Moore's dæmons were 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, named Luis O'Bobo, was able to see other people's dæmons. Irish poet W. B Yeats developed the concept of poetic inspiration being the result of a conflict between the poet and his 'Daemon' (which he considered the disembodied spirits of the dead) in his works of occult speculation such as 'A Vision' (1925). Zoo City is a 2010 novel by Lauren Beukes in which certain characters are physically and metaphysically linked to animals in a similar way to Pullman's daemons.

See also

Concepts similar to that of the dæmon can be found in the belief systems of several cultures, such as Fylgja from Norse mythology, Naguals and Tonals from Aztec mythology, aku-aku from Easter Island, and familiar spirits from early modern English witchcraft. Elsewhere, a parallel can be seen in the Jungian concept of the anima and animus. However, the most famous dæmon holder was Socrates, who claimed that he could see and talk to his.

Similar concepts

• Aku-aku
• Anima and animus
• Daemon (classical mythology)
• Digimon
• Familiar spirit
• Fylgja
• Nagual
• Tonal (mythology)

General

• Agathodaemon
• Daemon (disambiguation)
• Totem

External links

• Philip Pullman Author's website
• HisDarkMaterials.com Publisher Random House's His Dark Materials website
• Scholastic: His Dark Materials UK publisher's website
• Randomhouse: His Dark Materials U.S. publisher's website
• BBC Radio 4's His Dark Materials site inc. Dictionary of His Dark Materials and web Q&A with Philip Pullman
• The then Archbishop of Canterbury and Philip Pullman in conversation at the National Theatre, from "The Daily Telegraph"
• BridgetotheStars.net Fansite for His Dark Materials and Philip Pullman
• HisDarkMaterials.org His Dark Materials fansite
• Cittagazze.com French His Dark Materials fansite
• Of Dæmons and Angels and Dæmonology, two Bridge to the Stars essays on dæmons

References and notes

1. Robert Butler (2007-12-03). "An Interview with Philip Pullman". Intelligent Life. Retrieved 2008-03-05.
2. Early editions of Northern Lights briefly mention that a deceased scholar's dæmon had the form of a "young woman". However, this was removed in later editions.
3. Interview at Lexicon (Unicon 2000)
4. The most detailed account in the books shows pulling to be torturous both physically—like "an iron hand pulling ones heart out between ones ribs" —and emotionally. To Will it felt as bad as if he had, within his mother's earshot, requested someone who was about to kill him "instead to kill his mother because he didn't love her". The Amber Spyglass, Chap. 21
5. Pullman, Philip (2007) . The Amber Spyglass. His Dark Materials. New York: Random House, Inc. p. 423. ISBN 978-0-440-23815-7. There's a region of our north land, a desolate, abominable place... No dæmons can enter it. To become a witch, a girl must cross it alone and leave her dæmon behind. You know the suffering they must undergo. But having done it... can roam free, and go to far places.
6. IRC interview of Philip Pullman by the BBC

v t e Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials and The Book of Dust
His Dark Materials	Northern Lights The Subtle Knife The Amber Spyglass
The Book of Dust	La Belle Sauvage The Secret Commonwealth
Companion books	Lyra's Oxford Once Upon a Time in the North Serpentine
Characters	Lyra Belacqua Will Parry Lord Asriel Mrs. Coulter
Adaptations	His Dark Materials (stage play) The Golden Compass (film) The Golden Compass (video game) His Dark Materials (television series) La Belle Sauvage (stage play)
Other	Locations Races Dust Dæmons
Category

• His Dark Materials
• Fictional shapeshifters
• Characters in British novels of the 20th century
• Characters in British novels of the 21st century