Personifying the Unconscious: Daemons

I mentioned in class that when I first read the His Dark Materials trilogy that I wanted a daemon.....still do....but not as fervently. But before I read the trilogy I did carry a stuffed animal around when I was really young. It was a white bear I called whitey. Then I had a black bear called rocky. I actually still have rocky, but he is now a dog toy. I loved him, still do, but Oly got to him one day and I had to turn him over to the dogs.. But stuffed animals remind me of the false bear king Iofur who wanted a deamon and carried around a stuffed doll. People get pets too. Is that a way of trying to fill some void or place something within your life that you can connect with. Some people really connect with certain animals. Maybe through stuffed animals as a child or having a pet we can personify our unconscious. This idea of having a daemon sparks the imagination and highlights a part of us that we can explore.















My daemon: according to quizilla.com my daemon is a "SONGBIRD (male) - Your daemon may be a song bird if you are a true free spirit. You don't do any harm to anyone, but go along your merry way. You work hard and you play hard. You may be very talented and you use your talent to add happiness to the world. You may be a hopeless romantic, and probably put your family and significant other before anyone else. You might be a little vain at times, but no one can ever fault your for it." I feel this is fairly accurate. According to okcupid.com Sutter's daemon is a pole cat. Don't cats eat birds! But opposites attract.

I was looking around online about daemons and I found a website called Finding Your Daemon Within. Maybe we really do have daemons, but not quite the way Lyra does. It has some interesting things to say but an important idea was that, "the idea of picturing and speaking to your own subconscious soul is a very old concept, one which Carl Jung, the eminent psychologist, explored in great depth. Not only is finding and speaking to your daemon possible, but it is emotionally healthy and important for psychic growth." it goes on: Many people already speak to their "daemon" and do not realize it, because they call it by a different name. Students of Jungian psychology call it their animus/anima. Parents call it an imaginary friend. People who have read Philip Pullman's books call it their "dæmon". No matter what you choose call this part of you, it is a real part of the psyche that you can learn to see and speak with. Our dæmons serve as a conscience, a guardian angel, and a method of examining ourselves. By learning to hear this subconscious voice, we can help expand our own emotional development. Depending on the kind of animal our dæmon's form takes, we can learn a lot about our own personalities.
Carl Jung interested me and I found that Jung believed that getting in touch with your animus/anima was the route to getting in touch with your unconscious self. He called the animus/anima the "Soul Image" of the person. A man's soul image consisted of a feminine anima, while a woman's Soul Image was a masculine animus. This is the part that dæmians would call the dæmon. It is your inner, subconscious self, and by learning to talk to him or her, you can become truly whole once more.
It seems that maybe Carl Jung is where Pullman got his idea for daemons or is a part of the idea.