More than 15 million copies of Philip Pullman’s trilogy have been sold. The first movie in the series opens December 7. Pullman was a teacher at Westminster College, Oxford, while writing children’s books. The Golden Compass won the prestigious Carnegie Medal.
Flying witches, evil specters, talking bears and evolving “Dust” abound in The Dark Materials, Philip Pullman’s popular fantasy series for children. In this confusing cosmos of multiple universes, every human is linked to a personal daemon, and telepathic seekers find answers to life’s mysteries through divination, Eastern meditation, ancient “wisdom” and ritual magic. These occult practices are essential to the battle for the “free” Republic — against the despised old Church.
Lyra, the pre-teen heroine, is a headstrong tomboy raised without parents at an Oxford college in a universe parallel to ours. A proficient liar, she’s first seen snooping in a forbidden area with her personal daemon camouflaged as a moth. From then on, she follows her intuition from one crisis to the next until all remnants of Biblical truth and authority have been destroyed. By the end of the series, God is dead. Free-spirited Lyra (still a 12-year-old) has sexually “come of age” and fulfilled her destined assignments in the war against Christianity.
As readers move from book to book, they meet likeable God-haters, experience magical worlds, and discover new revelations about the strange forces that drive Pullman’s occult cosmos. Defying any short, simple synopsis, this mind-changing trilogy appeals more to feelings than to understanding. But those feelings will open hearts to deceptive mysteries that produce death and bondage, not life in Christ. Click here to read this entire article.
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