The Authority

In the cosmology of His Dark Materials, The Authority is presented by the Church as the Creator God who shaped the universe. However, the true reality revealed in The Amber Spyglass contradicts this dogma: he is merely an angel, the first-born of his kind, born from Dust in the earliest days of existence. He did not create the universe: he told the later-arriving angels that he created them and the universe, but this is a lie. This claim legitimised his taking political power in the Kingdom of Heaven, and he ruled his various churches and organisations from the Clouded Mountain. He makes his only appearance late in The Amber Spyglass, by which time he has grown weak and transferred most of his powers to his regent, Metatron.

Lore & Background

The Authority was the first angel to come into existence; he and the angels which formed after him condensed from the substance known as Dust. He led the other angels, and later humanity, to believe that he was in fact the creator of the multiverse. He ruled his various churches and organisations from the Clouded Mountain, a floating mobile city believed by many to be Heaven. As the Authority grew older and weaker, the Mountain became more and more obscured by clouds, and in his old age he appointed the archangel Metatron to act as regent of the Kingdom of Heaven.

During the final battle he is carried away from the Clouded Mountain on the orders of Metatron, imprisoned in a crystal box; when Lyra and Will free him he is too weak to survive and drifts apart. The angel Xaphania found out the truth about him, whereupon he banished her from the Kingdom; she and other angels later started a rebellion against him.

Reader's Guide

The Authority serves as the ultimate antagonist of the trilogy's theological arc, embodying institutionalized fear and the perils of blind obedience. Initially presented as the omnipotent Creator, he is revealed to be the first angel, grown old and weak.