The Republic of Heaven

it occured to me the other day that if you can hold your damon, why cant you ride on your daemon?

you know? why doesn't pan turn into a horse and let lyra ride on him, that would have saved them a lot of time in the book.
Just thought I would see if anyone had any thoughts about it.

I often thought about this too. I think for plot purposes, daemons just never turn into anything useful. Whether they can and we just never see it I don't know, but I can't see why they shouldn't be able to turn into something like a horse or an elephant. An elephant would be the best, you could have awesome water fights.

Lyra is a small kid, and we never see her daemon turn into anything larger than a dog. Asriel, on the other hand, is a huge, powerful man, and his daemon is an enormous leopard. Even his servant Thorold gets a large dog of some description.
So I think that the size of your daemon is limited by your size (whether physical or metaphorical I'm not sure). Perhaps nobody is big enough to ever have a horse, elephant or blue whale daemon?

moonflash wrote:So I think that the size of your dæmon is limited by your size (whether physical or metaphorical I'm not sure).

Yes, I can't remember where this discussion came up before, but I think we ended up deciding that your daemon is influenced by your size and your needs, like Lyra needs an animal that can hide, but also by your social position and your native surroundings (like Ogunwe has a cheetah and the sailor has a dolphin). So it might be that if you were a rather arrogant Indian Maharajah, you could have an elephant.

I expect that if you were an adventurous wrangler, born and bred on a cattle farm or in the Old West, you could have a horse daemon.

And having a settled dæmon of that size would surely be impractical?

To extend the question - can your daemon be used for any practical purpose?

The answer to that is partly yes, in that witches' daemons can act act as spies and communicators, but otherwise? Suggestions are welcome.

(I did once half-jokingly suggest that the possessor of a horse-daemon could use it to pull his hackney carriage (and save on the costs of feed and stabling) but that the cabbies' trades unions would forbid it as constituting unfair competition...)

AUST wrote:And having a settled dæmon of that size would surely be impractical?

There is a reference to dolphin dæmons in NL. Very impractical - the person more-or-less has to spend life at sea, and because of the distance limitation presumably can't be a deckhand on a big ship.

Mockingbird wrote:

moonflash wrote:So I think that the size of your dæmon is limited by your size (whether physical or metaphorical I'm not sure).

Yes, I can't remember where this discussion came up before, but I think we ended up deciding that your dæmon is influenced by your size and your needs, like Lyra needs an animal that can hide, but also by your social position and your native surroundings (like Ogunwe has a cheetah and the sailor has a dolphin). So it might be that if you were a rather arrogant Indian Maharajah, you could have an elephant.

I expect that if you were an adventurous wrangler, born and bred on a cattle farm or in the Old West, you could have a horse dæmon.

I believe it is entirely possible to have a 'steed' daemon, but I feel that it could be entirely inconvienient.
You could definately ride a dolphin, if you really tried. That would be an odd sight to see.
Perhaps, like touching another's daemon, there lies a taboo that prevents anyone from riding their own daemon because it might breach the divide between soulmate and 'pet'. Maybe it is a huge act of disrespect or demoralization. As they say, a cat would look at a daemon and see a person. Being lowered to the status of a common pet or work animal could be outright scandalous.

Blossom wrote:I often thought about this too. I think for plot purposes, daemons just never turn into anything useful. Whether they can and we just never see it I don't know, but I can't see why they shouldn't be able to turn into something like a horse or an elephant. An elephant would be the best, you could have awesome water fights.

I thought about this before and it made me laugh.

By my luck, I probably would be stuck with something like an elephant. As much as I love them, and how amazing it would be to have a royal daemon steed, it would just be entirely inconvenient. Imagine, you wouldn't be able to go to any social places, ride any transportation, visit any house, LIVE in a house if you had an elephant daemon.
Perhaps someone who is just asking for social rejection and isolation would end up in such a situation.

On that note, I think a great blue whale daemon would set the record for 'Most Inconvienient daemon."

LOL, this brings back memories.

I made a thread about this a few years ago, actually. It said, like, "If Pan could turn into a horse, do you think Lyra rode him around?"

For some reason, everyone told me I was an idiot and the entire thread got deleted. It's a legit question...

You almost can't help wondering what your own daemon would be, once you've read these books. (Yeah, yeah. They're just books. But a new world is always fun to visit in your mind.) And I think that Philip Pullman was using the daemons as an allegory for something that's real in every person: the Jungian inner self. Anima for a man; animus for a woman.

I found the odd thing: as much as I tried, I couldn't give myself the daemon I really wanted, which was a hare. It just didn't work. But what did come up was...a raccoon.

Now, I'm not really a big raccoon fan. But something inside me said that a raccoon would be my daemon, and that's all there was to it. Too bad, so sad. Nothing practical or particularly admirable. Just a musky, fuzzy bandit who compulsively washes his food, and is pretty good at solving problems.

Doing the same for my husband, it came to me that his would be a Great Blue Heron. I never thought of him that way, but that's what came when I drowsily imagined it. And it works completely for his personality.

That's what I found works best for imagining daemons: open and empty your mind to find them, and concentrate on what the person is like. Your daemon isn't going to be something you want it to be, nor anything practical.

The daemon is who you are.

TianNing wrote:But what did come up was...a raccoon.

Now, I'm not really a big raccoon fan. But something inside me said that a raccoon would be my dæmon, and that's all there was to it. Too bad, so sad. Nothing practical or particularly admirable. Just a musky, fuzzy bandit who compulsively washes his food, and is pretty good at solving problems.

Hehe! There's a character in my fanfic story The Cassington Scholar who has a raccoon dæmon!

Seeing as you can feel your daemon's pain, if you rode it and it got tired from carrying you around wouldn't you get tired as well? Even though all you've been doing is sitting?
Ha! It's a bizzare thought really...

And certainly none of the character's seem to have any qualms about their daemons riding around on their shoulders... so perhaps the opposite (human riding on daemon) wouldn't be so unheard of... although maybe it's more likely to occur amongst children, an adult riding their daemon is perhaps undignified(?)

I don't think daemons can get tired. They are manifestations of the soul, after all. Nor am I sure that they can feel human pain. I've got no quotes to back me up, but as far as I remember the only pain that daemons felt was the tug when the bond was stretched, and that's because it's an intrinsically spiritual thing.

I saw that someone noted about Hester's eyes being wrong because they were green, not brown, like a real Hare.
I just wanted to point out that the eyes of the daemons are actually significant because they match the eyes of their humans. Look at the Asriel/Stelmaria photo, and you can notice the stark resemblence with Daniel Craig's cold, icy blue eyes. http://www.goldencompassmovie.com/wallpapers/asriel_1280.jpg Snow leopard's eyes actually have a yellow tint, but I think blue works beautifully. It is obvious that the creators did this with intent, and I feel that this addition was an excellent development for the daemons. It also draws them away from being 'animals', and pushes them towards being seen as a part of their human.

If you had a large daemon you could use it for intimidation; likewise, if you had a small daemon it might help you keep a low profile.

I just wanted to point out that the eyes of the daemons are actually significant because they match the eyes of their humans. Look at the Asriel/Stelmaria photo, and you can notice the stark resemblence with Daniel Craig's cold, icy blue eyes.

That's funny, I thought it was significant because the daemons' eyes match their respective actors' eyes...Someone else noticed this with Pan and Freddie Highmore. Maybe it's just for that character though.

I thought (or rather imagined) that they decided to impose human eyes on the daemons to make them less like animals, and it would be a lovely touch if those human eyes were those of the voice actors.

Selkie wrote:

Blossom wrote:I often thought about this too. I think for plot purposes, daemons just never turn into anything useful. Whether they can and we just never see it I don't know, but I can't see why they shouldn't be able to turn into something like a horse or an elephant. An elephant would be the best, you could have awesome water fights.

I thought about this before and it made me laugh.

By my luck, I probably would be stuck with something like an elephant. As much as I love them, and how amazing it would be to have a royal dæmon steed, it would just be entirely inconvenient. Imagine, you wouldn't be able to go to any social places, ride any transportation, visit any house, LIVE in a house if you had an elephant dæmon.
Perhaps someone who is just asking for social rejection and isolation would end up in such a situation.

On that note, I think a great blue whale dæmon would set the record for 'Most Inconvienient dæmon."

From which we get the term "white elephant". The legend is that if the king of Siam wished to destroy a subject, he would make a gift of one of the royal herd of albino pachyderms. You couldn't refuse a gift from the king and the expense would financially ruin you.

TianNing wrote:You almost can't help wondering what your own dæmon would be, once you've read these books. (Yeah, yeah. They're just books. But a new world is always fun to visit in your mind.) And I think that Philip Pullman was using the daemons as an allegory for something that's real in every person: the Jungian inner self. Anima for a man; animus for a woman.

I found the odd thing: as much as I tried, I couldn't give myself the dæmon I really wanted, which was a hare. It just didn't work. But what did come up was...a raccoon.

Now, I'm not really a big raccoon fan. But something inside me said that a raccoon would be my dæmon, and that's all there was to it. Too bad, so sad. Nothing practical or particularly admirable. Just a musky, fuzzy bandit who compulsively washes his food, and is pretty good at solving problems.

Doing the same for my husband, it came to me that his would be a Great Blue Heron. I never thought of him that way, but that's what came when I drowsily imagined it. And it works completely for his personality.

That's what I found works best for imagining daemons: open and empty your mind to find them, and concentrate on what the person is like. Your dæmon isn't going to be something you want it to be, nor anything practical.

The dæmon is who you are.

Sound like you were on your vision quest and found your spirit guide.

"A supernatural experience in which an individual seeks to interact with a guardian spirit, usually an anthropomorphized animal, to obtain advice or protection. Vision quests were most typically found among the native peoples of North and South America."

From the Brittanica

The spirit chooses you, not the other way around.

If dæmon size is depending on his man`s size,whos dæmon would be the biggest?Probably of some people that have 2 metres and above.
(What about Hulk)