Milton's Golden Compass

William Blake, The Ancient of Days (1797)

On heav’nly ground they stood, and from the shore

They view’d the vast immeasurable Abyss

Outrageous as a Sea, dark, wasteful, wilde,

Up from the bottom turn’d by furious windes

And surging waves, as Mountains to assault

Heav’ns highth, and with the Center mix the Pole.
Silence, ye troubl’d waves, and thou Deep, peace,

Said then th’ Omnific Word, your discord end:
Nor staid, but on the Wings of Cherubim

Uplifted, in Paternal Glorie rode

Farr into Chaos, and the World unborn;

For Chaos heard his voice: him all his Traine

Follow’d in bright procession to behold

Creation, and the wonders of his might.

Then staid the fervid Wheeles, and in his hand

He took the golden Compasses, prepar’d

In Gods Eternal store, to circumscribe

This Universe, and all created things:

One foot he center’d, and the other turn’d

Round through the vast profunditie obscure,

And said, thus farr extend, thus farr thy bounds,

This be thy just Circumference, O World.
–John Milton, Paradise Lost bk vii, lns 210-31 (1667)

There is an explanation for the Blake painting and the Milton passage here at Harpers Magazine online. "But the essence, the conception of a world driven by a celestial mechanics not altogether fathomable by humans, is distinctly a classical Greek idea..... The golden compass describes a world of order and reason, a place where the possibilities open to humankind are great. But it also describes the limits of this world, beyond which lies maddening and incomprehensible Chaos."

I found this by googling the words, 'golden compass.' This seems like a place where Philip Pullman may have gotten an idea for the alethiometer. There is a lot more to the alethiometer than just symbols. The alethiometer looks like the I Ching. The moveable hands of the alethiometer remind me of the Blake painting above.