Trutharchivist

Hello and welcome to the outpost of Trutharchivist's Rambles! I'm writing here instead of my blog because I'm (supposedly) in the middle of writing a series of posts about the history of Judaism during the age of Enlightenment there, and I don't want to stop it. Anyway, let's jump to this week's topic: daemons.

First thing first: daemons and demons are two separate thing in this context - I'm talking about daemons from His Dark Materials, who are constant companions in animal form that can talk and are largely considered to be the physical presentation of a person's soul. They can also talk, and act as if separate from their respective human even though they are in actuality one entity.

More details about daemons: they usually are the oposite gender to their respective humans (or biological sex, it's not absolutely clear from the book), and touching them is considered a taboo and a horrible violation - since they are their human's soul. They can change shapes freely during their childhood, but they settle as one animal upon reaching puberty. They and their humans can't be too far apart - separating them causes them both pain, and severance - while possible - can cause death or lobotomization. Also, since I'm spoiling the book anyway, consensual daemon touching can be an act of love - like opening your soul up to someone. And now those of you who didn't read the book will wonder what happens in the books that those things are spoilers. Well, as they say... RAFO.

To return to the topic at hand: daemons. Or, more accurately, to close another tidbit. You see, in Northern Lights/the Golden Compass, the first book of His Dark Materials, the passages of Ancient Sin in the bible are presented as the myth of the first daemon settling - Eve's daemon, thus connecting daemon settling to eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. I already wrote a rant - albeit in Hebrew - about HDM and religion, if anyone wants I can try to translate it and publish it here too, but to make long story short - the books go against religions that suppress knowledge and life's joys. I don't believe Judaism as I know it is guilty of that, and it might just as well be Pullman (the series' author) crying out about dead grievances (and that was somewhat clumsy wording. Whoops. Hope it's fine). Still, I think there are some things to be said about this connection, and I think I'll mention one or two of them.

Is puberty a bad thing? A hard question, really. Pullman, obviously, sees it as a positive thing. If I remember correctly, he once said he set out to write a loss of innosence book as a good thing. To be quite fair, if your answer is that puberty is bad - well, it can be that you think that the process is not very good but the end result is good (though... Journey before Destination, people!), in which case all's well, but if you think adulthood and the loss of innosence is a tragedy - well, I'm sorry to tell you that 80% of your life are a tragedy. Not that I liked puberty that much, but it's a fact of life. Side note - please don't take offense at anything I'm saying - I'm writing in a storm of thought.

Anyway, whether or not you believe in the bible, chance are you have one of the three opinions I presented in relation to puberty. You could also have another opinion I guess - though I can't think of one right now. The first - Puberty is bad - is what Pullman pushes into the Bible. It's a possible interpretation - and certainly, just because Pullman thinks this idea is wrong doesn't make it wrong - but let's explain how one could see it differently. Say, those (theoretical) people who think the process of puberty as it stands is flawed - perhaps it is. Perhaps t puberty was supposed to happen anyway - but now that Adam and Eve ate the Tree of Knowledge's fruit it's not going as it should have. How it would've been different? ... Don't ask me, I'm just randomly rambling here. One interpretation I heard about the knowledge of good and evil is that originally they knew true and false (objectively) - what is and what is not, and that after eating the fruit they started thinking about things subjectively - good for me, bad for me. And what about those, like Pullman, who think puberty is the best thing that humanity was blessed with? Well, a possibility (that I'm pretty sure Pullman won't like) is that Adam and Eve just ate the fruit too early, and they were supposed to eat it at a later date. It still shows something about puberty problematic, but more as a technicality than as an essential part of it. This explanation comes from something a Jewish rabbi said about the problems that surfaced in Jewish education at the Age of Enlightenment - namely, many children leaving Judaism to become secular. And that's just something I'm not going to elaborate on more here. 

I don't think that the option "puberty and adulthood are bad" needs an elaboration on how it fits the way Pullman presents things - it's pretty straight forward. There could also be explanaitons on puberty and the Tree of Knoowledge not being connected at all, but I'm not sure I can think them out. Just as a clarification: puberty here doesn't necessarily refer to sexual puberty but to the entire collection of growing up and reaching adulthood and everything that ties into it. So, there might be a "take a fourth option" of parts of it are good, and parts of it are bad... Anyway, you can think it up, I've been rambling for too long anyway.

On another note, in relation to daemons and my interest in them - I have a small obsession to confess: I'm really interested in exploring my identity and personality. To this end, I looked into my MBTI personality type, Hogwarts (and Ilvermony) house, Patronus and... At some point I also reached daemons (oh, and there's this Brother Bear totem quiz. But that one was a while ago). Anyway, daemons seem to be a far better system than all those other ones, since the final form of one's daemon represents their personality, and... well... there are many, many types of animals in this world. This kind of narrows things down more than, say, four houses or sixteen personality types - also, someone should draw a correlation between them and the allomantic metals. Anyway, it sounds great in theory... Only this means it's also more complicated, so there aren't many good online quizes. That led me to the Daemon Forum... But that's a story for another day. All of this is why I take it to heart to explain how all that works.

There are more things to be said on it - like the relation between daemons and Dust (intentionally capitalized, a term from the books), and how that ties them to angels, but I've already wrote a really long ramble that I'm not sure how many people will take interest in, so I think I'll stop now. Also, if I had any idea in mind about something specific I wanted to say on the topic, I... kind of forgot it...

Anyway, thank you for reading, and have a good afternoon/evening/night/morning/day/whatever other thing you're at!