Dust (His Dark Materials)
"[1] Writing in Children's Literature in Education, she suggests that the first trilogy develops John Milton's metaphor of "dark materials" from Paradise Lost "into a ‘substance’ in which good and evil, and spirit and matter – conceptual opposites that form the basis of religious dualism – coexist.
"[3] Oram compares the following passage from The Amber Spyglass, in which the angel Balthamos explains the origin of Dust, to Satan's account of his coming to consciousness in Book V of Paradise Lost:[3]"'Dust is only a name for what happens when matter begins to understand itself.
"[4]In Fantasy, Myth and the Measure of Truth, folklore and fantasy scholar William Gray has noted similarities between Pullman's descriptions of Dust to Perelandra by C. S. Lewis, particularly the "Great Dance" passages where "Dust" is described as "at the centre" and "whereof allworlds, and the bodies that are not worlds, are made".
"[5] In Northern Lights, Lord Asriel reveals the origins of the term "Dust" to be from a passage from the slightly alternative version of the Bible in Lyra's world: Dust was previously known (in Lyra Belacqua's universe) as "Rusakov particles" named after their discoverer, Boris Mikhailovitch Rusakov.
[a] The Mulefa, who are able to see Dust directly, use the word "sraf" accompanied by a leftward flick of the trunk (or arm for humans) to describe it.
[8] When Dust is first mentioned in Northern Lights, it seems to be something negative; only later do Lyra and her daemon, Pantalaimon, discover that it is good and necessary for survival.
[12] Dust came into being when living things became conscious of themselves; but it needed some feedback system to reinforce it and make it safe, as the mulefa had their wheels and the oil from the trees.
[citation needed] It is particularly attracted to consciousnesses that have matured; in the case of humans in Lyra's world, this happens when their Dæmon is fixed in shape.
Over the course of the books, several alethiometers are shown being read, including by Lyra Belacqua, Hannah Relf, and Fra Pavel.
The missing alethiometer is found by Malcolm Polstead in the pack of Gerard Bonneville, and given to the Master of Jordan College, for safekeeping.
About 33,000 years prior to the time of the books, Dust had induced changes in sapient species, including humans and mulefa, to allow them to interact better, conferring more consciousness.
[c] 300 years before the start of His Dark Materials, scientists in Cittagazze had created the Subtle Knife, which allowed them to travel between worlds.
However, explorers were not meticulous about closing the cuts in the fabric between worlds, and Dust was lost into the void between universes through the cracks of these windows.
