I read in a transcript from an interview on "Belief" on the BBC
http://darkadamant.betterversion.org/BB ... ullman.txt
that "I was writing this novel, - I was simultaneously writing something else. I was simultaneously writing, a sort of creation myth that would lie
behind it all, which is no way explicit in the book except in those
words of Balthamos."
and
We all go through life in your book, with a daemon perched on our
shoulder, or indeed travelling round our body, but are present with us,
which is a sort of soul.
PP
It's an aspect of our personality, which in Lyra's world, has become
visible. Now, in my myth that I was writing, the daemon is conceived of
as being the gift of the rebel angels. Now, in the course of the myth,
the rebel angels are on the side of right and decency and goodness and
consciousness, and all these things.
IV
Lyra's side.
PP
Lyra's side. And they're lead by a figure called the Sophia - wisdom -
who's a figure which I've sort of borrowed from Gnostic myth.- the
rebels angels led by Sophia gave to the beings in each world who were
evolving, a gift that would help them understand themselves and become
wise. In some worlds, they gave them a daemon. In other words, they gave
them a song that could pull down wisdom from the stars. In a world which
we visit in the course of The Amber Spy-glass, they gave them the gift
of riding on wheels so that they could… and this… Well, you have to read
the story-
IV
Oh that's very funny … everyone going round on tricycles.
PP
But in each case you see, what it does, this gift is to help one achieve
wisdom. Wisdom, which is the sort of natural status of life and
consciousness, towards which we move almost gravitationally, and this is
where it's helping us towards that.
So basically, I think BOD will, and I hope it will, get into some of the "origin myths" of this world that Pullman has created, sort of a Silmarillion of HDM. I've heard a lot of stuff about Lyra and Will's stories continuing, but I think Pullman may be angling more for a deep history of the world, hence the title, the Book of Dust. The story will be about Dust, perhaps.
