His Daemonic Masculinity

[lupinesque]

John wrote:

> Quick question -- does anyone in the books have a daemon of the 
same gender
> as themselves? If not, perhaps there's an interesting gender-
daemonic musing
> to be made there. Is the daemon the suppressed inner opposite 
gender in us
> all?

Bernie, the pastry cook of Jordan College, is described as "a kindly, 
solitary man, one of those rare people whose daemon was the same sex 
as himself" (NL/GC 7).  As a friend said when I was explaining 
daemons to him and said that there were very few people with a daemon 
of the same sex, "about one in ten."  It made me laugh, but it seems 
far rarer than that because I don't think we ever see anyone else 
whose daemon is identified that way.

I don't think Pullman is suggesting that it corresponds to sexual 
orientation, but yes, I think the daemon is usually the other gender 
because it completes us, and I think Pullman is saying a lot about 
the meaning of gender by making most daemons the complement of their 
people.  I don't know exactly what Jung meant by anima and animus, 
but that's one of the ways I think about daemons. So is Bernie out of 
balance, or are masculine and feminine sufficiently integrated in him 
that his daemon doesn't need to be female?

I have a lot of thoughts on Dust but sadly, did not opt to write this 
week's sermon on HDM (gotta do that soon) so must return to that 
instead.

Amy Z
still waiting for her meerkat daemon to tell her his name, or--intake 
of breath--show up in the periphery of her vision