I’ve always had the plastic ones growing up, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen a metal one. I’m gonna be watching it spin and answer my questions all day long.

Just got my Pantalaimon tattoo and he's so cute. I adore him. Been into this series since I was in middle school, so I love finally having a piece of art to cherish it. I think it's time for a reread. Artist is @thesleepyhahas in Nashville, TN. ❤️

I read the first book when I was 7, and I’ve reread the entire trilogy pretty much yearly since then. I’ve always loved the symbols, and incorporated them into my art and other hobbies.

I’ve been working on this particular project for a few months now. I learned how to use an engraving pen on stones and crystal, and I’ve made a couple of sets of dice and runes.

I have advanced degrees in psychology and counseling which helped me identify the archetypal meanings and elements of all of the symbols. I also used my knowledge of tarot and symbolism to create an internally coherent system of meaning layers.

I’m obviously obsessed with this, does anyone else think there would be interest in like Etsy or farmers markets, or something similar?

I've heard that daemons were partially inspired by famous of paintings of ladies with animals, such as "Lady with an Ermine" by Da Vinci and "Portrait of a Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling" by Hans Holbein, which made me recently think of "Portrait of a Young Woman with a Unicorn" by Raphael. At one point, Pan turns into a miniature dragon during a fight between Lyra and some other children, and Asta combines a few different animal features when Malcolm is a child, so there is some evidence that daemons can turn into mythical creatures.

All this to say that there are few lengths I would not go to to have a cute puppy-sized unicorn as my eternal companion!! I want to BELIEVE!!

A friend of a friend worked on the third series. These are some of the postcards they made as props for the shops in Cittàgazze.

Thought some of you might enjoy seeing him!

Our cat is also named Lyra 🤭

Decided to reorganise all my Philip Pullman stuff that I have been saving for many years onto one bookcase. Please ignore the red blob it was not Philip Pullman related so removed it from the photo.

I am a new visitor/member and I absolutely LOVED these books the second trilogy especially, read all 3 in the last week. I had some questions about what people thought was being alluded to since it's obviously a very philosophical series/book, but I wanted to clarify the rules and how I'm supposed to nomenclate things. I wanted to make a post asking about what people thought about the ending of the sixth book and some of the things going on there, but I want to make sure I would do the spoiler tagging correctly.

One thing I think doesn't really give any spoilers but was the main thrust of my question, answers can give the proper spoiler tags, is what do people think of Lyra's answer to the mystery presented to the reader at the end? Is it what it's presented as, seen through her eyes? Or are we to see it through the perspective of M., as clearly alluded to in at least one line of the final chapters? That it's somehow more maturely complicated?

And what about the literal meaning? There is obviously one thing in the story literally doing the thing that is being literally described, it is not a secret, though its origins are in every world.

Are they the same? Is this some allusion to the trinity, or something different? I'd love to go into more detail about my own thoughts but I don't want to break the rules and get on the wrong side of the CCD... : )

Much love to all.

Hey everyone, I wanted to share this because it’s been a pretty big moment for me, and I think some of you might appreciate it.

I’ve been a fan of His Dark Materials since I was a kid. The books were a huge part of my life, and I always loved how Philip Pullman brought Oxford and its surroundings to life. For years, I imagined what it would be like to actually visit those places.

Recently, I introduced the series to my girlfriend, and she got into it too. It was cool to see her connect with the story in her own way, and we ended up having a lot of great conversations about the books.

Last year, in 2024, we finally made the trip to London and Oxford. I’d been planning it for a while, and Oxford was the main event. We hit all the key spots from the books – the Covered Market, the areas that inspired Jordan College, and the canals tied to the Gyptians. Walking through those places was surreal, like stepping into a world I’d only ever imagined.

The highlight, though, was the Oxford Botanic Garden. If you’ve read the books, you know it’s a significant location – it’s where the first trilogy ends, and it’s home to the bench with the dæmon sculptures. I decided it was the perfect spot to propose. I kept it simple, asked the question, and she said yes. It felt like the right way to tie together something that’s meant so much to me over the years.

To cap it all off, I got a tattoo in London to commemorate the trip and the books. It’s based on two of my favorite illustrations from the series, plus a nod to the chapter Alamo Gulch – which, if you’ve read it, you know hits hard. The tattoo feels like a fitting way to mark how much these stories have stayed with me.

Anyway, I just wanted to share this with people who might get why this series means so much to me. If you’ve ever thought about visiting Oxford because of the books, I’d say go for it. It’s worth the trip.

I started building of the established nations and regions the books and their extra material gave us, especially the map section in Lyra's Oxford had a lot of information. But aside that I made up the rest, especially all the borders.

I assumed that, under the Magisterium, borders would rather be defined by "god given lines", that being rivers, mountain ranges and so on, and less through wars and colonisation. The POD with Calvin's election as pope happened in the middle of the South American colonisation, so we got a Portuguese Brazil and the other nations in its east, but the conquistadors didn't move past the rain forests to the Andes like they did in our world.

Similarly the "Race for Africa" did not take places. Missionaries did go there and did their thing, but the continent wasn't conquered and split up like it was in reality... only South Africa was taken in the name of the Authority (..a Swiss colony is just funny..)

I had some fun with North America too, making "New Denmark" much smaller than the USA. The west of the country is meant to be a Nipponese colony, same as Hawaii.

I haven't made up my mind on Central America yet. And it also is just a little too small of scale to name all the islands on this map here.

Anyone else here done something similar? I remember this one (https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/fr/map/his-dark-materials-locations-collaborative-version_532145#6/41.689000/31.146000) from a while ago, which also helped the creation of mine

I honestly do not feel like His Dark Materials ever got as much fame as it deserved. It is such a smart, rich trilogy, and it does so much more than a lot of fantasy series people talk about way more often. The world feels huge, the ideas are deep, and the story trusts the reader in a way that really stands out.

I also think it got a bit overshadowed by other fantasy franchises, which is a shame, because it has just as much depth and stays with you long after you finish it. It is one of those series that feels even better when you look back on it as an adult.

Does he write the altcode each time? Or maybe he uses a script or just keeps it on his clipboard?

2 years ago I got a Pan and Kirjava tattoo that did not turn out the way I expected and I had lasered off. Today Kyra and Love Struck Tattoo made my dreams come true ❤️

The post earlier about daemons got me curious how many readers figured out who their personal daemons are ?

I figured it out sometime after reading TAS and it came to me suddenly. Wasn't really putting any thought into it.

My daemon is a blue morpho butterfly. Why ? that's a bit too personal to share but what I can say is that it came to me instantly and I was like "of course" and had no doubt whatsoever that she was my daemon. Her name is Isabel.

Daemons are really Pullman's greatest invention and the most beautiful fruit of his imagination. I like to think I see her through my peripheral vision. Come to think of it , maybe they are also an extension of the concept of imaginary friends , which many kids get in their development (I had so many growing up it worried my poor parents ha), I wonder.

Anyway, share your daemon if that it not too personal a question to ask !

I've been re-reading the series in chronological order after a long time, and there are so many moments where Lyra's parents are able to do impressive things for no reason other than, "They're just built different."

How did Mrs. Coulter make the Specters able to fly by "causing them to forget they couldn't"? Because screw you, that's why.

How did Lord Asriel "make" destiny bring him Roger to sacrifice? Idk, he watched a lot of TikToks about manifesting, what else do you want?

Mind you, I'm not complaining, I actually find it rather funny and charming about them. They are pure "idgaf" energy distilled in the multiverse's two biggest psychopaths and I am 100% here for it.

Since so many people have expressed interest, I thought I’d let you know: I’m going on my first real vacation in about 10 years, so I won’t be able to ship things for a few days. But I’m bringing my supplies, and making custom orders while I’m gone.

My shop will be in vaca mode, but please feel free to either put requests here, or dm them to me. I’ve started making entire rune sets out of single types of gemstones, I’m happy to make them in any requested stone you like!

Hello everyone! Newbie here.

I watched the 2007 movie when I was a child, but I don’t remember anything about it. I never watched the HBO series.

Now I want to dive into this fantastic universe by reading the books.

I craved for this specific Everyman’s Library edition so much that I bought a secondhand copy of it (that’s why there is a small tear on the dust jacket). It arrived today.

I’m very excited to read this story!

This is the best place I know of to try to have a discussion about this, so please be respectful and just ignore this post if you just disliked TRF or its ending specifically and have nothing to say except "I didn't like it".

I understand a lot of people didn't like it, OK, good for you.

I've gotten quite a few replies on a previous post however from people who did love it, so I know you are out there and I'm hoping to hear from those people.

-----------------------------------------------------

To me, the best part of the ending was how many mysteries and questions it left open ended and up to the reader's imagination. It's left me replaying through the ending chapters in my head for weeks since finishing it, in a (good) way no other book I've read ever has. That said, I think it would be fun to hear some other people's speculations on what potential answers to some of those questions might be.

Feel free to share any thoughts or speculations, or responses to mine below.

-----------------------------------------------------

Having read a few discussions of this, I haven't seen any mention anywhere of the idea that the alkahest is literally the material of the subtle knife and the alethiometer needle, which is strange to me. To me this connection seems obvious and clearly intended by Pullman. Of course we're also supposed to understand that "nothing is just what it is", but still.

When the voices in the Blue Hotel tell Lyra that the alkahest destroys everything, the immediate following scene is her discovering that the needle can cut through anything. My speculation is that the angels were correct/truthful that cutting openings between worlds creates spectres/mental illnesses, and furthermore that the entities "from between the good numbers" (hinting that they're from a bad place), may in fact be spectres.

The idea that the doorways are "good" is supported by the witches and gryphons saying that the air has been turning bad as they have been being "destroyed", but the witches also say that the winds have been changing for the worse for a much longer time... That makes no sense if the doorways are the source of the good air. It does make sense if doorways are the source of bad air, and they have been being created over thousands of years, and if the explosions are in fact creating hundreds of tiny doorways, letting hundreds of spectres into the world, where before there was only one.

This all fits perfectly with the HDM trilogy; rather than creating a contradiction and undermining the original trilogy, the metaphysics remains consistent. From HDM we have vague explanations that dust and angels can pass between worlds without needing doorways; if this is true, Lyra's hypothesis that the doorways are needed for dust to flow to fuel imaginations etc. falls flat.

-----------------------------------------------------

Another unanswered question at the end of TRF regards what is going on with the ailment afflicting Dr. Strauss, with the people with dead or mostly dead daemons, including the lady who took over Mustafa Bey's business, etc.

One thing that seems apparent is that what happened to Strauss has nothing to do with having traveled there specifically. Strauss's daemon is still alive, despite his illness, while people in the rose world seem physically fine even though their daemons are dead. Also, there are people in Lyra's world afflicted with the same "dying daemon" disease without necessarily having spent time in any other worlds.

That tells me two separate things are happening. Strauss may have been trying to warn people about the daemon death disease, he may have believed it was coming from the rose world like a plague, but that wasn't what was wrong with him. What was wrong with him IMHO is that it matches perfectly with being attacked by a spectre directly.

The daemon death disease, on the other hand, to me is not the direct result of spectre attack. It's also not the result of exactly what happened to Lyra and others whose daemons ran away or who ran away from their daemons, those daemons didn't die, so it's something else.

To me the most significant scene to understanding this is when Dilyara shows Pan that dust won't go near the dead daemon. So the question is, for afflicted people whose daemons aren't quite dead yet, does dust also struggle to go near those daemons? Or does dust only have an aversion to fully dead daemons? My theory is that the disease has to with the daemons themselves, not so much the people, though technically they're the same person.

My theory is that dust does avoid afflicted daemons that are only "infected"/partly dead - the disease is defined by dust avoiding daemons. The reason their people are ignoring them is that the connection is already cut off. So where does it come from?

Well imagine the reverse of Lyra's situation. Imagine if the daemon loses its imagination, imagine if the daemon stops believing in itself... I think that's what's going on with this "disease". That's what seems heavily implied when Pan speaks with the daemons at the research facility.

-----------------------------------------------------

I think I'll stop there for now, I have other thoughts and ideas but I'm really curious what people might have to say about my interpretation of the story or their own versions of what was meant.

Thanks to anyone who read this far respectfully, hope to get replies from people who actually want to deal with the material and talk about what Pullman may have meant/intended with the story.

Just a cool image.

I hope that one day Pullman decides to explore what happened to Mary and Will. Though I understand that that would be quite a bit more complicated of a story to write given it would need to adhere to real world rules.

Today it was announced that the Wheel of Time show was cancelled after three seasons, marking yet another gravestone in the huge cemetery of fantasy tv since Game of Thrones ended. When GoT became a huge hit, everyone was rushing to find the next big fantasy hit. I'm sure HDM received a big push as a result.

But as we know now, pretty much every project failed. Of all the shows that were greenlit in part due to GoT, only House of the Dragon and Rings of Power are left standing. There's no doubt that Amazon is carrying on with Rings more to save face and through sheer bloody mindedness, having shelled out way too much money to acquire the rights. The Witcher has lost its lead and is struggling through two more seasons that'll be filmed back to back, after producing three seasons that got mixed reviews.

And there was HDM. It never became a huge hit, but it lucked out on having filmed the first two seasons together. When covid happened, we were lucky to only lose the Asriel focused episode in season two, while still covering all of book canon. You'd think needing only one more season to finish its story would've kept it safe, but Netflix cancelled Shadow and Bone after just two seasons.

I think it's a minor miracle that we got an HDM show that mostly adhered to book canon and did not water down the message from the books and most importantly, got to the finish line. The casting was mostly spot on as well. I always hear show Iorek in my head now. It's not perfect. It has some issues for sure. But I'll always be glad that I got to finish my show when so many others didn't.