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The upside-down world of Pullman's "Dark Materials" Where Bad is Good, and God is banned By Berit Kjos - November 24, 2007
More than The first movie in the series opens December 7. |
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The upside-down world of Pullman's "Dark Materials" Where Bad is Good, and God is banned By Berit Kjos - November 24, 2007
More than The first movie in the series opens December 7. |
|
"This will mean the end of the Church... the end of all those centuries of darkness! Look at the light up there; that's the sun of another world! ... The Dust will change everything."
[1, p.394] The Golden Compass"Lyra...was afraid. Whatever power was making that needle swing and stop, it knew things like an intelligent being.'"[1, p.147-8]
"The God who dies is the God of the burners of heretics, the hangers of witches... [T]hat God deserves to die. The Authority, then, is an ancient IDEA of God, kept alive artificially by those who benefit from his continued existence."
[2] Phillip Pullman"Woe to those who call evil good and good evil...." Isaiah 5:20
Witches, evil specters, talking bears, and paranormal creatures abound in The Dark Materials, Philip Pullman's trilogy for children. In this cosmos of multiple universes, every human is linked to a personal daemon, and "open-minded" seekers find answers to life's mysteries through divination, Eastern meditation, ancient "wisdom," and ritual magic. These all are effective in the battle for the Republic -- against the despised old Church.
In The Golden Compass, the first book in the trilogy, a strange mass of mystical Dust is discovered during a magnificent display of Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights). Of course, Pullman credits no Creator with this beauty. Instead, he attributes the multi-colored phenomenon to impersonal energies, materials, and mystical consciousness -- all esoteric notions that remind me of the occult philosophies of Teilhard de Chardin, Willis Harman, ancient Gnostics, and William Blake. Blake, who was captivated by Rosicrucianism, Theosophy and other occult teachings, is one of Pullman's main sources of inspiration.[3]
Lyra, the pre-teen heroine, makes an enticing role model for young readers. A free-spirited tomboy raised without parents at Oxford in a universe parallel to ours, she seems an unlikely candidate for the messianic mission ahead. Always ready with a clever lie, she's first seen snooping in a forbidden part of the Oxford college complex with her daemon wisely camouflaged as a moth.
Lyra's choices and circumstances take her to the icy snow fields of Svalbard, a Norwegian island in polar regions. Sailing northward from England with a valiant group of gyptians [gypsies] she's determined to rescue children abducted by the heartless Church for experimental purposes. So she studies her alethiometer and practices the deep trance-forming concentration needed to receive its mystical guidance. After all, she has mission to complete:
“The witches have talked about this child for centuries past... Because they live so close to the place where the veil between the worlds is thin, they hear immortal whispers from time to time, in the voices of those beings who pass between the worlds. And they have spoken of a child such as this, who has a great destiny that can only be fulfilled elsewhere—not in this world, but far beyond. Without this child, we shall all die."[1, p.176]
Do you see how this fantasy undermines Biblical values? Pullman's crafty tales pull readers into an occult context where -- through their imagination -- they experience life from his dark perspective. In fact, his methods sound just like the transformational tactics in UNESCO's global education plan:
1. Give new meanings to old terms:
For example, the word DAEMONS (sounds like demons) are loyal, loving, intimate and normally inseparable soul mates to their humans. Unlike the demonic servants of Satan, these creatures live to encourage, not deceive, their human hosts. Though equated with the human soul, they look like animals and talk with their hosts as separate entities.Second, the word "CHURCH" points only to an evil hierarchical dictatorship. "[L]et me tell you... who it is that we must fight," says the proud, beautiful witch, Queen Ruta Skadi:
"It is the Magisterium, the Church. For all its history... it's tried to suppress and control every natural impulse. And when it can't control them, it cuts them out.... They cut out the sexual organs.... and every church is the same: control, destroy, obliterate every good feeling. So if a war comes, and the church is on one side of it, we must be on the other, no matter what strange allies we find ourselves bound to.... Lord Astriel [Lyra's distant father] was my lover once, and I would willingly join forces with him, because he hates the Church."[4]
Third, "HEAVEN" is presented as a lie. It doesn't exist, according to the angel, Baruch. Instead, everyone ends up in the "world of the dead" -- a miserable "prison camp" established by the evil Authority.[5 -33] To counter these lies, please see God's revelations of Heaven.
2. Redefine God and undermine Christianity. In The Amber Spyglass, Lyra becomes a counterfeit savior. Corrupting the reader's view of Christ, Pullman trades Jesus, our holy Redeemer, for a headstrong girl whose human nature could hardly be less like our Lord.
The highest "God" or "Authority" in this story is a feeble old man who dies a natural death. The angel Bakhamos summarizes the horrendous lie:
“The Authority, God, the Creator, The Lord, Yahweh, El, Adonai, the King, the Father, the Almighty—those were all names he gave himself. He was never the creator. He was an angel like ourselves—the first angel, true, the most powerful, but he was formed of Dust as we are, and Dust is only a name for what happens when matter begins to understand itself.... The first angels condensed out of Dust, and the Authority was the first of all. He told those who came after him that he had created them, but it was a lie. One of those who came later was wiser than he was, and she found out the truth, so he banished her. We serve her still. And the Authority still reigns in the Kingdom, and Metatron is his Regent."[5 -31-32]
Metatron, the murderous administrator, is the practical head of the church. This fits Gnostic teachings about an evil underling -- a demiurge -- that did create the world. Metatron is finally killed by Lyra's ambitious parents. They, too, die in the battle. But Lyra doesn't miss them; she never really knew them.
3. Highlight seductive suggestions that clash with traditional values. Daemons assume their permanent animal shape when their human partner "comes of age." For 12-year-old Lyra, that initiation came through sexual intimacy with Will, her close companion and lover near the end of the series.
This fits our times, doesn't it? Myth replaces truth, feelings eclipse morality, and human effort dismisses the cross. In Pullman's amoral universes, all traces of Biblical truth must be purged or reinterpreted. As Lord Asriel tells his daughter Lyra, "something happened when innocence changed into experience." Here's one result: The opposite of innocence is no longer guilt; it's experiential knowledge -- the fruit of the forbidden tree in the garden.
"...the Lord God commanded the man, saying, 'Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; 'but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ' you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it 'you ' shall surely 'die. ” Genesis 2:16
In contrast, Gnostic and other occult philosophies viewed the serpent as good and the forbidden fruit as enlightening. So did Milton in his Paradise Lost, another source of Pullman's inspiration.
4. Ridicule, rewrite or reinterpret Biblical Truth. Here, Lord Asriel reads a false version of Genesis 3. Though he uses it to illustrate the importance of experiential learning, he attributes the offensive notion of "original sin" to the despised church: "...it's what the Church has taught for thousands of years:"
“...the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden. But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shalt ye touch it, lest ye die. “And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: 'For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and your demons shall assume their true forms, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to reveal the true form of one’s daemon, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband....
“And the eyes of them both were opened, and they saw the true form of their daemons, and spoke with them. But when the man and the woman knew their own daemons, they knew that a great change had come upon them, for until that moment it had seemed that they were at one with all the creatures of the earth and the air...." [1, p. 371-372]5. Introduce ancient occultism and ritual magic from East and West. As with Harry Potter, spells, witchcraft, and magic grab the readers' attention and make occultism feel good and normal. In this story, Lyra's continual delight in "reading" her alethiometer ["truth measure"] might seem just as normal. But this divination tool requires the same psychic skills as those used for spell casting and other forms of magic. Here's how it works:
“[Lyra] read it every day... and she found that she could sink more and more readily into the calm state in which the symbol meanings clarified themselves.... 'It's almost like talking to someone, only you can’t quite hear them, and you feel kind of stupid because they’re cleverer than you."[1, p.150]
“Lyra turned the hands to the [relevant symbols]... Then she sat still, letting her mind hold the three levels of meaning together in focus, and relaxed for the answer, which came almost at once.... She blinked once or twice as if she were coming out of a trance."[1, p.174]
Dr. Mary Malone, a physicist and former nun, used Eastern divination such as I Ching. At one point, she pulled out some "yarrow stalks" and begins the ritual. It brought "a sense of that calm and concentrated attention that played such an important part in talking to the Shadows [Dust]." When she finished, the meaning of the hexagram and lines pointed her to "doors, and openings...." Soon "Mary stepped through into the new world..."[5, p.81-82]
In that new world, she used her computer to receive instructions from "those entities she called shadow particles."[5 -80] "...They told me what to do. They said they were angels..."[5 -440]
"I saw there wasn't any God at all," she told Will and Lyra, "The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that's all." In place of God she had found unity -- "the sense that the whole universe was alive, and that everything was connected to everything else by threads of meaning."[5 -441, 449]
Total rejection of God is becoming increasingly common. As the Bible warns us,
"The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved." 2 Thessalonians 2:9-10
6. Cloak mysticism in scientific language. The mysterious Dust is a perfect example:
"Dust came into being when living things became conscious of themselves..." [5 -451]
"Conscious beings make Dust -- they renew it all the time, but thinking and feeling and reflecting, by gaining wisdom and passing it on."[5 -491]
"Dust is what makes the alethiometer work.... You’ve heard of electrons, photons, neutrinos, and the rest? They’re called elementary particles because you can’t break them down any further..."[1, p.370]
Each statement attributes subjective consciousness to Dust. In contrast, objective science might refer to the prevalence of Dark Matter, but it shows no evidence for consciousness apart from life. But a new kind of metaphysical science is emerging, and it fits this trilogy as well as postmodern thinking.
A key promoter of such metaphysics has been Dr. Willis Harman (1918-1997), a Stanford professor, futurist, and President of the Institute of Noetic Sciences. Believe or not, he was invited to speak at an evangelical conference sponsored by the Billy Graham Center in 1979.
Harman believed in consciousness-driven evolution. He wrote that a new, metaphysical foundation for science and cosmology must replace the old factual scientific method. Like Pullman's Dark Materials, Harman's book Global Mind Change points to paganism:
The last point matches Pullman's requirement for Lyra's success. Remember her prophesied role as savior of the dead and the instructions concerning her inner sense of "right" and "freedom to choose:""Down through the centuries a variety of anomalous phenomena, including clairvoyant remote viewing, telepathic communication... and other 'psychic' phenomena, had been reported.... What was common to all of these anomalous psychic phenomena was that mind seemed to have some effects in the physical world."[6, p. 13]
"Perhaps a species on the long path of evolutionary development is... pulled by the kind of teleological force implied in... in Teilhard de Chardin's The Phenomenon of Man. In this kind of explanation, mind is prior to brain, and evolution is characterized both by the organism’s freedom to choose and by its inner sense of 'right' direction."[6, p. 55]
"Without this child, we shall all die.... But she must fulfill this destiny in ignorance of what she is doing.... What this means is that she must be free to make mistakes. We must hope that she does not, but we can't guide her.”[1, p.176]
True truth amidst deception
Today's post-Christian vacuum is fast being filled with unthinkable lies and enticing old practices. In upcoming articles, we hope to show how this phenomenon is changing churches around the world -- and how we can help our children resist it. Meanwhile, let's "put on" The Armor of God and remember God's warnings
"Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort... For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables. But you be watchful in all things...." 2 Timothy 4:2-5
For background information, see Mysticism & Global Mind Change, Part 1
1. Phillip Pullman, The Golden Compass, 394
2. Phillip Pullman's answers to Questions about Science and Religion
3. Teilhard de Chardin, Willis Harman, ancient Gnostics, and William Blake, Theosophy