Anima

I've been thinking a lot about Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy lately. New Line is, as you might know, releasing a film version of the first book, The Golden Compass, in December. One of the conceits that bonds me so fast to these books (moreso because of their characters than their plot, but that's another post) is that of the daemon. The daemon is like an external hard drive for the soul, and it takes the shape of an animal. You can learn more at the linked websites, or better yet, by reading the books.

One of the reasons I chose Country Wolf, City Wolf as this issue's theme was my ever-abiding love of animals. I love thinking about cultural perceptions of animals, and how they vary from context to context and person to person. A favorite website of mine is The Medieval Bestiary, a fairly extensive catalog of common and allegorical information about creatures one might find in Western European illuminated manuscripts. This is a neat resource in its own right, but becomes more interesting if you read through it with daemons in mind, given that His Dark Materials is a retelling of John Milton's Paradise Lost.

As for myself, I find myself fixating on the whippoorwill, which has strong Underground Railroad connotations to me, particularly affecting because I grew up in that part of the country, near the Ohio River. I've just found out that, according to Wikipedia, "in New England, legend says the Whip-poor-will can sense a soul departing, and can capture it as it flees." If anybody else finds themselves as unable to stop thinking about this as I am, let us know if something comes of it.