Girls Gone Canon Cast - His Dark Materials Episode 17 - The Amber Spyglass Chapters 4-7

Episode Date: August 6, 2021

As Lyra sleeps, the players begin moving into positions, with Asriel at the basalt fortress, the CCD deciding that murdering kids is in fact very chill, and Mary Malone is Alone but then later not alone.   CHAPTER 4 - Ama and the Bats CHAPTER 5 - The Adamant Tower CHAPTER 6 - Preemptive Absolution CHAPTER 7 - Mary, Alone   --- Eliana's twitter: https://twitter.com/arhythmetric Eliana's reddit account: https://www.reddit.com/user/glass_table_girl Eliana's blog: https://themanyfacedblog.wordpress.com/ Chloe's twitter: https://twitter.com/liesandarbor Chloe's blog: www.liesandarborgold.com Intro: Waltz Of The Skeleton Keys by WombatNoisesAudio | https://soundcloud.com/user-734462061

You're listening to Girls Gone Canon, covering welcome to Girls Gone. Cannon reads his dark materials, the book series, The Amber Spyglass, chapters 4 through 7. I am one of your hosts, Eliana. And I am another one of your hosts, Chloe. We're back with chapters four through seven. Those chapters are, of course, Amma and the Bats, The Adamant Tower, Preemptive Absolution, Mary Alone. And all of that will, of course, be ended with a dust-scussion, which is a very, very, very special, dusty, spoilery section where we talk about the books of dust but eliana do you want to tell

the listeners at home what our spoiler policy is yeah so we've been doing our spoilers as though you the listener are reading along with us and up until the discussion our spoilers are all through the first two main books of northern light slash the golden compass the subtle knife and the first two made books of northern light slash the golden compass the subtle knife and the first three chapters of the amber spyglass we're doing our best yeah the discussion covers everything else including as chloe said the books of dust as well as novellas and everything else that's going to happen in the rest of this book and we're doing our best please give us preemptive absolution if we fuck it all up you know uh eliana's gonna try to we're not i'm so sorry thank you for supporting us yeah hey and if this is your first listen

through and you're listening with us we're so excited you're you're reading these books i'm so excited eliana really gave me a gift she gives me a gift every week honestly every week i get to record with her as a gift. It's a present. Her presents. What kind of gift? The gift of mercy? The gift of my wish. Oh my god. The gift of mercy.

Please give it to me. But beyond that gift that Eliana gives me that keeps giving every week, I do hope you give us preemptive absolution if we do fuck it up at all but we'll try not to we'll try to keep you spoiler free till the end with that dusty dusty dusty dust discussion eliana we're doing a very special patreon episode this month this is usually the month we would talk about something kind of his dark materials related for

patreon patreon members in the stranger tier and above but we have an episode on a very special book series actually it's a series did you know this technically i actually did i didn't read the second i don't know if i read the second or the third one so before we go into a discussion of which books we have read from the series i don't know that we'll do the whole series or not, but as Chloe said, many apologies if you were looking forward to this month's His Dark Materials Patreon episode.

But we are going to visit actually a different book from my childhood that is also actually part of Chloe's childhood. We are going to read Ella Enchanted, which is a wonderful I think it's a wonderful like classic i will call it a classic i think so it's gail carson levine it is it's a classic

fiction you know like youth fiction story with the romance and the the ogres and the magic and it's kind of a retelling of cinderella right it features ella ella enchanted so because a person i know was born this month we're going to celebrate someone that i know that was born in the month of august and the episode is going to be called eliana enchanted yeah um hopefully i'm not enchanted in the way that things go in this book series but it's i love this book i think we've discussed it before i i read this book over and over again until this copy fell apart in my hands growing up uh but at the suggestion of i believe our friend ashea from history of westers i checked out fer, which is another one of the books in this series, but apparently

Ashea's favorite is the two princesses of Bamaare, but there are, I think, a few other ones also within this little universe. There's one more in this world. Yeah. Yeah. I know that the third one she put out was supposed to be

a prequel to Ella Enchanted, and I believe it was following the ogres i didn't read that one i didn't read the snow white one i read ella enchanted carsick on road trips in the back of my parents car i remember like being so nauseated and being like i'm watching the trees go by and i want to puke but i also want to read ella enchanted and see what happens next with the ogres so this brings back some memories i'm hoping not to get that sweet sweet vertigo while i read it again we'll find out i'll let you know but we might even watch the movie too over uh maybe even on our discord with our

friends or i might rent it you know pull it up and have a movie night with everyone we just don't know we're gonna look into it but we do have an event planned for patrons in the Thunder tier and above over on Patreon this month, which is our Discord brunch slash happy hour. Yes, and that's going to be towards the end of this month. You know, it's just gonna be an event filled month in general. This is going to be on August 28th, a Saturday this month. Yeah, to be announced, theme TVA. We're going to talk about it probably more next week. Our schedule's a little off. If you're listening to this, you might have noticed this is coming out a week later than planned.

Had a little bit of medical stuff to take care of, but we are back in action and we'll just be a week off. So if you're looking for an a song of ice and fire catelyn episode come on back next week yes but also speaking of things next week and movie nights chloe and i will be joining our friend thomas on monday evening august 9th yes we will be joining him up for a podcast so he is from teacock podcast network the new dad podcast the movie club pick uh podcast the movie club podcast and we're so excited last week our friend ashea who we just talked about she was on from history of westeros talking about fantastic planet we are going to be on tuesday live uh august 9th with thomas talking about one of my

favorites and i i'm excited to talk about it with eliana dazed and confused yeah i'm excited i haven't watched this movie in years so i'm excited to revisit it and also to do so with you and our friend thomas all right all all right. I'm excited. I love Matthew McConaughey in that fucking movie. It's a classic ass. It's just like a classic movie. It is a classic. I really relate to Mila Jovovich.

If you show up on Tuesday to the live stream on August 9th, I'm sure you'll hear me talk about my love for Mila Jovovich's character strumming the guitar, hitting a joint in the corner. That's high school, bro. That's high school, man. The girl with the guitar. These books, though. Let's come back.

Let's come back to His Dark Materials. The Amber Spyglass. Let's get back to it. Let's talk about Ama and the Bats. Right off the bats, if I may say. Oh! If I may say. Amazing. You may say. Right off the bats, if I may say. If I may say. Amazing.

You may say. Right off the bats. You may say. Thank you. Thank you, Your Honor. I'm happy. I'm happy to be here. Eliana missed me too.

I'm just happy to be alive. Oh my God. The poem at the start of this chapter is actually one of my favorite poets, Emily Dickinson. And I'm very excited about the poetry. We keep threatening to do a Poetry of His Dark Materials episode. We might have to. That would also mean we'll have to probably read Paradise Lost further.

It's just so much. Anyways, but this poem is not that much. Emily Dickinson is my favorite poet i don't get to talk about her a lot but my yeah i i my mom gave me a bunch of emily dickinson books when i was a kid and i loved them i kept them in my bookshelf i still have them love them to pieces and uh she actually it was her books she took notes and had them in between and like it was her books so yeah that's cool it was actually really cool i have a lot of notes on it yeah it's special and between 1860 to 1862 emily wrote about at least 1800 poems like probably more this one specifically was one of them

she lay as if at play the snippet that philip has highlighted here is, This one was not published until 1935. However, it was likely written 1860 to 1862. Most of her poems were taken from letters or from just scraps she had in notebooks or etc. and ledgers, but all of them were put together in packets at her archives, which if you haven't visited them, you can go online and visit the archives of all of her work and see all of these scraps. It's really actually intensely amazing. I was just looking through each part of the website and it was just very well organized. They're all put together in packets.

This is in packet 13. And it's tying into Lyra, right? So well with her being at sleep, the enchanted sleeper. And Pullman chose to open this chapter with that quote. But the last verse of the poem, I feel like ties in also well here. Her mourning at the door, devising, I am sure sure to force her to sleep so light so deep not only does this play on the force of sleep that of course coulter has put her under but there's also kind of a double entendre in this poem in the beginning of her mourning at the door not just mourning but also mourning grieving which coulter kind of is right like she's

living out her sick twisted fantasy of not being able to keep Lyra, not being able to have Lyra or have a life with her, which we've seen her attempt to do, right, over the last couple books. Her inability to make a move while the Magisterium is on the way coming for her daughter, right? It's this kind of this static, like frightening feeling. She's frightened and she's immobile and she's in gridlock. She can't make a choice. She's mourning that past and possibly going to be mourning the future, right?

Like when Lyra wakes the fuck up. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's really interesting. And I love that double entendre that you've read into this because it does feel very much like what's going on here in this chapter and as you said, her entire arc so far and she's really one of the most dynamic characters in the whole story and yeah, Emily Dickinson's so funny

didn't she have what? she would take little scraps of her poems and just tuck them in random places in her home? Little Easter eggs of things to find everywhere. She took all the pieces of her soul and split them up into little words and hid them all across the landscape.

But not in an evil way. Not in a horcrux way. Not like that. No, in a beautiful queer way okay god jesus well back to ama and the bats ama cannot stop thinking of the sleeping girl she didn't doubt mrs culture's story at all she was like yeah sorcerers exist and that woman loves her daughter ferociously and so ama like just began to love her too she's

running errands for her she's listening to like this woman's many stories she's just like really deep in it and she hopes to see lyra and except that she probably won't see the sleeper again but she like has this fantasy of like lyra's gonna wake up and we're gonna be friends and in many ways like sweet wait this you were talking about Mrs. Colter trying to live that life with Lyra again. And part of this is part of that, right? Remember, like in the earlier book, she had this great plan. She's like, all right, Lyra and I are going to run schemes together to lure even more children into damnation. And I'm like, okay interesting and I mean this is kind of doing that but with Lyra very much not consenting to be part of this scheme slash unconscious but Amma is again

she's just like one of the many children right who falls under Mrs. Coulter's spell once more and I'm just like damn a lot of people give this woman so much trust just because she's hot yeah I understand that you know it's really hard being i'm sorry being this hot being this sexually erotic arousing oh my god uh you know i just tend to rile i get it i understand marisa no i'm totally kidding

she crazy and i love her though i do love this woman to pieces, but she crazy. And that's coming out right now, right? A little, a lot happening for Marisa, kind of suffering from a little bit of a mental break going on here. And she's like keeping her like a doll. It's just back to hearkening to the Northern Lights, Golden Compass, putting her in that dress, right? And dressing her up to be like just her little toy.

And even the way that she's protectively combing her hair and washing her and keeping her safe. Obviously, we know there's a greater evil coming after reading these handfuls of chapters here. But what? What? Coming for Lyra. Yeah, it's like between a rock and a hard place.

And I also will say, as we get into the next chapter in the Adamant Tower and talk about the contrast of Asriel's plans for Lyra versus Coulter's plans. I don't know. Coulter may be crazy, but at least she went there. At least she went to find her daughter. Just saying. Yeah. Herself. She's a really bad mom in a lot of ways.

But in some ways ways I'm like, hmm, I guess I admire this. Yeah. But that's what makes her such a fascinating character. I think so. She doesn't have to be moral to be a good character. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's important. She's not real. Thanks for

clarifying. I don't know, people need that clarified nowadays sometimes. Yeah, I just hate that we have to preface work like that, thanks for clarifying i don't know people need that clarified nowadays sometimes yeah i i just hate that we have to preface work like that you know like let me just preface this you know these are fictional ama thinks incessantly about the spell that's been cast on the sleeper on lyra why it happened all while she does her chores and day work she gets so curious that she walks three hours to cho lung say where a monastery is taking flatbread sweetened with honey she bribes the porter and gets an audience with pagzin tulku

a great healer with a bat demon who had cured an outbreak of white fever the year before so tulko is actually a term for a spiritual leader in tibetan buddhism and the Dalai Lamas are among this. There are other less high-profile ones, of course. We can't all be rock stars. The Tokos are the spiritual leaders who consciously return to be reborn

as humans to help guide people. And I think it's interesting to just consider that. There are Tokos here within the context of historic materials oh yeah that spiritual rebirth that's really interesting okay okay that and like

also that they return right that their soul the reincarnation returning back onto this plane so it's interesting because that is like how I feel about how the alethiometer is described like when you read it the state that you're supposed to be into is kind of like letting and we'll get into this with balthamos baruch their angel form being made of dust but it's like

meditation or the alethiometer you're supposed to like let your subconscious drift from you if that makes sense like separate sever yourself and it does seem like that's how the alethiometer works of concentrating deeply and letting yourself deeply fall into that chasm that pit if you will something kind of yeah meditation yeah yeah yeah it's hard to explain i haven't done it in a bit i I need to get back to that. That might improve my blood pressure, my emotions, my mood. But yeah, it's just like enlightenment and also seeking knowledge still, right? As opposed to some of the other religions that we see in the next few chapters. The Tolko's bat demon swoops down to speak to Ama's demon, Kulong, and Ama remains still until she is asked to speak by Pagzin Toko.

She begs him to teach her wisdom so that she can learn the spells and enchantments that he knows, but he rejects her. She figured this would happen and asks humbly, alright, then just teach me one remedy so she knows how to haggle, alright? alright then just teach me one remedy so she knows how to haggle and he says he can give it to her instead because she can't know his secrets and then she lies and says oh cool great

it's to cure a sleeping sickness for the son of my father's cousin and she's like good job me very clever for changing the sex of the sleeper she guesses that the son she decides that the son is like a few years older than she is and can't wake up. So big Lyra move here from Ama with all these lying.

And she lies even more and says that, oh yeah, I was sent by those parents. They're very poor. They live on the other side of the village. And the killer's like, all right, I want to see the child inquiring to the planets that were in position when he fell asleep and she explains to me you don't have time for that the man and the

bat move from shelf to shelf tapping out powders and herbs in the order that his demon visits them um i do have to say it's so sad because they would be best friends right like ama and lyra would hit it probably ama would be like yeah another Rogers. They both have very similar kind of mannerisms. They like a little bit of mischief, but they also, you know, they like to be proper. It's just like it would be a great personality match for Lyra. It's so sad. I want them to be friends.

Lyra, wake up. They are in the same world. They are. Soon they might meet. You never know. You never know. Soon. It could happen. In the book might meet. You never know. You never know. It could happen. In the book, even. It could happen. I love this next part.

It says that Tolku grinds the herbs, same, been there, mutters a spell, and tells her to brush the powder into the child's nostril until he wakes with great caution, because too much, the kid will choke she thanks him and she's like i'm sorry i only have one loaf of honey bread for you and he's grateful all the

same he tells her next time tell me the whole truth not part of it though and she's like oh shit right like total adult catching you shit um ama bows out she's ashamed and she's like oh i hope i didn't give too much away because she knows that he knows there's a woman a witch you know in town he knows so she goes to the valley yeah everyone knows they're all gonna know they're like she's weird why is she here also like you keep going off in the woods to see her like everyone can see you ama like it's not a big town yeah it's it's a pretty small town small village so ama bows out she's ashamed she's like oh i hope i didn't give too much away she hurries to the valley with sweet rice shaped in a heart

fruit leaf it sounds delicious she's bursting to tell colter what she had done she's like i want her praise and her thanks which is exactly what Colter like instills in people right they crave her praise and her thanks and she also is like maybe I'll get to talk to the enchanted sleeper they could be friends but she arrives there and the place is empty she looks around monkey woman they're gone and she's like what if they're gone forever but she realizes all the equipment is still there and she's like what about the enchanted sleeper what if she woke up while the woman was gone and she hears a noise outside and then she hides she like darts behind a ledge in the room same room as lyra is in uh as she watches the golden monkey and woman arrive and the monkey is sniffing from afar marisa and her demons see the food that

has been left by the girl and marisa comments that that girl shouldn't be coming inside the cave she stoops to start a fire and heat some water and ama painfully watches from far away she's like stuck she's like fuck and as mrs culture mixes a draft for the enchanted sleeper but she realizes oh my god amazing the spell's broken the sleeper is awakened and suddenly mrs coulter is murmuring to her telling her she's fine creating in a sing-song voice to her as she sponges her face down and the girl who as we know is lyra begins to wake and starts lashing out and spilling the drink that mrs coulter is feeding her until the monkey just grips pentelimon holding him down with his little black fingers as uh pan begins to change between like a cat snake rat fox bird wolf cheetah lizard pole cat honestly this grip must be so strong those are a lot of animals uh until finally

pan settles on a porcupine which makes the monkey screech as it's impaled by three of pan's quills then mrs coulter slaps lyra across the face and before lyra can do anything mrs coulter is just like force feeding her the potion again then lyra chokes down she's coughing she's sobbing she's retching until you know finally she falls back into an enchanted sleep a poison sleep drugged deceitful sleep

and you know this is not the good sleep that we have brought you before listeners this is not the good sleep that we have brought you before listeners this is an unnatural sleep it is though it is totally an unnatural sleep we like when lyra has organic healthy naps yes we love a rested cared for queen and right now she's not she's not at all well she's semi cared for but like with a sponge she hasn't had a proper bath in a while. She probably really is smelly.

She's been smelly for a while. Oh, my gosh. Since like Chita Godse. But just lapse as we do a little. And the spoilers, the television show does show that. That's fine for Lyra, you know? Yeah. Good for her being stinky yeah i mean i imagine you'd be i mean i work it up after a couple couple hours you know of like living it's just life she's out there in real life used to that smell yeah her mom has probably gotten used

to that smell you know it kind of fades a little it's the smell of love the smell of love oh my god well smell of the outside speaking of the smell of love there's a couple really obvious uh like fairy tale kind of references and uh things going on here right the enchanted sleeper very snow white very sleeping beauty you got your run-of-the-mill princesses but and especially with the ama interactions there's something really interesting with the perspective pullman is giving her here right like she is in the position of all of these enchanted uh like the princes have been before with these enchanted princess princesses of viewing them and being like oh what do i do to awaken the sleeper? The original Sleeping Beauty, or what really began the Sleeping Beauty mythos and story, is called The Sun, the Moon, and Talia.

It's written by an Italian poet, Gian Battista Basile, in his 1634 work, The Pentamerone, from the Greek five and day. So this is actually a really interesting story. It's which 50 stories are related over the course of and day. So this is actually a really interesting story. It's which 50 stories are related over the course of five days. It's crazy. There's so much in it. And it's all in analogy

with like the 10 day structure of the earlier. This story is in analogy with the 10 day structure of the earlier Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio. And I just think it's such an interesting like delivery of a bunch of poems, basically, to tell stories over that structure of days. This particular story with the OG Briar Rose, Talia, is very Lyra in that basic Eve kind

of storytelling. But in this poem, it's slightly different. So Talia is the main character of the poem, and she is subdued by flax that gets stuck beneath her nail. There was once a great lord who was blessed with the birth of a daughter whom he named Talia. He sent for the wise men and astrologers in his lands to predict her future. They met, counseled, and cast her horoscope, and at length they came to the conclusion she would incur great danger from a splinter of flax. Her father therefore forbade flax her father therefore

forbade flax hemp or other material be brought in the house so she should escape the predestined danger as we go into the next chapter of the magisterium we'll talk a little bit more about that ink being dry right but it definitely brings up a lot of lyra's prophecy talia's father abandons her in one of his rich manses he can't bear the grief this brings upon him you know to see her all the time and a king passes by in the wood and the king rapes talia while she's asleep she magically bears two golden children in birthing these children out of her it wakes her up from the enchanted sleep would you imagine that and what a horrible way to wake up i know congrats there's twins uh the two twins that she has she

has no clue how it happened she's like huh don't know but it wakes her the queen the king's wife hears about this and she wants to get the children and she summons for them and talia is like oh that's such a compliment being summoned by the queen uh because she still doesn't know about you know their heritage and she gets called out like in front of the whole court no slut shaming this is not cool of the queen uh she's like a hussy and that's not what we do here we don't like make golden twins while we're asleep and all this shit and uh the queen orders the kids cooked up and the king is like oh i kind of love these kids though i don't want to i don't want them to be cooked up in fact do you know what i don't want to get i don't want them to be cooked up in fact you know what i don't love my queen she's awful she's like terrible so he trades the kids out for lambs and long story

short the children who are the sun and moon overcome so does talia the queen goes bye-bye talia is now the queen she becomes the queen it all happens real fast and it all works out but the big the big moral at the end of the poem is, those whom fortune favors find good luck even in their sleep. Here, of course, there's something about the innocence of Ama being the king in this situation, or the princes that stumble upon the fair maidens asleep in the woods. save her and they're looking to do something heroic and help her uh and you know she's a sleeping princess who happens to be a figurehead of a rebellion right in a cave it's kind of magical and they take a journey to go find a healer to help her and uh they are the ones that wake her still by kind of slight lies and trickery which is very thematic for lyra but good lies and trickery not for you know the stories telling of a king raping a princess to have magical

children or whatever. I don't know, he just thought she was pretty. I guess it was a compliment back then. Who knew? But in storytelling in the whatever hundreds, 1600s, a king liked the sleeping princess. She was gonna marry her, okay.

Yeah, that's what they thought in the 1600s so i think i don't know i guess feminist theory has gotten better or whatever but run she couldn't she was asleep well no but after right afterwards she decides yeah this is a wonderful reward no she loved him she loved him uh it's weird but i do think that there's something in this of lyra being held by her mother right against her will without having free will, which is kind of the big one. Free Lyra, too, while we're at it. But free will in the story. I think that's kind of interesting.

And I also think that at the same time, these four chapters that we're going through show people searching for Lyra, right? Some are bad that we see searching for her, but some are good that we see searching for her but some are good that are searching for her or good aligned or good tangentially aligned is what i'm trying to imply and some of it's all right right like that's good like people are out there hoping good fortune does favor her in that way that like she is the figurehead and the people are thinking of her you were you were talking earlier about like how that prophecy plays into this, and then the parallels, right? But there's being a prophecy in this story of Sleeping Beauty, and that, you know, her father forbade any flax hemp or any other material. None of that weed be brought into this house so that she could escape danger.

No weed in this kingdom. No CBD in this kingdom no cbd in this kingdom anyway um i think i'm real funny the king so the king is like doing all this like these crazy outlandish measures of like over protecting his daughter to prevent that destiny coming true for her which is very much what uh mrs coulter is doing here right now that she knows more about her daughter's prophecy she's like well if i just if i just keep her here and keep her asleep then she she has no chance of falling this never happened for her and it's interesting because

i mean mrs coulter is so toxic as like a parent but in a way there's like a twisted logic to it and i i don't know if we've talked about it in this series or in the song of ice and fire series which we probably have but bringing up that idea of young archetypes especially again of the mother and how the mother is often seen as a very supportive figure a very protective figure right um someone who nurtures but then the shadow of that uh jungian archetype is that the mother can be a very suffocating force um sifling as in that desire to over protect and nurture and makes it so that one never actually gets to grow and experience life and that's what Mrs. Coulter is doing here as she attempts to, she's like, this is

motherly, right? Maybe. Trying to mother, you know, Eve, mother of us all. Yeah, how do you mother the mother? Truly, I do not know. Lyra's gonna wake up and she's gonna be like, you just got mothered.

Then she pours soup down her throat and does it again. Yeah, probably. Take that. Eat that. Mom. Well. Pan transforms into a long snowy furred creature alongside Lyra's neck

as the woman sings to her humming songs and even just kind of talking gibberish because again Mrs. Coulter, very new to this mother thing she's just like, I actually don't know any lullabies. She's like panic singing

and eventually Mrs. Coulter cuts a little bit of Lyra's hair trims a long dark curl off and puts it in a locket and Amma's like, what the fuck is going on and decides she's gonna work more magic on it she was like when did i just fucking watch this was this was like rated r and the golden monkey says something to mrs coulter who reaches up to the ceiling pulling down a bat that she hands to the monkey who snaps it apart like a

toy cracking and snapping it limb by limb while marisa lays on her sleeping bag eating a bar of chocolate no literally she's like this is what i do on my period what the fuck well not the part where my soul snaps things apart just the chocolate all she needs is a glass of wine and And I'm like, okay, I guess that part's relatable, the other part is not. And the description of the scene is actually, I would say, even more gruesome in the context of the healer who is helping Lyra, Pagden Tolko, because it's called Ama and the Bat,

plural, because Tolko's demon is a bat demon. Thankfully, what the golden monkey is tearing apart isn't a bat demon because we're told that it's very clear the difference between them but it does remind us once again of kind of mrs coulter's relationship with religion and it's just kind of a weird like image to put together in your head not just the the sadism of it because i think this finally really drives home like oh this woman just like relaxes off of other people's pain oh she's like the cold unnatural mother i never had she's like it's a fascinating characterization so you bring up some of the symbolism with the bat.

I love that. I caught that too of the bat at the beginning, different bat, and now this bat, and this bat symbolizing him and symbolizing what he stood for and how he's a helpful healer and that he or she is just tearing that apart, tearing that construction apart. As far as bat symbolism goes too, the mostly common look at bats,

depending on where you are culturally, is that they're trickery. They resemble trickery or death. And they're also used in some religions as symbols of the underworld and in some mythology and Greek mythos with like Hades and Persephone and greek mythos uh with like hades and persephone and people living in the shadows of darkness and many mythological stories include bats and humans

being intertwined and sometimes bats even acting as messengers to the world of the dead so interesting i thought that was interesting and i think it's interesting how she's besides her tearing one apart but how she's like brewing potions right and create that this potion would use that feels interesting to me too it's kind of witch-like just putting that out there that coulter's brewing potions tearing apart you know having the the torn apart bat for it and if the bat's used in the potion application at all it makes me think what is she brewing a potion that actually helps lyra communicate with the underworld with her dead bff with that bat symbolism and it represents you know destroying magic and breaking it down to use it yeah that would be interesting if

she were i think so just my personal opinion i kind of prefer that she's not because then i'm just like she just wants she just wants to hurt for the hell of it that's fine too but but i was just interested i don't know if it's fine yeah yeah i mean that's commonly right it's commonly like cited sometimes like a wing of a bet yeah exactly like a witch potion like it to me that's what it seems almost like she was like all right do your thing crack it open eat your blood marrow out of it and we'll throw it in the pile for use later for next week eventually they fall asleep and ama makes her great escape her demon turns into an owl on the clean, cold air. She stops in front of the huddle of stone houses with her demon on her fist,

and she's crying that the woman had lied to her, asking Kulang, What should we do? How could she have done this thing? Kulang says they cannot tell anyone, but they can go wake the enchanted sleeper when the woman next leaves, wake her, and spirit her away from here.

The thought filled them both with fear, but it had been said and the little paper package was safe in Ama's pocket and they knew how to use it. Brave little Ama! I love Ama. I want more Ama. Forever.

Yeah. Ama need to see more of her. Yeah, like forever. I'm gonna need to see more of her. If you know what I mean. Yeah, like a chapter. Another chapter or so. Or yeah, it's her and Lyra. We get another one of these great little underworld interludes. Wake up!

I can't see her. I think she's close by. She's hurt me. Oh, Lyra, don't be frightened. If you're frightened too, I'll go mad. They tried to hold each other tight, but their arms passed through the empty air. Lyra tried to say what she meant, whispering close to his little pale face in the darkness. I'm just trying to wake up. I'm so afraid of sleeping all my life and then dying. I want to wake up first. I wouldn afraid of sleeping all my life and then dying. I want to wake up first. I wouldn't care if it was just for an hour.

As long as I was properly alive and awake. I don't know if this is real or not even, but I will help you, Roger. I swear I will. But if you're dreaming, Lyra, you might not believe it when you wake up. That's what I'd do. I'd just think it was only a dream. No, she said fiercely. And it cuts off.

Have to commend Eliana. You hit the emotional beat there. I know sometimes we have to redo them, but that one was like, you were fierce. You were very fierce. You fiercely said it. I believed it. I thought you were Lyra for a second. I really thought.

Oh, thank you. I too thought I was really a 12-year-old. The voice of an angel. I do love to sleep. I do too. That line made me go, oh, okay. Thanks, Philip Pullman, for staring right at me. I'm afraid of sleeping

all my life and then dying. Me. It's exactly what's going on. It's so poignant to you know the way that life this story yeah life and like this story and what it's going towards but um yeah maybe lyra sleeping through the first two books was actually foreshadowing wait were we supposed to be analyzing that within the context of like this line this is a great sleep for her

i also like thought it was like philip pullman's mechanism for like showing the passage of time to some extent and like how much how tiring all this shit is because life is also tiring but now i'm like i should be i've been taking a closer look at that like as you said like is it part of this of waking up not sleeping all your life no no no you know i think lyra just went through some very tiresome trials in the first two books this one's just she's being drugged yeah yeah this is just getting drugged it's kind of the fucked up one well yeah let's go to the tower. The Adamant Tower. I am adamant about this tower, Eliana. I'm Adamant versus Adam Termite.

Oh my god. We open it up with Milton. Right. We open it up with some Milton. With ambitious aim against the throne and monarchy of God raised in pious war in heaven and battle proud. I love the opening of this entire chapter just in general it's just like this beautiful look at like a hellscape right it's metal it's the most metal view we get we get this awesome big place the first passage reminds me so much of like revelations

and of ezekiel and different things in the bible a lake of molten sulfur extended the length of an immense canyon releasing its mephitic vapors and sudden gusts and belches and barring the way of the solitary winged figure who stood at its edge if he took to the sky the enemy scouts who had spotted him and lost him would find him again at once but if he stayed on the ground it would take so long to get past this noxious pit that his message might arrive too late he would have to take the greater risk what an epic metal like you know like i just i feel i feel like i'm there i'm about to like feel the wind through my dusty cells of my body like an angel uh you are an angel oh shots you're such a liar

you're a demon I love just the biblical metal opening here. And with Asriel, of course, as like our Lucifer character, Asriel's palace, the description is completely on that biblical plane. The way it's constructed as we go up and get the descriptions of it is in levels, right? It's very much like levels of purgatory in hell. And I was reading a little bit of the prophecy against gog and uh gog and magog and the story from ezekiel of uh god just coming down and being like listen gog you're being a shit ass

which isn't what he said but it's basically what he said he's like he can't be destroying shit he was like stop destroying shit but god when he's pissed in this story in one of these fictional pieces the bible uh he said and i will summon a sword against gog on all my mountains declares the lord god and every man's sword will be against his brother i will execute judgment upon him with plague and bloodshed i will pour out torrents of rain hailstones fire sulfur on him and on his troops and on the many nations with him. I will magnify and sanctify myself and will reveal myself in the sight of many nations. Then they will know I am the Lord. It just reminds you of like this, all the totally like metal shit happening in Ezekiel. And I was trying to understand, like I was looking for more molten

lava in the bible just chilling the other day i was googling on bible search you know.com or whatever just hanging out getting those christian pop-ups and uh i recalled they don't talk about molten lava because they usually call it brimstone and that is what this chapter is full of we're going to talk about adamant in a while but brimstone is always used to describe like fire and sulfur and God's wrath and judgment and damnation. And it actually is from Middle English. The etymology is brimston or bremston, forms of brinston, brenston. And it's two words together, meaning brian stone or burn stone literally

translates to burn stone i'm into it that's also metal in and of itself too and that's asriel's house right it is built of brimstone here it is just lava and hell gates and shit yeah dude absolutely a lot of like it it is going to be called like his basalt fortress later on and i mean that that whole like imagery right you were talking about the brimstone and then even like how it's what there's all that sulfuric stuff going on which must smell bad i've heard that you know volcanoes smell bad it's like that's what makes rotten eggs smell bad probably smells like farts everywhere yeah absolutely smell like sewage yeah i live in a city it smells like sewage yeah i walked by it on the way to target the other day not awesome but

you know i guess that's that's the war for you and it feels very reminiscent of the description of what will be pandemonium or the capital of hell right for satan in uh paradise lost that that poem that uh you know philip pullman's like a big fan of you know he's in the paradise he's a big name fan oh my god he's a john milton stan oh my god philip pullman pulls up in the menchies and he's like at john milton what do you think about cats at john milton what do you think about cats the musical he's not gonna answer he's dead spoiler so it's apt that a line from early in the poem you know opens this chapter that you read a lot earlier and uh especially that description again of those flames and just it it feels very much like being far from heaven though you know apparently it's like

it sounds like in the poem in paradise lost you make it sound like the fires have like no light somehow in hell and i'm like interesting interesting also very metal oh metal but also metaphorical metal metaphorical i tried it's not great i'll do better no i think that one's good i like it i like it it's a little slip of the tongue a little slip of the tongue well baruch is flying against his enemy angels right he's trying to outfly four pairs of wings beating after him he finds clear air but his pursuers do too streaming trails of vapor dizzy from the fumes another hunter finds him and all three of them twist in the air like scraps of flame falling in a struggle to the rocks on the far side the other pursuers don't come out of the clouds after

them they stay behind and watch it's honestly amazing um and you were talking about this earlier but i want to re-emphasize like i just love the language that opens opens this it's honestly amazing um and you were talking about this earlier but i want to re-emphasize like i just love the language that opens opens this it's like how even baruch isn't named at first right it really adds like the drama of that opening scene and highlighting the war and the carnage here as those two flyers don't emerge and just like how fucking sick baruch is right i mean it's dangerous and also it shows the stakes here right of like why baruch decides that that big risk needs to be taken really shows you how like much they believe in this cause just as asriel does and then also again like those stakes are highlighted as baruch passes at the end of this chapter. Yeah, maybe more. Maybe more than Asriel does. You never know.

Yeah, probably. A fortress emerges at the end of the valley, and it's built of basalt, like Eliana mentioned, like a volcano had thrusted up millions of years ago. It's a dragon stone. No, I'm just kidding. Vast caverns full of provisions lie beneath the fortress, engines of war being calibrated and

tested below that mills hold mighty forges where phosphor and titanium are being combined in alloys never known before and the other side the most exposed side is a gate that's guarded by sentry where the walls rise out of lava flows i love the language in this chapter when we get to the mary malone chapter later, you know, Mary alone, as we'll talk about. There's a lot of really beautiful description that describes the natural landscape like this, just like that the art and the colors of it all blend together, but it's not violent, not like this. And this is very metal, very violent, literally metal, right? Because we're talking about metallic alloys.

I love this. Mills hold mighty forges where phosphor and titanium are being combined in alloys never known before. So he's forging battle weapons, it seems. But the alloys are standing out completely to me here because in Northern Lights and Golden Compass, we talked about this a bit. The blade in Bullvanger is made of two distinct new metal alloys right the blade asriel kills roger with is also made of those two distinct metal alloys

then we get to the subtle knife which we hear is made of two distinct alloys twisted together and so this must be a world splitting atom splitting life splitting soul splitting weaponry that he's making he is having them forge soul splitting weaponry like yes he it makes sense right if you have this fight going on between angels we know that they're not quite as strong as other angels there are some angels that are far far stronger that are in the inner circle and have that protection and strength uh but angels you know we we also know there's not just angels there's other witches there's other machines of war um and we don't really know the true power power of the authority that's something that asriel seems to be weighing out so these weapons could definitely kill anyone

fighting them yeah and yeah i mean it makes sense why they're doing this, and that stole spirit-splitting weaponry. But I will say, like, does Asriel need to go through all this effort, right? Like, is it a little OP, considering that what we found out is that angels are, like, little weaklings compared to us, the Chad humans.

Yeah. Right? And he doesn't even use this to, like, I don't't know it's interesting like i this is this is a big extent that i'm exploring the weaponry right like it's not brought up much more often because this story is is focused on differently we focus a lot more on the characters honestly um i think about it and i'm interested to see how they'll adapt this book right to screen when we get to series three. But I'm hoping it's not like some Avengers endgame event, you know, where it's just like war, war, war.

There's people everywhere. I don't know. I'm curious to see what they actually bring to the front of it during game time. Interesting. Good point. I hope it stays character based is my hope. In some aspects. I'm sure they will have to do some big things but

portals yeah how they're keeping it tight the watch is being changed above and the sentry must keep warm in the middle of the night slapping their hands on their arms for warmth ten minutes later the guard

is going to get his mug of chocolatel and smoke leaf. That sounds fun. But better of all, his bed. But that doesn't actually happen for him. Fun times don't happen because the last thing he expected was to hear a hammer at the door, but he does and so he snaps the spy hole open. And in its glare, three

hooded figures carry a fourth figure with an indistinct shape who seems wounded, and the figuring front throws his hood down announcing that they found baruch a rando angel new to them but not to us because again we are the wise chad humans um they found him at the sulfur lake and he has a message for azrael so the sentry lets them through and he realizes as they enter that the wounded figure is an angel. An angel of low rank, but an angel nonetheless.

So he instructs them to lay him in the guard room and he calls his boss to report what's happening. Wow, the staffing structure is interesting here. Like, not really trying to be a jackass, but it does bring up the comparison to the magisterium a little bit. Yeah. In that Asriel's working towards the greater good but this is a militarized situation now like he has commanders he has staff that report to each other and managers and all this uh he's not doing things that differently right his goal is war against the authority and so he's not playing like against them he's doing the same things in some aspects

i kind of see it as like it's more pointed that like the magisterium is doing it the same as him because we've known from the start that azrael's goal right like war well like it makes sense for this to be what he's building up so it's more strange that like why is the magisterium in the church staffed and structured like a like a militaristic uh operation but also where did azrael get all these people from so fast yeah well i mean support against oppression i think the it's hard when it's like a well this makes a. We have something similar in our other series we read, right? Like in A Song of Ice and Fire, there's the case of like a flawed, when you have a flawed regime happening of like, you want to support their cause

because there is totally oppression going on and there are horrible people in power, but is it a good cause? Is the person that's leading that cause really morally doing the right thing? Are they going to morally do the right thing when under pressure uh these are all things to weigh and it is interesting how asriel's presented here and how his structure is and the magisterium as you said like no they should not be militarizing but they already are so i i was just knocking that

one off you know i mean yeah yeah can't do nothing about that they have been they're ready they're like resources we can buy them yeah yeah well let's talk about where we are give this quote this line on the highest rampart of the fortress was a tower of adamant just one flight of steps up to a set of rooms whose windows looked out north, south, east, and west. The largest room was furnished with a table and chairs and a map chest. Another with a camp bed. A small bathroom completed the set. Lord Asriel sat in the adamant tower, facing his spy captain across a mass of scattered papers. Sick loft, bruh.

MTV Cribs, Asriel style. smells like farts uh smells like farts oh my god you could never bring a woman home here you better watch out don't go calling your ass scotty doesn't mind oh my god ruda scotty loves farts that's her kink oh stop no kink shaming on this podcast we are not allowed to kink shame it's not fair uh the tower of adamant what a mythological centerpiece of lore right it's uh in the bible greek mythos paradise lost it's everywhere it's a form of archaic diamond over time its meaning has changed depending on what lore and etymology you're following. It actually, interestingly enough to our episode today, has been confused with magnetic lodestones in the Middle Ages and lost kind of its meaning throughout that. Because of that, you might hear people use it to refer to being attached to something, right? Like I adamantly agree with Aliana pretty often, in my opinion, or i'm very adamant that aliana is being very stupid

right uh i'm just kidding aliana you can never do that the duality of chloe i agree she's dumb so you agree i think aliana's dumb uh it does stand to reason this adamant of the tower could be an archaic alloy or diamond and also usable or able to be transformed into magnetic lodestone. Honestly, like I wouldn't be surprised if this is the material that their lodestone, the Galavespians will talk about, use. It's been used in other great works, though. I didn't even realize I was chatting with my husband today who's a big lord of the rings fan one of the three rings of power galadriel's ring the the chick with the long blonde hair eliana and the ears and shit and kate blanchett galadriel not gasadriel galadriel anyways but she has a ring and it's called nanya n Business, and it's set with a gem of adamant. Oh, God, I guess we're covering Lord of the Rings now.

No, it is set with a gem of adamant, and Sauron's fortress in Mordor is made of adamant. So that's kind of sick. That's kind of crazy. Gulliver's Travels has an island made of adamant. Sir Artigal's sword in The Fairy Queen is adamant. The Divine Comedy by Dante has an angel sitting on adamant sir article's sword and the fairy queen is adamant the divine comedy by dante has an angel sitting on adamant in it it's throughout the bible look it up it's a thing but

less tangentially related are these two pieces i brought up ezekiel and the brimstone and hell and whole war being waged gog magog in some versions of alexander romance alexander the great builds walls of adamantine, the gates of Alexander to keep the giants Gog and the Gog from pillaging the peaceful southern lands. So I definitely think there is a connection in this to those Ezekiel passages to Gog and the Gog. But of course, the most famous book that we keep talking about, the most famous poem, we should say, is Milton's Paradise Lost. And it references adamant throughout the entire whole shebang constantly. Book one, Satan gets hurled to a bottomless perdition,

dwelling in adamantine chains and penal fire. In book two, the gates of hell are described as adamantine. Book six, Satan comes towering armed in adamant and gold, and his shield is described as tenfold adamant his armor also and the armor worn by fallen angels is described as adamantine and in book 10 the metaphorical pins of adamant and chains bind the world to satan thus to sin and thus to death or here in our story to dust it's so interesting i never knew that like this term had like such a such a long backstory until i mean we did this series and it's of course a similar similar route

right of how you get to adamantium alloy right for wolverine it is but i don't want to commend you for it but it is. Wait, why? Eliotta shows up and she's like, just like in Wolverine? Just like in Wolverine? Just like in X-Men? A literary podcast. If you would like to start an X-Men podcast with Chloe, she's looking. It's not me. I'm begging you, please. Please start an X-Men podcast with me something interesting you know is we get those prophecies about

Will and Lyra soon right and clearly if Lyra's supposed to be Eve that makes Will Adam so Adam Adam Ant so maybe that's part of you know his

strong will is part of that too as we're talking about here very unbreakable well inside the door I've lived for so long I actually was being very serious I thought that was a serious analysis I think it was great good job you're doing amazing

thank you thank you the duality of clans I agree it was great. Good job. You're doing amazing. Thank you. Thank you. The duality of clothes. I agree. It's happening all at once. It's happening all at once in her head. Fuck. It's not even one or the other. Well.

Inside the door, a small blue hawk is perched on the bracket. It's Lord Roke, the spy captain, sitting on the table as is his custom he is no taller than azrael's hand span he slanders a dragonfly but commands immense respect he is a galabespian who are great spies with most of their features um however he has kind of a malevolent tongue and he's like kind of pretty high strung and pullman describes the galabespians are small although and although they're small even if they were as real size

they would never be considered also small they got big big hearts big energy lord broke is speaking to asriel of lyra and what he knows of her and kind of like ribs him a little that apparently Asriel doesn't know as much and Asriel gives him kind of a very quick glare Lord Roke notes this and he realizes I've kind of taken advantage of his courtesy loses his balance a second

holding on to Asriel's wine glass though he's like fuck what was that we got a line a moment later Lord Asriel's expression was bland and virtuous just as his daughters could be and from then on lord rogue was more careful i love this i love the change of his expressions there you know i think this maybe i'm making this up but uh i love when people use like kind of just the imagery of a storm clearing out a face i think in a song of ice and fire it's used often to show rage pass on someone's face and i i feel like a storm literally passed asriel's face

here right like at first he like glares and the fire takes over him and then he's bland and virtuous and uh it's interesting too that it's comparable to coulter right who loses her temper and rage like that and you see that storm pass over her as well. Asriel doesn't doubt him on any of this information, but he explains he wants to understand why Lyra is the focus of the church's attention. Lord Rogue responds the magisterium doesn't really know, actually. Each of them are hiding secrets from the other, and they're constantly saying different things about the topic. He has spies in both of the big places the ccd and also the society of the work of the holy spirit that's a mouthful his spy in the society is the lady salmakia who is a skilled agent she had not unlike

lyra with the ex-bear king convinced the priest he's communicating with the wisdom through a forbidden ritual by appearing in front of him when he prayed. She lives in his bookcase now and has learned that the society thinks Lyra is the most important child to live, that the fate of everything will depend on her behavior. Yes, so both sides are very fixated on just like one each of the children it feels to me. Maybe it's not like maybe that's an uncharitable reading. But it feels that way to me. Right.

As Azrael seeking will as a weapon. And that's what the angels have kind of fixated on. We got to get this weapon to Azrael. Whereas on the other side, the Magisterium sees Lyra. They're very fixated on her because they see her as a big threat and they're trying to kill her. But neither of them see the whole picture that again two children are a pair and both are important

yeah that's actually what like helps them succeed sometimes in this story it feels like too like even in the subtle knife they won because they stuck together and cause you know they care about each other and trust each other that feels important

it is important well the CCD is currently holding an inquiry however with witnesses from Bolvanger that place and also elsewhere Lord Rook's other spy is Chevalier Tialis

Chevalier? I would go Chevalier fuck Chevalier Tialis. Chevalier? I would go Chevalier. Fuck. Like the truck? Chevalier Tialis. Just kept him updated by means of the lodestone resonator. I'm gonna be honest now, whenever we do Chevalier

or Chevalier or Chevalier or Chevalier. Chevalier. Chevalier. We should just go all in, Chevalier I like Chevalier, you know I like the trucks, the Chevaliers Now though I'm gonna hear him with a southern accent

For no reason whatsoever So get ready, get ready It's like the return of Scoresby I love the Galavaspians I love them so much I am so excited Lady Salmachia, amazing. Queen shit. Love her. Love me a good Galavespian.

Love the fairy tale energy with them. I didn't really think about some of Pullman's emphasis on fairies and folklore when I first read this story, right? So thinking about the Galavespians, it really brings up, you know, Thumbelina or Tam Thumb

or the flower fairy, the idea of a flower fairy, like in a Midsummer Night's Dream, the elves creeping into acorn cups to hide, the tempests, Ariel singing of lying inside a cowslip bell. They ride dragonflies, let alone train them, and birds. Lord Roke rides a bird. Of course, our Galavespians are not only described, though, as flower-dwelling folk, but are also described as having been weaponized in ways, whether for themselves or for keeping themselves alive, right, self-sustainability, or as hired guns for others. We'll learn a little bit more about their history.

More not this week, really, in a few weeks here. But I think there's a lot of how the humans in their world were wary of them that we learned, right? Trying to stamp them out. And the ones that we meet are spies and assassins involving themselves, though, with humanity's course and destiny. So not unlike the other magic folk we've met, Yorick, the angels, the witches.

I do love with Galavespians that the etymology of the name is derived from an insect, the Galwasp, and the word Vespa, which is Italian for wasp. This creature forms a round, shiny, often colored chrysalis on a tree in the Dead Sea of the Middle East. So there are a lot of other explanations of the name, but I think it's kind of interesting that there's also a translation that this has been called the apple of sodom in literary guides so it would be a bit of sarcasm that pullman chose the name galavespian it is interesting sodom and war is such an interesting story um i guess putting uh chevalier and salmachia into kind of context there, maybe we should think of them as that. As being from there.

In some aspects, yeah. We'll have to think about that as we go along. Yeah, and the whole apple thing, you know? Interesting. Considering. Well, overall, Lord Rogue thinks that the society will find out the truth. Though do nothing with it. But the CCD, however, is a different story.

Once they figure it out, they will act decisively. Asriel directs him to keep posted the news, and off Lord Rogue goes, springing onto his blue hawk saddle and flying out the window. It's pretty cool. He gets a burp. Other people just get, like, fucking insects. out the window it's pretty cool he gets a burp other people just get like fucking insects um azrael pets still mario playing with her ears and he's like with my big animal um remembering when lyra came to him on svalbard he's like that was that was real hard for me personally when i thought

i was gonna have to sacrifice my daughter good thing i didn't until roger had arrived it's very much like a what was it abraham abraham an angel i don't know if we discussed that yeah yeah well isaac was gonna or or ishmael yeah one of them one of them neville or harry pick one instead the angel brought a lamb but unfortunately for Roger I guess the story decided that was him anyway Azrael relaxes right when Roger appears because again what the fuck

Azrael and Mrs. Coulter brought together in romance by the idea of fuck them kids anyways he now wonders was this a fatal mistake and Mrs. Coulter, brought together in romance by the idea of fuck them kids. Anyways. He now wonders, was this a fatal mistake? Have I made a huge mistake? And then he wonders, what does Lyra know?

Now that I have estranged myself from my daughter because I killed her best friend and she doesn't want to talk to me. Ran away because of that. Anyways. And so they discuss that her alethiometer reading isn't actually that special he's like yeah whatever a bunch of people can do it with books and i'm like damn talk about unsupportive parents holy shit hey um god what does he want he's like

laura this isn't an a plus god you weren't even there to help her study anyways he wonders where the hell she is now but instead a knock on the door arrives, and the officer at the door is like, an angel is here! It's Baruch, who insists on speaking to him. So Asriel sits near the angel, throwing herbs into the fire so he can see his body better, just as Will did before, and asks Baruch, what have you come to tell me? And Baruch requests that he listens to everything before Asriel speaks, right? Because he's like, I cannot be interrupted right now. So he tells him his tale, he and his partner of the rebels party and they wanted to bring him something valuable so they'd climb to the heart of the clouded mountain and learn

the truth! The authority has retired to a chamber of crystal deep within the citadel and no longer rules in more than name. Metatron. Rules in his place. Proud, ambitious, and once allied to the Authority's plans 4,000 years ago. And you'd think that, like, Metatron sounds like some made-up fucking, like, Transformers name.

But no, it is actually a term. It is a real term. You need the mouthpiece of God. But now, oh my god, Chloe's playing metal music. It's a metal episode. It's a metal chapter. Through the fire and flames.

Actually, literally. Literally. Literally. But now, Metatron and the authority have a new plan intervene in human affairs move the authority to a new permanent citadel

and turn their mountain into an engine of war and his first campaign is to destroy Asriel's republic before turning to fix the corrupt and weak churches of the world and then Baruch trembles from his own weakness and asriel trembles from excitement just playing metal guitar in the back oh my god um i love this line baruch trembles from weakness asriel trembles from excitement it shows that contrast between

these two characters the way philip draws that, Baruch trembling to get the info out with his very last breaths, Asriel trembling to devour it with his many more. It's sad, but it's electric. It's like a perfect explanation of those characters. And I'm going to be honest, you know, when the authority is done with like their mass genocide and all uh if they're looking for a new home why don't they just take asriel's it's a pretty great crib as we just discussed right like it's ready it's prep it smells like farts yeah it smells like farts he's got all the weaponry got all the defenses yeah actually true they might that might be the plan baruch gathers his remaining strength right he doesn He doesn't have a lot left. He's telling Asriel about Will, the bearer of the knife.

Baruch has to stop for a moment and recover because he starts to feel himself drifting apart. So sad. Because he's made of dust, Aliana, dust. He says that his companion is with this boy and that this boy is the son of Stanislaus Grumman. And Asriel's like what grumman has a son and then brooks like no i lied catch up with the subtle knife he's not even grumman

liar uh he's like he was not born here his real name is not that and he starts to tell asriel i tried to bring the boy but then he trails off he's painful he takes a breath and asriel is obviously impatient as fuck right he cal He calms down, though. He's like, I'll just sprinkle more fucking herbs in the fire, which is what I do when I want to calm down. Just saying. And then Asriel's like, take your time. Smile.

He's like, do you know where my daughter is? Asriel, through gritted teeth. Yes, please take your time. Sure. Dude, he's dying. Like, in front of you. He came all this way to give you this info, and you can't even, like, chill for a moment and let him die in front of you? No. Jesus.

The disrespect, that's all. He's doing the best he can. I know, right? Which is not great. It's not great. I mean, he's doing a lot. There's a lot here that he has brought, which, you know know it's not news to us but it's big news for Asriel

Asriel should be thankful who's very surprised that I guess his drinking buddy had a secret son Baruch says that and also probably that turns out his drinking buddy also beat him to the whole crossing worlds thing yeah that's a big one As as really just never good enough i guess i'm sorry buddy he did it first yeah i mean

if he can't be like wow good job laura i'm not gonna be like good job as real okay i mean and i will say that that thought of roger is like the first time we we see him think about roger like that and like him go wow was what i did maybe wrong question mark uh he he hasn't like asked that question until this chapter and he didn't really ask it it was just like implied right by the silence but it's there it's implied that he's like wow what did i do did i fuck up um and and so like here as he has someone sacrifice himself once more at the foot of his cause right like maybe asriel is building up something to be more important maybe he's like huh maybe people are dying for my cause maybe they do matter he's like and he's like i don't know let's not think about that push that to the back of my mind

fuck these people were dying go faster that's him right now anyways baruch's like uh yes lyra is in the himalayas of her own world and great mountains and a valley of rainbows nazrael's surprised and impressed he's like wow that is a long ass ways from where they are and wow you flew very quickly brooke he says it is the only gift i have except the love of both on this i shall never see again poor one out i'm so sad i can't believe he's about to fucking die i hate this shit i hate it is it's so sad it's so sad i'm sorry philip pullman i take it back don't fuck you um asriel says if you found her so easily and brooke's like yes then any angel can find her too

asriel asks the angel to show him where on the map himalaya is he's like hey i know you're bleeding out of dust right now but like if you could just lean over and just give me a stab here on the map Himalaya is. He's like, hey, I know you're bleeding out of dust right now, but if you could just lean over and just give me a stab here on this map. Give me this little pinpoint. Drop a pin for me. And Baruch is losing his senses, right? He's murmuring, with the knife, he can enter and leave worlds. Will

is his name. They're in danger. He and Balthamos. Metatron knows we have his secret. I was his brother. Whoa, whoa. What? Whoa. Some lore.

Baruch. Baruch. Baruch is on fire. I just thought that was great. You know, like he is commonly known. The Book of Baruch is apocryphal to the hebrew and protestant canons it's not in the the bible right so this is interesting because this is like deleted lore this is uh extra content on the the dvd bonus edition of the vibe the bibles yeah um it's real though it's real shit

they're brothers they're brothers bro it's real look though. It's real shit. They're brothers. They're brothers, bro. It's real. Look it up. Google it. Baruch is the brother of Enoch. It happened. And he explains that they made it into the clouded mountain. That's how.

That Metatron was Enoch, son of Jared, son of Mahalil. With many wives, he casts Baruch out. But he trails off and he's like, oh, thinking of my dear Balthamos. And he's losing it. He's going. And it's so sad. It is literally just such a beautiful passage of him just like bleeding dust out on this table. And the characterization for Baruch in contrast to Asriel, who's so hellbent, pun, on this war with the authorities, seeming to care kind of nothing for Lyra beyond the extension

of her power, almost here. You know, earlier, he's like, yeah, whatever, she can read an alethiometer. But now that there's a some sort of prophecy being milled about about people that she might be around or near or important to, he's like, interesting, interesting that Lyra is real important suddenly. It doesn't feel like he cares about where she is necessarily, other than like, like he cares not because of her safety, but because he's like, oh wow, that magisterium's gonna roll up on her real quick. Baruch, though, he was cast away from his whole family. And instead of following in his brother's dark path,

he chooses love, and he chooses Balthamosamos and chooses good and not killing kids and bringing light to people and sacrificing his last breaths for these two children who he would rather spent these last breaths with the love of his life right he's doing this for humanity for free will and free lyra and free will and uh what's good in the world i don't know if i was lyra's dad i would drop everything right and go be like wow maybe i should go get my daughter from the clutches of my abusive ex because i know she a little crazy and maybe she's unsafe over there you know being drugged every day by her but uh he doesn't know that obviously in azrael's mind though that's like not it right like this war is obviously important you can't just walk away from a huge ass rebellion you've started but i don't know

one parent showed up that's all yeah i mean it's just interesting he never even bothers to secure lyre because a lot of people do that because they're like afraid that their family will be used against them yeah some like enemies but whatever yeah but also there was something else that you said in terms of baruch uh you know, fighting in all this for freedom, right, etc. And freedom of thought, of course, but in general, for people to be able to choose. And I think that, you know, around the time that this book was coming out, in general, like, Baruch and Balthamo's having this, like, same-sex relationship in a children's book was really eye-opening for probably many people. And during the time, culture has come, I think, a lot further in the years since this book came out. And it's fantastic the way that acceptance has gone, I think, a much longer way. There's still more of ways to go. But like, I think that there's some subtext to there in regards to that when it comes to Baruch and Balthamos and wanting a world where people are free to like,

think and live and be themselves. Yeah, I would even say like, we hear in the first chapter of this book with them, you you know that they weren't even purely just male humans before one of them was not you know they're transformed i mean it's not just two queer characters that's really big for a children's series too in my opinion i do think that's big and i think that he gets such a sad celebrated death he does go out here like kind of like a hero that he made it all this way and brought the news of this rebellion this far yeah it's a little bit of like you know the unfortunate part is it is it does go into the trap of like kill your gays but at the same time like i and i think i find this like so interesting because at the time like that

was big for me when i was reading this so i was like oh shit well asriel directs baruch back to lyra and he's like all right i don't care about gay rights no asriel does not say gay rights asriel does not say I'm gonna say that Azrael directs Baruch back to Lyra and he repeats okay okay so a valley full of winds and rainbows with tattered flags on the shrine simple easy we're gonna google earth and they're gonna just

show us satellite photos NBD not really at all he tries to look at the atlas and is like what the fuck is this but an officer look at the atlas and is like, what the fuck is this? But an officer knocks at the door and just opens it without waiting. What's the point of fucking knocking if you're not going to wait for your superior?

Your superior, especially. In his apartment, right? He could have had someone there. He could have been doing stuff. His bed is in this apartment. But he just opens it, right? And then the suction of air just like whooshes in this apartment but he just opens it right and then the suction of air just like whooshes in and then like Baruch just like shivers

he can't do it anymore and like then some particles just blow apart and that's it and he's rolling upward and vanishing with only a whisper on the air of both of us how dare you I'm just like what the fuck officer

it is sad and like I what the fuck, officer? It is sad. And like, I feel bad for the officer because he didn't realize or know. I mean, I mean, he feels bad. Yeah. Asriel, like, kind of comforts Delmaria because angels, of course, are made of dust, just like demons. Demons are dust. This is going to happen to her someday.

You know, we all fucking die. And she feels him tremble. And he's scared, too, it too it seems right because he trembles she stills him though with her energy the orderly apologizes and asriel tells him it wasn't your fault and he says take my compliments to king a gunway he directs the orderly to gather the king and his commanders as well as mr facilities the lithiometer reader he asks him to arm and fuel the number two squadron of gyroctors and zeppelins as well as Mr. Bacillides, the alethiometer reader. He asks him to arm and fuel the number two squadron of gyroptors, and zeppelins as well, ready to take off and head southwest. He'd send further directions after. He crosses to the window, watching the deathless fires and

smoke on the air, the hammers banging in the wind, and tells Stalmario that they've learned a lot, but not enough. They welcome the next knock at the door, Tukros Basilides, with a nightingale demon. He tells Mr. Basilides his problem that now takes priority. Pinpoint that cave. Get me the coordinates as precisely as you can. This is the most important task you have ever undertaken. Begin it once, if you please. Well, that's good. You're sending someone after your daughter, you know? I'll give you that point, I guess, since you won't go yourself to pick her up from her after-school activity or from her

mom's house, but whatever. Whatever, Asriel. Whatever. You're like, none of us will have custody. If you can't have custody, Marissa, I guess I won't try either. Yep. I'm joking. He obviously wasn't allowed. saw that yes we saw that but

he couldn't live both of his lives and take care of her i understand that this chapter is a great introduction to some of the members of asriel's camp we don't get a great view yet of king of gunway beyond this but we will i think this chapter makes a good case for some of them being more significant than Asriel himself, like in the war, as far as why they're doing this, right? As far as free will, I mean, Asriel's war on the authority is of course inspired, but I feel like some of the people that are in this war with him as his ally, I feel like some of these allies are a little more inspired, and could have more, but I do have some regrets with some of the backstory like King of Gunway I would love to learn more of why he

joins Asriel I imagine when they adapt this to tv show they might actually kind of embellish it a little more you know and give it a little more life but uh we have talked before a little bit about Coulter right she visits Africa at some point when she was a little younger than now, so it makes me wonder if maybe the Magisterium also went to Africa after that, right? They are a little bunch of colonizing assholes, as we know. Wouldn't surprise

me if maybe he's facing oppression in his land, in Africa. But we don't really get that backstory. I don't know. I do expect something to come up there. Yeah, we don't really know I guess where he's um in africa and i kind of wish that they would tell us more than just like from africa i'm like yeah there's like a shit ton of different cultures there yeah especially like after this it's just like the african king the african king the african king like all right but like they're all pretty different but who is the african king i'm like all right but like they're all pretty different but who is the

african king man that's what i'm trying to know you know like tell me more i want to know more where's the moment where he explains why he's fighting for free will where's my big monologue you know i don't know i want more true i do true no i agree i do kind of feels i don't want to be an asshole right like i don't write books because I can't. It's not for me. I'm not beautifully, I can do shorthand writing. You know, I'm good at that, but not books. And I just feel like it's there.

The plot's there. It could be touched. But maybe, maybe that's the problem. It's too easy. Pullman likes a challenge, you know? Maybe they'll flesh it out, you know? Yeah. The show.

I do love the Mr. Bacillides. This is a total reference. The Mr. Bacillides, Tukros, such classic etymology. Bacillides is the early Christian Gnostic teacher in Alexandria, Egypt, who taught 117 AD to 138 AD, inheriting his teachings supposedly from the apostle Saint Matthias. And in Greek mythology, Tukros, or Tuker, also Tukris, that's the son of King Telamon of Salamis Island and his second wife Hesione, daughter of King Laomedon of Troy. He fights alongside his half-brother Ajax in the Trojan War and is the legendary founder of the city of Salamis on Cyprus.

After Tuker's death, the kingdom gets incorporated into that of Dardanus and the entire region becomes known as Dardania. But in later times, the people of Troy refer to themselves as Tukrians. So I thought that was very interesting, the whole little Greek mythology he gives them. And I do think there's something about the Nightingale that's interesting for him as an alethiometer reader and we'll talk about the Nightingale a little more in the next chapter for sure. Interesting.

So everyone's got their own alethiometer. It's a war towards information, you know? Just as much as it is a force. Maybe more. It's mostly information at this point, so it's interesting to see how that's all ramping, right? As everyone's searching for the same people. We get a continuation again of the dream sequence of Lyra's where she

Stammed her foot so hard it even hurt her in the dream. You don't believe I'd do that, Roger, so don't say it. I will wake up, and I won't forget, so there. She looked around, but all she could see were wide eyes and hopeless faces. Pale faces, dark faces, old faces, young faces, all the dead cramming and crowding, close and silent and sorrowful. Roger's face was different. his expression was the only one that contained hope she said why do you look like that why aren't you miserable like them why aren't you at the end of your hope and he said because that's chloe's line thank you i did so

great i would like to thank the academy i would like to thank that one guy at Walmart that helped me read that one label that one time. And my mom and my dad. Thank you so much. BAFTA. BAFTA. And speaking of BAFTA, let's roll into preemptive absolution, which is nothing but drama. And let's start off the drama with John Milton from Book 3 of Paradise Lost. book three of this poem absolutely showcases some really great parts of like the loyalty to knowledge and freedom of knowledge that both john milton and philip pullman have this line that he

quotes at the top of the chapter is relics beads indulgences dispenses pardons bowls the sport of wins you don't have to be a scientist to understand uh kind of where that's going since this is a magisterium heavy chapter, right? Preemptive absolution is so displayed here with men choosing it for what they're about to do, which is in this case literally just premeditated murder. It's a fancy sinner's way of saying premeditated murder in this chapter. They call it preemptive absolution, but that's just for fun. This passage is largely referencing, in the poem especially, the difference between like Franciscan monks or like choosing the life of monkhood versus greedy corrupt priests who are taking power at the cost of others. Some would say maybe even at the cost of those others' souls,

right? They're taking those souls. A longer version of the passage really displays that. They passed the planet seven and passed the fixed, and that crystalline sphere whose balance weighs, the trepidation talked, and that first moved. And now St. Peter at heaven's wicket seems, to wait them with his keys, and now at foot, of heaven's ascent when they lift their feet when low a violent crosswind from either coast blows them transverse ten thousand leagues awry into the devious air then might ye see cowls hoods and habits with their wearers toss and fluttered into rags then relics beads indulgences dispardons, bowls, the sport of winds, all these upworld aloft fly over the backside of the world far off into a limbo large and broad, since called the paradise of fools to few unknown, long after now unpeopled and untrod.

I just think that difference of what these priests and these fathers in this passage are in this chapter are becoming at the magisterium as they turn their cheek to the dark side. It's described so well here of that difference between the selfless priests and the corrupt. Yeah, and the lines that are called out there, especially some of it, very interesting that especially indulgences dispenses, pardons, bowls, and we'll come back to that in a second. Definitely pardons going on. The inquirer of the CCD has Fra Pavel on trial as a witness

and wants to know the words that he heard the witch speak on the ship. He looks scholarly with his frog demon nearby, and this is the eighth day of evidence in the high, towered college of Saint Jerome. Fra Pavel says that he cannot recall the witch's words exactly, as he'd never

seen torture before, so that very much shocked him and made him feel faint and sick. Imagine how the witch felt. But Fra Pavel knew the meaning of it, of her words. Lyra was recognized by the clans of the north as a subject of prophecy, heard long before, with the power to make a fateful choice

on which all worlds depended. And I just want to say in general, these four chapters that we're going through, especially the last three, are some great structuring from pullman as we go from like hell to the church right and more of that information about lyra but also like here like why is everyone so fascinated with her like that's that question starts in the previous chapter and we get more of those answers here and it's a scene that is also

held together because it's uh being watched and relayed by that same network of little spies yes totally spies totally spies the galavespians and there was a name that lyra was called or that she would be called fra pavel says and and the church would hate her and fear her but the witch had not uttered the name because another witch under an invisibility spell killed her and escaped the court asks if coulter would know and he says she would not and she also kind of fled like immediately after that he tells them he learned the child went through to the new world opened by asriel and has acquired the help of a boy with a very special knife. Pavel asks to speak freely,

and the president of the court says he will not be punished for presenting what he had been told. Pavel explains the knife can create a window between worlds, the power to kill most high angels and even higher than them. There is nothing that this knife cannot destroy, he says. I'm really finding Pavel's character so interesting this reread i was gonna say compelling but i don't think that's a good word he's not compelling pavel's not compelling by any means but he's interesting he's a god-fearing man right that much is made apparent but also made apparent that it's not just god he fears he fears power powerful men like mcphail powerful woman like coulter and i'm gonna be honest i kind of forgot like Macphail, powerful women like Coulter.

And I'm going to be honest, I kind of forgot Macphail was in the books until this reread. I was like, oh, yeah, you're kind of forgettable. In the show, you're a lot different. You're not Father Macphail, you're Daddy Macphail in the show. Yeah, he's literally the dad of Daphne Keaton. Powerful. But anyways, yes, powerful prophecies, powerful magic. Pavel's afraid of power. He's also kind of playing coy because I think he has an understanding of power and what certain things mean.

Here he's like, oh, heresy, I'm so afraid to say it. He's securing insurance, securing safety. And in a way, it does feel like he also, I don't want to say he believes in it, but he understands the power and what saying these things out loud means, what giving this information to the magisterium means. And he seems almost afraid of the power that Lyra and her prophecy wields because he seems to kind of believe it. I think it definitely comes from being an alethiometer reader on one hand, right? being an alethiometer reader on one hand right seeing that course of life that is spread out beyond him that could happen or could not happen always just one hand away from that fate the ink is there but it's still wet he's kind of weaselly otherwise he has no backbone yeah but i like this

juxtaposition of him that he is weighing all of these things at once the world's on his shoulders as he reads this alethiometer and telling them this great prophecy is is a big choice that he does not make easily here and the torture of the witch the power coulter wielded over this highly magnificent intelligent magical being was horrible and terrible and he himself claims to have peeled away from seeing it but it does make me wonder is he more afraid of what that knowledge and revealing would mean to the court and to people of the earth who seek free will and what will happen to them? Because he is a person of the earth, right? When, as we've just discussed, the authority wants to come cleanse it all. you guys are in line to be done for uh i think pavel understands that this knowledge is terrible big knowledge and it's almost as if his true fear is what he's about to tell them yeah there's something interesting going on there because you're talking about his fear of the power that

others hold over him and it almost seems to some extent like there's a fear of his own power in this knowledge right he's scared of him his own because yeah knowledge is also power but it's also like to what extent is it especially when you have physical force going on here right and the magisterium has been able to exert power over a lot of this a lot of civilization in lara's world because they have been able to control uh knowledge right um it's a great example of that whole idea of tyranny of heaven which is a phrase that comes from paradise lost um especially as relating to this whole preemptive absolution part uh because the church again gets to control knowledge and what truth is and all those ethics and they console pavel over and over again that you know reminding him that

it's fine for him to report what he has been told that he will not be punished and to an extent maybe it's like he values his position of holding that knowledge within the magisterium does he feel that he is putting his position right the power that he has at risk uh with all of this and that you were saying if he believes what's going to happen next is he afraid of it is he afraid of it coming to pass because then that threatens again his position and the power that he has within this structure but also yeah i mean everything that's going here shows that lack of freedom of knowledge and speech that the magisterium has created uh that you were talking about and then also again how the church is redefining ethics with which you said earlier

you know premeditated murder it's becoming allowed so yeah it's just normalized it's becoming completely normalized that is interesting that he's afraid of his own free will and his own role right and uh as he tells them in just a second like he can rearrange things you know like the fate hasn't happened yet but it could happen if this path is taken i don't make the rules i just tell you what the rules are yeah world's split apart yeah he's sweating and trembling too right like he's like freaking out from all this this is a high pressure situation speaking of heresy the inquirer is like well did you discover the name like tell me and he did the president again says you're not a heretic don't waste our time tell us and he reveals the child is in the position of eve the wife of adam the mother of us all the cause of all sins

yes lyra this girl is the cause of all sins on earth over and over i'm sure uh the stenographers they're definitely the cause of like these men's sins i guess now that they're all like fuck them kids too yeah i mean i guess if that gives them a reason, you know, to sleep at night or whatever. God. The stenographers are nuns of St. Philomel, and they're sworn to silence, and even they gasp at this. I love this. So this is another reference. This is a princess of is philomela after being raped and mutilated by her sister's

husband tiras obtains her revenge and is transformed into a nightingale a bird renowned for its song but because of the violence that is associated with the myth the song of the nightingale is often depicted or interpreted as a sorrowful lament in nature the female nightingale is actually mute and only the males of the species sing. I thought that tied in as such a great reference he built into the nuns of St. Philomel who are sworn to silence the nightingales here, especially when we talk about the nightingale earlier on in Asriel's chapter, that the man that reads for them, which we don't know Tukros' background, but he has a nightingale demon. So he is allowed to speak,

and he is allowed to read and do his thing, but these stenographers are silent. They're just frogs croaking. Croak, croak, croak. Rub it. Eep. Cavell reminds the court that the alethiometer does not forecast, right?

As you were saying, it says if things come about, the consequences then will be like Lyra may not fall, but if she is tempted like Eve, she may fall This is a distinct possibility and the outcome will, you know just inform pretty much everything ever and dust

and sin may triumph. NBD Yeah One of the common themes across this chapters is definitely that importance and also not importance behind the alethiometer as we mentioned with asriel who brushed it off he's like it's not that special that she can read the alethiometer and brought in too gross his own reader and now here we have fra pavel a third reader blowing the lid off of that alethiometer magic and of course mary in the next chapter with the eging even uh shows that dust can be read in many different ways it is interesting that asriel seems to disrespect the art in the office of the

alethiometer right uh here pavel is explaining it so delicately and intimately and tenderly it's a tool that he's known and used and treasured and that does come off compared to asriel in the last chapter yeah interesting well after everyone overcomes this mega drop of drama the inquirer asks him the child's whereabouts he says that mrs coulter keeps her in the himalaya and that he will continue to work hard toward a more precise location so again you got that information race here and he hesitates and father mcphail pulls the next bit out of him he thinks that the society might actually know more about this than they do and might be on the move and the president is obviously pissed about this and frappavell's little frog demon whimpers i didn't know frogs could whimper um the rivalry between the branches is pretty famous,

and getting caught in between those is bad, but he would rather not hold back any information at this time. Fra Pavel tells him that they are closer to finding the child due to their other hidden sources, and he had learned all of this from the alethiometer. The president instructs him to continue

investigating, and whatever he needs in his secretarial help is his to command. Frappavelle is then dismissed, and Father MacPhail dismisses the nuns, asking for the transcripts. By end of day. Can we read the departmental amity? You know, it's really sticking out between the society and the CCD. They're both bloodthirsty and hated by all but the society seems to be smarter faster and better and i wonder if this could have any bearing in the future of politics in the story right in

the books of dust i don't really have any further thoughts on that i just do consider i'm like huh i wonder if this is going to become important in those books at some point it uh it feels like a veep episode with everyone just working against each other right like father mcphail is just like sitting there looking at father fraud pavale and he's like why is that your hair pavel why you know it's the most accurate depiction of government it is it feels deep veep and it feels like this this depiction of authority right here is a magisterium yeah same thing watch veep you have to especially as they're like but what if we did this bad thing i mean mean, we are kind of a veep. But we didn't do that bad thing.

We didn't know that. Yeah. We're kind of a veep podcast now is what we're trying to imply. Yeah. Yeah. Episode one. Here we are. No, I'm just kidding.

So the president, but not that president, this president, speaking of veep, adjourns the consistorial court and the twelve members from oldest Father McEppway who's ancient, to the youngest Daddy Gomez who's pale, trembling, with zealotry I don't know why they cast that person as Father Gomez. It's so ridiculous he's so good looking and they shouldn't have done that

It's fucked up Anyways, they gather their notes and follow the president to the council chamber where they can then speak in privacy father mcphail the current president had been elected quite young president served for life and it was expected that he would mold the destiny of the church for many years to come he was dark featured tall and posing with the shock of gray hair a lizard demon and completely ripped thanks to his very humble diet and personal trainer i love the way pullman says this here because he buries the lead he's like

he would be fat if he wasn't like he straight up is like saying that it's such a stupid it's weird i'm not sure why it's so weird it's very strange it's very weird it was uh what does it even mean it was funny uh once the men have been seated mcphail tells them the dark details left out at court asriel's assembling an army including angels malevolent to the church and authority the oblation board wants to replace the ccd to their chagrin and they will need to do something about it they must destroy the boy with the knife that frappavelle talked about and the oblation board and theologians from Bulwanger have information on dust for them. As soon as McPhail says he's going to question the people downstairs, one of the men kind of shifts uncomfortably.

And then we get the thought process here that it's soundproofed down there. And it's a white tile room with great drainage. Ugh. Little trough action going on there bleeding them out all righty all righty the authority is out there father mcphail continues right he's like well we need to be wary about what we learn and keep our purpose in our mind not unlike asriel in the last chapter saying they needed to learn more the oblation board wanted to understand dust but they must now destroy that altogether.

The CCD has to destroy the Oblation Board, the College of Bishops, every agency the Holy Church does the work of the authority through. And that brings them to point five, the child, aka Eve, aka Lyra. Based on the past story of Eve, she'll probably fall, so he proposes a very radical path to kill her beforehand. Father Gomez is just like super jazzed about this. I love killing kids. Yeah, he's like, he has been doing, and then it says, preemptive penance every day of my adult life. I'm like, bro, what? I get that, though. i got that and that preemptive penance and absolution were a i guess method researched

and developed by the consistorial court but it's very secret it's self-scourging and flagellation maybe not soft i don't know but i assume so well for sins not yet done in order to grant absolution before committing sin even if never called like for murder and everyone agrees to this and i'm just like i don't this doesn't seem like sound like scientifically theologically in any way anyways we have a line here of like he will be invisible he will come in the night like the angel that blasted the assyrians he will be silent yeah the self-flagellation is very crazy and we actually they they gave us that in that tv show

right now that now that you mentioned that i forgot that we got it in the tv show but that line is crazy that is like a bible line yeah it sounds like it it really does he will be invisible he will come in the night sounds like the the angel of death, right? Of course. And really is reminiscent of like, they talk about here for the boss of the Assyrians, but is reminiscent of like the plagues. Yeah. Right.

The angel of death in that last one. Pesalence. Yeah. Assyrian. Well, those were the Egyptians, but like, yeah, like the last one where every firstborn is killed. Yeah. Well, this is definitely every firstborn is killed. Yeah.

Well, this is definitely the firstborn, right? Lyra is on that list. Shit, she's an only child. Do only children count? Okay, I'm done. I don't know in this scenario. I wish we knew. If you're from the Authority or the Magisterium, please drop us an anonymous line. Do I count?

Yeah. Would you kill me? No, I'm just kidding i love that this has just become a larp like a larp of misogyny and murdering they're just grown men out here larping their murdering eve fantasy it feels very secret society right very in line with that third book of paradise lost and the men in their crystalline wares this isn't monkhood this is appreciating of life or nature which i i do love how this chapter is placed next to mary malone's chapter right because like you said we have these three chapters of these people you

know searching for information and trying to find lyra for something but then you get mary alone we do and it's interesting the way all these are structured together and i this whole idea of preemptive absolution is so funny it's so ridiculous um i feel like there's very little theological substance to this rationale again which i guess is the whole point right like it's kind of pointing also to the hypocrisy that like some show in their faith like in real life right also where they believe that their faith in jesus or god absolves them from their sins when the whole point of penance slash repentance is that you're also doing these things and the understanding that you're striving to goodness and you may fail

but you're not intentionally doing it and trying to like do things like i don't know murdering kids right there's no like yeah that's definitely this is totally what i'm supposed to do yeah it's definitely like not okay um it's in the 10 it's in the big 10 don't murder yeah right like it definitely is in the big 10 you know all the way back there right god like from the get-go is like this is definitely in the commandments all right uh no murdering the kid's part isn't in it but i'm pretty sure he's also like not into that thy neighbor i mean jesus loves the little children okay i sang that song jesus loves the little children yeah jesus loves me this i know yeah anyways so it's funny that like the the chapter opens again with those lines indulges indulgences dispenses

pardons bulls not like too familiar with bulls but indulgences right were a thing that was like part of the catholic church much more popular back then especially the middle ages where um it was often given out it's sort of like a it's considered like a permit like a in quotes way to reduce the amount of punishment one has to undergo for sins and at first you know it was kind of used as like not really a tithe but like way to support charities but like as a church in the middle ages grew more and more corrupt they kept trying to sell indulgences like yeah you totally need this so that like you can secure your spot into heaven and like you won't be punished as much and things like that so just keep buying indulgences and so it kind of really shows

along with those other parts of like this is not theologically sound uh the corruption of this church like there's this is so immoral but i kind of of also want to dig into some of the methods of preemptive absolution that Father Gomez has been doing. I find them a little interesting because none of them, interestingly, are praying or penance. Because, oh my god, what if praying actually forces you to do some meditation and self-reflection on yourself and who you are and why you're interested in killing children? But instead, he's chosen this thing that's more about the infliction of pain unto oneself. And again, flagellation is called out and

flagellants are what people who practice flagellation, usually again self-flagellation are called. And it's practiced usually out of tradition in some more Roman Catholic areas. And that includes the Philippines on Holy Week. You can kind of see it sometimes on TV or whatever. I haven't gotten to see it in person had tradition in some like more roman catholic areas and that includes the philippines on holy week you can kind of see it sometimes on like tv or whatever i haven't got to see it in person

because that doesn't i'm not into that but in some places you know people will go on the streets it'll be like a whole parade thing on holy week and you got people like you know just throwing and like whipping their self themselves and yet motherfuckers are pissed about pride let me just tell you yeah um so so that's a thing right and and they're kind of doing it to flagellate themselves also to like that's sort of i guess in a way for them meditative to feel what christ did but that doesn't seem like what father gomez's like motivation here is not very christ-like now no it brings up some of my questions again of like this whole thing about metatron and the first angel like the authority right and we've discussed

before a little bit how interesting it is that jesus is like rarely mentioned in the series only mentioned twice as is the term christian and both come from mary malone and it's never been in the context of lyra's world slash like the the magisterium like that church entity only within the context of like our world so i'm like so what what is the basis then of like lyra's church is there christianity in lyra's church what the fuck is this church then right is is jesus not there and if he isn't then why are they practicing flagellation which is like it's kind of intentionally supposed to imitate like, what happened to Jesus on his way towards crucifixion. And I think it was like mentioned a little in the Book of Dust, right, Jesus, but I'm still just like, doesn't seem like it's a big part of the whole like Christian ethos here at all. And they never use again the term christian well and it's interesting you say that right because that does feel and this is not really a spoiler but like an expansion because that is lyra's world that we're hearing that in so yeah i'm just kind of surprised maybe that is

a late stage pullmanism move you know like maybe he was like all right we'll bring him in a little um but even that it's like so small yeah so strange it is small i'm not sure and i would love to learn i hope there's a little clarity on that when we get into that last book of dust someday when it happens look under your chair i'm just kidding yeah i mean there might not be yeah one might be like i don't know jesus seems chill i just don't like the structure that's been built around him the church clearly but then it's also interesting that that's the translation in will and mary's world of what the church has become right like that the church evolved and that they needed something to put themselves beneath that wasn't just the magisterium you know their world evolved into christianity and broke off into other branches of religion and

uh it seems yeah no one even really worships though no one even like goes to church well like no one goes to church you know what i mean like or a mass or anything art imitates life just kidding true very true but anyway then we get a jump cut and we go to the man from bull of anger who's sitting in a tight little area, light and dirty clothes with his rabbit demon. Not my favorite rabbit demon, but it'll do. It's Dr. Cooper. It'll do. Right, like I'm like, it's not my favorite Arctic hair, but okay, it'll do.

It's Dr. Cooper. This is a cell. It's a chair, a bunk, a bucket. MacPhail's visiting and asks Dr. Cooper about severing Lyra, or almost severing her, but Cooper's like mrs coulter intervened and he discloses that the whole program was pretty distressing for him it was distressing for everyone i think especially the children

yeah he had thought the program was approved by the ccd and he says or else he never would have done it that's what they all say uh sure great parallel with pavel at the start right talking about the torture showcasing the magisterium's willing to uh do to people that they are willing to hurt people and uh it does bring back some of those vibes in that first book of you know those those doctors who they had to make those great choices of oh do i do a horrible thing that could lead to like the mass murder of a bunch of children or uh you know is it for the greater good or do i just like say no and not do it and they did it so yeah the only thing i would have thought that was like that

it wasn't approved by this department and like okay yeah or that like hitler called and said maybe pull it off you know what i mean like holy shit right jesus uh you you're seeing the results come on you guys so yeah mcphail then brings up well what about asriel's research do you know about it what was there anything about that why was there all that energy going on and dr cooper's like well we know some things about severing and releasing energy and that controlling it takes a lot of force, but it can be done with powerful ambaric currents like an atomic explosion. You know, just really easy information in case anyone's taking notes that would want to use it. Just putting it out there. Could it come back?

We don't know. For some reason, no one had taken Asriel's work seriously because it was like heretical and all. And now here we are, giant hole in the sky. And MacPhail is like, listen, listen, mini pep talk, buddy. Forgiveness is earned by cooperation. Tell us everything and we'll put you in a nice room and give you writing utensils, maybe a stenographer. They don't talk.

Anything you want. And you just need to remember everything your buddy, your colleague there, studied. And then he leaves. Wow. What a crazy bit that, like, Macphail just proved he's willing to embrace heresy to the fullest if it means he obtains power. If it means moving ahead. If it means beating the society. Or the woman.

That's showcased here. He's willing to learn asriel's research as long as it means he'll rise preemptive absolution god wants me to be better than the society better than asriel better than marisa it's clear right they think that they get to define what morality is so anything that they are like yeah this is fine this is forgiveness right it plays into that idea of absolution and indulgences and you know it's also very in line i think with what we learned about metatron's character that like the seizing of power right and that's kind of what mcphail is doing a little bit here

trying to do within the politics of this whole magisterium and you know i'm gonna just say like when it comes to asriel's like work and what they hope to do with this knowledge right i think because they are always like thinking of it as heretical right for the most part until like i don't know whatever that they're often a few steps behind but yeah they do what they can if you embraced magic bro the magic of life this is science this is not magic this is science experimental theology

it can be both so we get back to our Galavespian spy in the corner Chevalier Tialis who is speeding through Geneva to meet up with Lady Salmachia the other Galavespian. Things are very dangerous for them because they're small. For example, cats, dogs, dangerous. They meet at the seventh of their many meeting places. Lady Salmachia's contact in the society had gotten an

invite from Father Macphail. Tialis thinks Macphail won't disclose the assassin and shares the entire thing we just heard they both talk about lyra how they hope to meet this girl one day especially because their lives are very short they're only nine to ten years and both of them are eight they tend to die very strong but suddenly compared to them lyra's life is as long as a witch's hmm tialis returns to the college of saint jerome to text a message to lord roque on the old lodestone resonator and while the gallivespians were talking father mcphail sends for father gomez and prays with him then gives him some trip resources and also a couple of like warnings of like how this is all gonna go all right gomez is gonna be entirely on his own also congratulations on this quest also you can never come back

that's it you cannot like return to the church or speak to anyone again uh and mcphail says that looking for lyra also would give him away so instead of looking directly for lyra you gotta look for the tempter and said and use that to find the child. And interestingly, it says of the tempter, like, she will lead you to the child. Because the alethiometer has told him that and that the tempter is a strange one.

And he tells Gomez to not get distracted. And then Gomez's little beetle demon clicks, which I think is interesting. So now we know Gomez's demon. And he gets a packet of papers!ay these are resources uh actually it is it's everything that they know about the woman the tempter and then in a feat that makes everything worth it from the self-torture to being excommunicated from the church gomez finally gets called by his first name, by President Father MacPhail. He calls him Luis. And then he cries before kissing MacPhail goodbye.

What a dramatic passage. I love it so much. It's just pure drama. How much better for us all if there had been a Father Gomez in the Garden of Eden? We would never have left paradise. The young priest was nearly weeping with pride. The court gave its blessing oh my god shut up it just reminds me of the uh hey fellas is it gay if meme like if you hate women so much

is it okay to kiss men oh my god it is it is it is that it's completely fine but it's just funny that they're doing it uh especially because like father gomez is just a fucking gilded 21 year old safari hunter like he straight up is like the kid that lived on your street that wanted to shoot squirrels with a bb gun okay like that's who father gomez is it's fucked not too dissimilar i guess from mrs culture yeah um true bat style oh there you go yeah the bat yeah there's a there's definitely a through line there but i'm just like that idea of like yeah if we had a father gomez in the garden of eden then we would have never left paradise i'm like do you not understand like what the concept of the garden of eden is like how did y'all get to this point in the church and like completely

missed the whole fucking point of like the garden of eden is a place of innocence of no sin right where we followed like god and like i guess do they not have the ten commandments right because i feel like father gomez like killing eve right yeah she might not have eaten from like the tree of knowledge but that in itself that is a sin that is a a fall in and of itself an act of disobedience because you know murder but I'm just like did they not anyway that's all I got

yeah I don't know I don't know it is that's great I didn't really think about that that like he is sinning in the garden daddy Gomez in the garden with his rifle it's like a clue episode that in and of itself oh my god anyway well we get back to our blackout before we end the chapter with lyra and roger you're lyra then she realized what that meant she felt dizzy even in her dream she felt a great

burden settle on her shoulders and And to make it even heavier, sleep was closing in again, and Roger's face was receding into shadow. Well, I... I know... there's all kinds of people on our side, like Dr. Malone. You know there's another Oxford Roger, just like ours? Well, she... I found her and... she'd help. But there's only one person really who... It was almost impossible now to see the little boy, and her thoughts were spreading out and wandering away like sheep in a field. But we can trust him, Roger. I swear. She said with a final effort. him roger i swear she said with a final effort that language wandering away like sheep in a field her thoughts spreading out it's like when baruch was trying to hold themselves together

the atoms of dust that's what it sounds like interesting i thought it was another like kind of again channeling the whole biblical imagery of like the shepherd and shit both but why not both also yeah it is a little both no i think so i think philip pullman's good at that well sharpen your pencils double meanings sharpen your pencils get out your books we're on the last chapter marry alone so this time our line is last rose as in dance the stately trees and spread their branches hung with copious fruit also john milton who saw that coming uh wonder what that part of the poem could mean do you think it's referencing something also i have to mention not a spoiler but interesting roses are involved there is a chapter

in this book where two roses are are drawn doodled that pullman draws by the way he draws the chapter things and if you have not read that chapter yet i am preemptive absolution apologizing for your life when you get there but roses interesting interesting interesting well one last thing before we get to the chapter i want to say that this is the best chapter title in the entire his dark material series it is entitled as you all know mary alone which is a her name is mary malone fucking brilliant amazing job mr pullman. I'm not joking. This is to me the best chapter title in the whole series.

Chloe, again, I agree. Also... Eliana is dumb. No, I'm just kidding. The duality of Eliana. This is one of those moments. Of Chloe. Yeah. I too think it's a great chapter title. It is very fun. I agree.

It's good. Maybe not to the extent of the best one, but I think it's up there. It's the best one. The tempter is being tempted by an old couple trying to give her food. This old couple is afraid of specters, but the specters steer clear of Mary Malone, which is why the

old couple gives her wine cheese bread and olives to stick around to not leave them mary alone during her time in chitigatse mary saw the devastation to the adults and the scattered children scavenging left behind but she knows she can't stay to keep the specters away that she must leave and be mary alone soon and this is sad it's very very sweet. She's protecting them. She can give them this last moment to have their food to maybe even say goodbyes that they might not have been able to when under attack by specters. And it's sad she can't stay because she has a bigger journey and that wheel of life seems to be important to follow here.

The show played with this a little in their uh plot lines in season two right they showed her caring for some people in this uh angelica paula plot line and i hope we see something like this in season three just this mini scene of her helping other people yeah uh you know i i would do it though i would say for the wine and the cheese and the olives i would have stayed and then like the old couple would be fucked anyway because then the angels would abandon me yeah because you're useless yeah they'd be like clearly she's not she doesn't deserve our protection well mary malone recalls what the shadow particles had told her go through the window and then find the boy and girl and play the serpent

what does it mean i don't know what it means what is i mean i the serpent. What does it mean? I don't know what it means. What does, I mean, I don't know. What does it mean? Anything. Penina, anything. Away from the farm, she consults the I Ching, which she had brought with her mostly for sentimentality. Her grandfather had gifted it to her as a child, but also because Lyra told her it was a way to communicate with dust. She also brings her copy of the Book of Changes, which we're

about to read about. She finds the ritual returning to her, and she translates the first symbol, which she gets, turning to the summit for provision of nourishment brings good fortune. Spying about with sharp eyes like a tiger with insatiable craving. So in Iijing from the Oracle of the Moon, this here that she translates is six in the fourth place which refers to someone occupying kind of a position of power striving to let their light shine forth though so a good position of power the hungry tiger symbolizes her being out on the lookout for people that are helping her cause righteous people so in this case Will and Lyra and that the reader is not

working for themselves in this hexagram but for the good of all it represents perseverance yielding good fortune she reads on and finds commentary about mazy paths and she gets to a line of keeping still is the mountain it is a by path it means little stones doors and openings this is a loose translation from the Book of Changes, and this represents a part of the trigram that she is reading. So the part of the trigram is the mountain, or what is represented as Jen. Though I'm not sure which exact trigram she's reading, but the actual passage Pullman's taking from here is Jen is a bippath. It means little stones, doors and openings, fruits and seeds. Jen is the transition between one phase and another. Silence when breathing changes, from breathing in and out, when change stops, when change starts

again. The state of contemplation, meditation, like we were talking about with reading the alethiometer earlier, likely the state that Lyra enters when she reads the alethiometer or anyone would enter is probably considered, Jen, considered that space between things. Yeah, absolutely. And we talked about this a little more in one of the television episodes of like the connection between the I Ching and programming languages. of like the connection between the I Ching and programming languages so anyway yeah I mean I think this is a great this is a great way of interpreting all of that and figuring out

how how um Mary got there because I probably would have been like fuck I don't know again I would have made very different decisions from Mary all of which were probably bad for the world yeah she does great I wouldn't want to be in her role yeah she does great I would have eaten I would have stayed for the wine and cheese

and I would have been like I don't know what the fuck this means and given up well Mary assumes openings is about the windows between worlds and that it tells her to go upwards so she does it amazing job four hours later I also would have not done this

four hours later after much tiring and hot trucking the sun is almost setting and she's about to settle and rest when she suddenly notices the light's kind of weird and wow look amazing it's the window yay the night time is what helped her spot it she has time and thus like investigates this one and and we get this like little uh omniscient narrator like thing telling us about when the window was made around the time of the american revolution but the bearer who made it was careless and thus didn't close it uh mary doesn't know all this she she ends up stepping through and finds herself at the low area of a plane while like kind of like a prairie or a

savannah but also not at all because it's a different world so everything is new and i just put in all of the imagery in here because i thought it was all very good i think so too to begin with although most of it was covered in short grass in an infinite variety of buff brown green ochre yellow golden shades and undulating very gently in a way that the long evening light showed up clearly. The prairie seemed to be laced through and through with what looked like rivers of rock with a light gray surface. And secondly, here and there on the plain were stands of the tallest trees Mary had ever seen. Attending a high energy physics conference once in California,

she had taken time out to look at the great redwood trees and marveled but whatever these trees were they would have overtopped the redwoods by half again at least their foliage was dense and dark green their vast trunks gold red in the heavy evening light and finally herds of creatures too far off to see distinctly grazed on the prairie. There was a strangeness about their movement that she couldn't quite work out. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Well, strange.

Mary rests and refills her water at a nearby spring, then eats bread and cheese and sleeps. The sun wakes her and she can see more of the world, like flocks of birds that look like dust, being so far away. She then heads towards the nearest stand of trees, and there are many cool plants, which again, I've decided that this is worthy of being read aloud. The grass was knee-high, and growing among it were low-lying bushes, no higher than her ankles, of something like juniper,

and there were flowers like poppies, like buttercups, like cornflowers, giving a haze of different tints to the landscape. And then she saw a large bee, the size of the top segment of her thumb, visiting a blue flower head and making it bend and sway. But as it backed out of the petals and took to the air again, she saw it was no insect. For a moment later, it made for her hand and perched on her finger, dipping a long, needle-like beak against her skin with the utmost delicacy, then taking flight again when it found no nectar. It was a minute hummingbird, its bronze-feathered wings moving too fast for her to see. Too fast, too few.

Oh my god. I just love the way that we get this description of this world as we enter it in these chapters and I also think that like Philip Pullman has done a great job of structuring like the unfolding of all of this like multiverse starting from like with book two right where we really get

to see it also in book one but really get to see it into here right because obviously we have some of the supernatural elements in lara's world of things that we don't know like the gas right and the panzerbjorn but besides the specters in chittagatse we actually haven't seen too much of like a variety of life among the different worlds that's really like markedly different to show us what it could be and like after you know that gradual thing in book two

again with the specters it starts unfolding more here with these three chapters introducing us to it and dispersing it with asriel meeting all kinds of different like kinds of humanity when it comes to the galavespians right and then those who stand in the way when it comes to the magisterium right kind of giving us this plot too and then we come back to mary who gives us a glimpse into you know perhaps what azrael had to do right when he entered all these different worlds and um just meet the different kinds of humanity there which again azrael did extremely quickly and i just assume he's an extrovert, but to get that much done that quickly... It was real fast! I know! Get all

these people! And it all built. I'm tired just thinking about it, honestly. Yeah. Mary's probably tired too, but she also decides to just get a closer... get closer to the grazing creatures, who turns out their legs

kind of have a diamond formation and they move in a strange rocking motion and these grazing creatures look at her but they're not scared and mary decides not to get too close she decides instead to go towards the trees and the trees are pretty cool and she looks at more of the other cool scenery like also then the cold lava flow again the trees are enormous their trunks are like houses and the animals surround her i love i love this line also yeah it's so great especially how it's uh constructed right she walked along the floor of the grove feeling much as if she were in a cathedral there was the same stillness the same sense of upwardness in

the structures the same awe in herself beautiful just uh nature's cathedral right like she's walked onto this amazing land with these amazing creatures and this amazing flora and nature and there's such a contrast here from the last two chapters of asriel and the magisterium each of them are trying to accomplish an ideal and and their fashion sense, if we've seen, is not very pointed, right? It's not very natural. It's very war machine. Asriel making, you know, weapons of mass destruction

below his fucking purgatory hell mansion. And the Magisterium, a political penitentiary, right? Which I'm sure they have very minimalist decor in their halls. It's of malice and despair, and they want to control all free will. But here, this land is taken over by the power of nature? Question mark? Where those places are taken over by this architecture, this evil architecture. And the only brimstone Mary sees here is the blend of the scenery, right, that blends into a lava flow, not like the lava

flows that actually exist in Asriel's kingdom. There's no eminent threat yet, just beauty and nature. And I don't often think of Mary in this facet, but I guess she is kind of the multifaceted Mary in this, right? She's the blessed virgin, a nun, right? That's the the joke uh but also if her role is to bring whatever this whole serpent thing is to life here we're gonna see happen uh sounds like something sinnish right sounds like it's a sin or something so as a sinner they wrongfully call her mary magdalene because history collapsed mary magdalene into like eight random women in the bible just so you all know read about it it's true anyway very multifaceted in the mary here amongst nature i think this is just such a wondrous passage

it is it really goes to show that spirituality can exist outside of the building and also just the way that this world is presented is just so Edenic, especially as you were saying, in contrast to the previous two chapters and what we're seeing there. And also in contrast to the first one that we started out with, right? Which is also in a place that is quite beautiful naturally,

like in terms of nature, but what's happening there is pretty horrible. It ugly. Thanks, Mrs. Coulter. In her, like, fucked up pieta inversion. Well, Mary wonders why the grazing creatures don't need shade,

but then decides to nap. She's like, why aren't they hanging out beneath the trees? And then she finds out herself when a crash wakes her. And a round object about a yard across rolls to her and then more of them drop from the trees and it just seems to be dangerous

so she's like I don't this is a mistake all the trees of course and the seed pods of course they play into the symbolism of the tree of knowledge maybe even literally and again like that garden of eden vibes and here it also feels a little bit like maybe it's a nod to sir isaac newton and his pursuit of knowledge and that legend of how he

discovered the law of gravity so again also science when an apple fell from a tree the legend goes that the apple hit him on the head but it seems apparently he might have just been like observing it probably uh same as how mary is not hit on the head because again it was be dangerous yeah and to be fair i mean i think the seed pod doesn't fall that far from the tree in this situation you know what i mean hey hey and that's why it was dangerous mary watches the seed pods fall from afar and she's interested in how they're very circular very hard and she notices a fragrance under the smell of dust i love that line it has oil which is a kind of a great connection here that we started off this episode with Coulter, right? Making potions and making her own substances for Lyra, where now we have Mary Malone with an oily substance that seems to have some sort of properties that we don't know about yet.

Mary ponders this world's evolution, and she thinks about these multiple worlds evolving and colliding, and a cloud of dust heads toward her in fear she runs back into a grove solid move and it's a herd of wheeled animals with horns and trunks and diamond shaped structures but they have wheels on the front and back legs she's like what how could they evolve for this and realizes as they stop they evolved for the seat pods resources baby yeah they evolved into a motorcycle game oh my god that's what i want to do when i grow up actually i wouldn't mind being a malefa when i grow up anyways me either mulefa for life it turns out yeah these creatures have been looking for her they are very disapproving of the fact that she tampered with the seed pods uh based on the noises that she can interpret she's like interesting uh and she speaks to them and apologizes and she tries to signal that she is

safe by holding out her hands realizing maybe this gesture means nothing because they don't have hands. And then she realizes these creatures were as different from the grazing animals nearby as a human from a cow. And I love that this feels reminiscent of, again, we were bringing up earlier, how the difference between demons and animals are just so clear as well, even though they look like they might be the same. So this is like that. And then she gestures to her towards herself and says, Mary. A creature touches her and imitates

her voice, but says, Mary. Interesting. It's our good friend Maester Mary. She's in the story. I wish. It's actually not. The creatures repeat her noises back to her and of course it imitates a British

accent because it's like she's all saying like what are you and the creatures the way they say it back are like what are you? Oh my god. It's spelled like when she says I am a human it's spelled as A-Y-A-M-A human so it's like I am a human. Oh my god i am it's spelled it's spelled like when she says i'm a human it's spelled this a-y-a-m-a human so it's like i am a human oh my god danny wah i'm doing a terrible job that's literally this that's this scene it's from beep oh my god

are we recording that recently in this household? Oh, the other day. That is the scene. Everyone, please watch Veep. Please watch Veep. If you want to understand our podcast. It's actually my favorite show. It's kind of mine now, too. I'm almost on my third watch.

Just give me two more days. I thought you said Hacks is your favorite show now. Nope, it's Veep now. Veep and Hacks. It's sweet, though. And so they don't repeat her the next time, right? The creatures touch a trunk to themselves and they go, Mulefa! And they imitate her again and they're kind of laughing.

So things start to relax. They feel safe. And I have to say, they're the Pokemon of this series, right? They say their own name. Wow. Go Mulefa. phil do you like pokemon i gotta know and and the pokemon they haven't they are actually speaking it is a language that is just their own name and we should ask philip pullman you know i mean so like cats i

heard and maybe this is a rumor and untrue but like i hear that cats like they don't speak to each other out loud you know but they speak to us out loud like when my cats are yelling it's at me not at each other like they don't they just sense each other and they just like do things off their senses which is like a wild very free way to live so i'm into that maybe that's kind of like this uh like these humans are so unevolved they really are And after gathering some things into their sacks, one of the Mulefa trumpets and the grazers come over and one of the Mulefa milks a grazing creature with her trunk

and then brings her trunk to Mary's mouth. And Mary's like, no, thanks. I'm a vegetarian. I'm vegan. Just kidding. Mary flinches and she remembers Anthony Bourdain real quick. And she's like all right i'll take this one for the team and she opens her mouth drinking the milk and chugging it and the creature

just keeps feeding her there's this there's this line that is just so bizarre but i love it it's also very pure um and it says the gesture was so clever and kindly that mary impulsively put her arms around the creature's head and kissed her. It is kind of sweet. It is sweet. She's just like, amazing, thank you for feeding me with your trunk. Yeah, and that is, like, that's a sign of care that the Mulefa immediately

was like, well, we should feed this nice human. They seem good. We should feed this stupid creature. Because they're an idiot. They can't find it on their own. It says Dannywa. Dannywa, the duality of Danny Wah. The Mulefa are about to leave and Mary's suddenly kind of sad. She's like, oh no, until

one of them lowers itself and gestures at her to get on because they're going to carry her, this strange squishy creature, and one of them takes her rucksack and puts it on their saddle and Mary climbs on the back of the creature and rides down with them. Again, we are so uninvolved.

They're right. They're right to be just babies. Yeah. As a human adult in the real world, I don't know how I feel about some of this plot now. I'm going to be real with you. Like some of it reaches a little bit in some parts. So I'm like, all right, Pullman. And she's well-meaning well meaning right like Mary is well

intended she's not being disrespectful and it's a very beautiful and sad as we go along to see this display of their culture and nature and as you know as we get forward in the story obviously as you can tell war is on the way to each of these plots every plot we talked about today

all four chapters right there were four different plots going on but they're all about the culmination of the war that is coming for them so i do think it's very sad and it's an interesting perspective to watch from and i will say i'm very into nature shows lately i don't know if any of you are they're beautiful right if you're looking for recommendations david attenborough's life in Color on Netflix is amazing. It's beautiful. You might know him from other things as a popular media broadcaster, specifically with the old BBC here.

So please enjoy it. Very pleasant. And the other one is Moving Art, also on the old Netflix. It's by filmmaker Louis Schwartzberg, and it highlights beauty lurking in oceans and forests, deserts, flowers, and it's gorgeous. It's one of my favorite things to just watch. It's like, as cheesy as it sounds, it is quite literally moving art,

and it takes your breath away, and there are just so many little landscapes that kind of remind me of this and some of the stuff in His Dark Materials and just nature and flowers and Mulefa. Well, not Mulefa, but, you know, elephants and shit. And roses. Roses, which I'm sure we'll talk about soon interesting

well yes yeah but Mary alone Mary Malone not so alone anymore and so that brings us to this last this last one line from Lyra's dream sequence. She goes, because he's Will.

It's so good. Look, this is such a great line. We don't know the precursor, but we obviously know what's going on at the very end of the chapters for the first seven chapters. know what's going on at the very end of the chapters for the first seven chapters we can fill in the blanks that this is something confidence inspiring that lyra's feelings about will and that he will help them and save them this girl who has been let down by the only blood family members she has right over and over again yeah by everyone but william perry is the one person that she has faith and trust in she this is the only religion that lyra has believed in and yorick yes and it's just like so emotionally resonant out of context that this is lyra's headspace no matter what like because he's will

you don't need the other words for this you know what it means right and uh there are two other fictional moments that just like this kind of construction in writing in youth fiction or in fiction in general that romantic kind of one-liner that draws the eye into the story it makes your heart kind of go oh my god pitter patter uh this is so well done it reminds me of a couple things that i'll keep vague with the least amount of spoilers. Doctor Who, Series 6, Episode 10, The Girl Who Waited, Amy Pond argues with, really long story short, Amy Pond argues with an older version of herself to do the right thing. Between them, Amy says to herself, you're asking me to defy destiny, casuality, the nexus of time itself for a boy. And the other Amy says, you're Amy, he's Rory, and oh yes, I am. It's just these lines that have so much romantic weight of like, yes, the fate of the fucking world is in disarray.

That is what I'm asking you to do. And here for Lyra, because he's Will, because he's Will and he will come for us. Like, that is what Will will do. He will fight tooth and nail to do that. And it also reminds me of the other series that we read, A Song of Ice and Fire. There's this moment with two characters, Jamie Lannister and the Maid of Tarth, where Jamie retrieves the Maid of Tarth from a very dangerous bear pit, and the villain who is guarding this bear pit says, you want her? Go get her.

And then George R. R. Martin, George Railroad Martin, writes, so he did. I do think so he did, though. I think that's such like I've talked about it before, but it's such like romantically weighted. So he did though like i think that's such like i've talked about it before but it's such like romantically weighted like so he did pullman has constructed this as one of the briefest snippets that has so much weight right one sentence that has so much weight and he's playing with some

of the most basic coming of age friendship slash relationship parts of youth fiction but yeah it explains so much of what we know lyra is saying because he's will yeah it's everything it's it's that absolute hope and belief and that of everything she lands on that and she just knows it's it's like a law of gravity itself, right? Yes. Coming back to that. And also, as the Paradise Lost stuff becomes much more explicit in this book, I love that this is just called out individually, right?

The way, again, it's constructed with will, of course, it's capitalized because it's a proper noun, but in paradise lost the poem the a couple of times because i don't know for emphasis and because rules of spelling were just like different like not codified as much and people are like whatever i can do whatever i want um so will actually gets capitalized a few times in the poem and the first instance of when will comes up and this it's as a noun not acting as a verb is capitalized and so those lines are all is not lost the unconquerable will and study of revenge immortal hate encourage never to submit

or yield that glory never shall his wrath or might extort from me i'm like oh yeah the courage never to submit or yield especially sounds a lot like our will that's interesting i mean i do think that he named will accordingly for free will you know i i do think that has to be part of it and it probably is this paradise lost with i bet i that's what I would actually like to ask him. If we have an ask Philip Pullman sheet, we start Eliana. That's one I'd like to know. We should start.

And we have asked him. I mean, it absolutely is. Yeah. Not just like free will, but in general with the will, right. The ability to do things that,

that impetus. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, that brings us to the end of, you know, this theoretically spoilerfree section of our podcast and to the threshold the window of our discussion yes so if you have not read

the novellas the books of dust either labelle sauvage or the secret commonwealth or have you not finished the amber spyglass you gotta log off just for a hot second uh we'll see you next month when we're back with the next few chapters but we don't want to spoil you so come back when you've read more but if you have read all that or if you don't care about spoilers this is going to be the dustiest dirtiest section the sinful section for you yeah we also discussed the television show but i mean that's free game behind that's on tv yeah we all watch tv it's not tv it's hbo exactly fuck well that's sad guessing that the uh the less dusty of us have logged off, those who dust has not fallen upon them, those who maybe their demons have not settled yet. Ours haven't, but that's different.

I'm a baby. I'm boby. We still have like 20-something chapters till our demons settle, you guys. Okay? Yeah. So, dust-cussion. First thing that I have to bring up, because he's Will. Something really struck me this time through, thinking about lodestone resonators. There's something interesting about how they're used.

We get to see them more as we go along, so as we visit with the Galabaspians in this book, we'll come back to it, but these points on a stone are unmarked they require really really crazy precision it's just a small stone that tialis tunes right he uses and tunes and reaches the correct fluency the right frequency and the state of mind that's used when you use this lodestone resonator is similar to a state of mind required when reading the alethiometer or

using the subtle knife by extension. Also, lodestone resonators can communicate across worlds. That's very interesting. I just kind of feel like, is Lyra going to be able to use a lodestone resonator to talk to will in the future

i'm just putting it out there that this feels intentional like an intentional craft uh-huh but it feels intentional this feels intentional i i didn't really think about them till this time through and all that talk about adamant also kind of felt significant and that the lodestone resonators are confused lodestone is confused in etymology and mythology with adamant interesting we have lots of adamant it could be it could be adamant and like yeah that it just like lets people reach across like cool texting and stuff it's interesting that it hasn't come up but i guess partially because you have to bring it through the windows but it could it could be made i kind of wonder because like i guess the way it works is right you you tap the thing it's kind of like telegraphs right but also you tap the thing and then it resonates across right and i guess it's kind of like the a little like the technology

that's used for the atomic bomb that we'll talk about in a second for Lyra but it also reminds me a little bit of photons there's an experiment that was I don't know if it was conducted in 1997 but the results of it were

spread more widely in 1997 which would have been contemporary-ish to the time of the publication of the Amber Spyglass. And I don't know if this has been debunked since then, but it was like, there's these, like, if you have a pair of photons, right, that are, like, intertwined with one another, when you do something

to one photon, right, or, like, it responds to a stimulus, the other one, even though it's like a distance away reacts the same way and does the same thing and it's it talks about like the entangled particles right like in general they're like these identical entities that share common origins and properties and that there were um experiments that did it like over distances of hundreds of yards or less but like that it could happen when like miles apart the most that um they did in this

experiment was seven miles apart shows that there's something very very strong that like bonds these particles together this quantum key that cannot be broken even though through those distances and so it's interesting that i i feel like the lodestone resonators might be drawing off some inspiration from that a little but it also reminds me of the link between a human and demon when it's not severed in the way that we see uh lyra and pan are able to achieve that will and kajava will be able to achieve right but also perhaps it's a there's something really beautiful to that entanglement that intertwinement that like can happen between two people right even across different worlds with will and lyra um two so it's called quantum entanglement right

that's the term used in series all it's called is that is that is that entanglement and i was going to mention i'm really glad that you talked about it's called is that is that is that entanglement and i was gonna mention i'm really glad that you talked about it because it is like a very intimate sexy thing like i'm just kind of like you know like it is like a quantum entanglement just sounds like your cells of your body are fucking like from long distance like i don't know i i mean my husband and i were long distance as you're well aware of because we've been friends for a while. Forever. Ever.

800 years. Me and you go way back. And, you know, we were long distance. And, like, that's really an emotional relationship. You've had long distance relationships. You know, it's an emotional thing. It's hard. It's hard.

And sometimes it feels like all of your cells in your fucking body are, like, revolting. Like, you just to like, you want to, your cells to splatter like baroots, you know, you're like, take me away. Let me whisk out of the door and fucking float there. So I really find that, that study interesting that you're referencing, especially like in thinking of the new way of reading the alethiometer, maybe Lyra could use those skills to read a lodestone resonator. I don't know. Oh, so interesting. yeah yeah i was gonna say less romantic um good we didn't we didn't get this but similar similar idea they now have vibrators that can attune to one another um using apps on

the phone it's it's a similar idea. It's kind of a resonator, if you think about it, a vibrator. So, Mariam alone. I ruined it. Mariam alone with the seed pods. If we can just change gears out of your lodestone resonator. Oh, gears. Gears, yeah, that's a Hitachi joke. And a fragrance under dust, Mary smells on the seeds.

A fragrance under dust. I loved that. The seed oil pods smell fragrant. Don't you find that so fascinating, Eliana, that they're fragrant, floral even? It is interesting, especially under the dust. Yeah. I mean, we learned about the lodestone resonators here, which communicate across worlds and possibly here a special oil from a seed pod. And look, OK, let's cut the shit until we get to the secret commonwealth, the definitive guide to rose oil, which is another oil brought up in the series or another fragrant brought up in the series.

So roses grown in the Levantine trade area are a great source of a tar of roses, rose oil, essence of rose, fragrant rose water, soaps, perfumes. We see a lot of this throughout the main story, just in passing, and then the secret commonwealth, it becomes a big deal. Grown in Bulgaria, Turkish Anatolia, south of France, Morocco, Lyra has a friend in school that comes from a family whose trade is roses. The trade starts to be disrupted. We learn it's hampered by magisterium, basically. What's now the magisterium or left of it. Lyra learns some of the history after talking to a doctor from her school and then learns about, you know, Ottoman Empire, everything involved with this kind of trade going on. And then she ends up going back to jordan where she's gifted a bottle of rose water the last one by the steward bless him gladys godwin new director of oakley street speaks with hannah and malcolm at a funeral and discuss its properties

a man named brewster napier wrote a paper on some effects of rose oil in polarized light microscopy which seemed to hold some bearings on our friend malcolm's little light show he gets in his eyes right for the future later we learned that in this book rose oil causes visions to the people that put it in their eyeballs which like on the bottle i'm pretty sure it says not for internal use uh possibly visions of the prophetic nature for those who apply it ocularly so to recap malcolm might shoot lasers from his eyes later uh that's what i got is that what you got from all this i don't know i don't know it feels magical and i think the seed pods

are related and i think we have to talk about it now is what i'm saying i think they're related yeah yes so so the memes that i see people shooting lasers from their eyes it is all foreshadowing of malcolm doing so as well i mean it does it does feel related the whole use of like floral oils or like wells in general um something's going on there with the lenses you know i just want to like also no one should be putting oils in their eyes, probably. You know what? Every single time we record, I do my skincare at the beginning while we talk.

You know, it's a habit. It's the only thing that gets me through. Yeah. And I pour oil in my eye every time. Every time. Oh, my God. And nothing good happens. No.

Nothing good ever happens. That sounds painful. Because, like, I've've been you know i i use moisturizer right and uh sometimes uh i feel like maybe a little bit get gets into my eye or something and it's just it's painful that's it yeah it's over after that yep well so again we are we're getting into the end game here right um of the his dark material series so there's just a lot of setup in these past few chapters you know between all those dust references that we were discussing and the stuff with roger that's been interspersed since the start of the book and you know the magisterium suddenly being interested in asriel's research

but also being like interesting that mrs culture is like that you know you get to start seeing like this build up towards a scene later where they use like mrs culture's love for her daughter against her now that they're like oh haha you actually care and then they, you know, and using that lock of hair that Mrs. Coulter has cut from Lyra later on. And then, of course, using, pairing that with Asriel's research to create that bomb. It's the perfect leverage. Wow, that's the relationship right there. And then, you know, again, like those different goals for that same research right where asriel has used it to open up new worlds and knowledge and the magisterium wants to use it for destruction

but you're kind of like i mean if they both believe like this is what it is there's a question being posed there morally somewhere um and then also again especially when you see how mary malone interacts with the malefa more of like this sort of desire to come from a place of understanding, right? Not from a place to subjugate or exert power. And of course, we also get that stuff about Metatron and start learning more about our final boss. So, and yeah, that we get the setup of the world of the malefa where the all the shit's gonna go down right they're talking about like oh if only you were there in the garden of eden you go next straight to the world of the malefa where i mean the fall happens that's supposed to be the garden

of eden ask area so yeah he goes there they're sending him there and uh i think just cohesively speaking like all four of these chapters just have such strong themes that bind them together uh i think the construction of these four chapters is just perfect how it flows from yeah who her religion right now is clutching lyra close to her in this cave in the himalayas and asriel whose religion is building these armies and these war machines to face the authority and then you move to the magisterium who is scared and running and clutching things to their side and planning to murder a little girl because they have no other control or power that's where we are boys really this is where we are anyways and then ending where we are with the garden ending with mary

in the most peaceful place of them all, for now. Until. Until. But things are good now. Things are good now. Gosh. Except, like, for her. For her. Not for everyone else. Clearly shit's chaotic as fuck. Well. I was- I think that was a lot

to discuss. Those were four chapters, but at the same time, some of them are short and sweet but a lot happens yeah Mary's chapter for sure was beautifully done too short sweet and got the point across but showed some great imagery and some great bible references and I like that

yeah so we had to do a bit of shuffling around as you all know these past few weeks so lucky for many of you even though we do not have another historic materials patreon episode this month we do we had to do a bit of shuffling around, as you all know, these past few weeks. So lucky for many of you, even though we do not have another historic materials, Patreon episode this month, we do end up having two historic materials episodes in August. This one and one at the end of the month.

Yeah. We'll be back with you at the end of the month, last week of the month, back to our normal schedule. So we'll get back in the groove of things next week. We will go back to a song of ice and fire for just a couple weeks before returning giving you a his dark materials august episode and uh we'll go from there we'll be back then the following month that last friday thanks so much for listening in make sure you check us out online and subscribe to us over on social media if you want to give us a tweet or a dm let us know how you're feeling

about the episodes girls gone canon c-a-n-o-n or if you want to send us an email and let us know what you're thinking about in the amber spyglass or if it's discussion worthy we will definitely save it for there our email is girls gone canon at gmail.com yes and of course keep up with us with whenever these episodes come out. You can find us on Podbean, where this is all hosted, Google Play, Apple Podcasts, Pandora, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, Acast,

Stitcher, I always say Overcast, I'm still not sure if that's real or if I'm making it up, but we will be in one more place next week, Monday, August 9th, streaming with our good friend Thomas as part of TMC.

Yes, the TMC podcast. Can't wait for that. We'll be talking about Dazed and Confused. Check out the T-Cock Network, the TMC podcast. We will put a link in the description for you. As always, thanks so much for listening. I have been one of your hosts, Chloe.

And I have been another one of your hosts, Eliana. See you later this month. Goodbye.