Spiritual Lessons from The Golden Compass

Pursue Truth Wherever It Takes You

The heroine of "The Golden Compass" is a 12-year-old girl named Lyra who receives an alethiometer, the golden compass of the title, a beautiful and rare truth-telling device. (In Greek alethia means truth.) Only Lyra has the gift to read it, but she struggles to interpret the often-cryptic truths it offers. By following the word of the alethiometer, Lyra is heeding God's call (with "Dust" being Pullman's word for the divine).

Through the alethiometer Lyra talks to God, and she consults it at every turn in her journey--a journey that takes her to the northernmost regions of her world. To read it she must enter a meditative state of a sort--and it is during this time that we can say that Lyra is in prayer. Pullman even describes our heroine poring over the alethiometer "like a lover with a picture of the beloved." How's that for divine adoration?