As the story progresses, we come to realize that a dæmon is not in fact the demon of the hellish nature as the name would imply (it’s the old English spelling of demon), but instead represents a human soul. Pullman uses his books to take a look at the different parts of a person- the body, the soul/ dæmon, and the ghost. A person cannot be complete without one of these parts, although they can survive without a dæmon, in the case of the zombies of Africa, and the deathless of the North. But they are not complete… they’ve had their souls taken away from them, ripped or cut away from them. This bond is so strong that when Asriel needed a source of energy to open the window to Cittagazze, he broke the connection between Roger and his dæmon.

To me, the scene on the dock in the Land of the Dead was one of the most powerful in the series. In it, Lyra forces herself to break that bond between her and Pan, in order to reach the land of the dead, where no dæmon can go. In her eyes she must sacrifice her own love for Pan in order to speak with Roger. If she hadn’t been willing to do this, then she and Will would never have been able to open the way out of the Land of the Dead, and everyone would be confined there forever. What drove her to do this? Surely she loved Pan much more than she loved Roger, and cared more for her own dæmon than for all the ghosts in the Land of the Dead. But she realized that while putting herself first would keep her happy, for a time, it would keep everyone else in sorrow and pain. These books are about sacrifice, and growing up- and this is one of the major cases. Without Lyra’s sacrifice, she and everyone else would have been confined in the Land of the Dead forever, never able to breath fresh air, to feel the warmth of the sun, or the cold burning of the distant stars on a clear night. Lyra the child would not have given up Pan- I know that. But Lyra the grown-up realized which was better in the end for everyone. And she was willing to do what was right, even though it hurt her deeply.

But what about Will? Or the two Gallivespians, for that matter? They all had to give up their dæmons too, but they didn’t know it at the time. They didn’t know they had daemons, for they couldn’t see them as Lyra could. But they felt the wrench “of an iron hand, tearing out their hearts” as they crossed that lake, they too had left something back on that poisoned and desolate shore with Pan. They were not whole without that part that they could not see, just as we would not be whole without our soul.

When Lyra was in the Land of the Dead, she and Will smiled at each other in a way that foreshadowed the Marzipan scene. But without Pan (and without Kirjava), neither knew what was happening. Neither knew that they were in love, since they did not have their souls to tell them so. The body is capable of sensing the world around it, the ghost is capable of learning about the world around it, but the soul is the only part capable of loving the world around it. Pan and Kirjava had not been back with Lyra and Will at the spring, but we know that they were near, and I think that they were near enough to help their people realize what was happening. Marzipan would have happened then and there, in the Land of the Dead, had Pan and Kirjava been present.

Pullman has said in many interviews and in the books themselves, that even people of our world have dæmons, although we can’t see them. And I should hope so, if the dæmon is to represent one’s soul. Pullman has also said that wishing to have a certain type of dæmon doesn’t work- who you want to be and who you are, are two different things. You can’t dictate your personality. Instead, you should ask your friends (and your enemies) what form they think your dæmon is. They are un-biased (unless you tell them what you want), and if they know you well enough they will be able to see what your nature is.

And then there’s angels. In the traditional sense, angels and dæmons are related, since they are opposites, but in these books there really isn’t anything that is the same. But what are Pullman’s angels, anyway? We know Balthamos and Baruch were once both men, so which part of them turned into angels? It wouldn’t seem that their bodies did, since they had no solid form. What about their ghosts? Well, if their ghosts survived, why didn’t they go to the land of the dead like everyone else? Here’s my humble proposition for what happened, in the absence of any sure information (perhaps it will be explained in the “Book of Dust”)

To form an angel, the dæmon and the ghost sort of merged together, the ghost refusing the go to the land of the dead, the dæmon refusing to disappear. They still existed, but with the body dead, they couldn’t really live on as normal. Instead they retain the ability of dæmons to take on different shapes, and to love, while retaining the abilities of the mind to think and reason.

Obviously some ghosts and dæmons would become stronger than others, since in life their souls loved more, and their minds thought more. These would become the greater angels, like the ones who served Asriel (and the Authority… we know that Metatron was at one time a man), while others had loved less and thought less, so they became the weaker angels like Baruch and Balthamos.

But what about the original angels, those like the Authority (and those who rebelled against him)? Well, perhaps when they had formed, the concept of the body had not yet come about… perhaps the cosmos had not yet formed worlds for a body to live on, nor the physical nourishment needed to sustain a body. So, the first angels were just ghost and dæmon, without ever having a body in the first place.

Again, that triangle of a being… the mind, the body, and the soul. In this case, the angels are at a disadvantage. While the parts of them that love and think are probably stronger, they lack the part that can physcially experience the world around them. Balthamos admits that Will is stronger, because he has a body. Angels serve Lord Asriel, not the other way around. In the end, I think Pullman again is saying in his subtle ways, that to truly experience the world, we must do so in a complete way. We must love, we must think, and we must sense. To truly be ourselves, we must live our lives to the fullest

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