The Multiverse
Many parallel worlds, joined by windows that the subtle knife can cut.
His Dark Materials takes place across a multiverse, moving between many parallel worlds. Northern Lights takes place entirely in Lyra's world; in The Subtle Knife the story moves between our own world, Lyra's world and a third world containing the city of Cittàgazze, and in The Amber Spyglass several other worlds appear alongside those three.
Quick Facts
- Primary antagonist force
- The Authority and the Magisterium
Lore & Background
Lyra's world is the one most of the characters come from; there, a person's dæmon takes an external animal shape. Will's world is our own, where dæmons exist but are invisible. The Cittàgazze world serves as the crossroads of the worlds, because all the windows lead there, and Spectres have been common in it for generations. The Mulefa's world, with a savanna climate, is the setting for much of The Amber Spyglass. The Land of the Dead is the underworld to which the dead of every world go, and the Gallivespians come from a world the trilogy itself never visits.
Reader's Guide
The subtle knife, created 300 years before the story by scientists in Cittàgazze, can cut windows between worlds, but each window creates a new Spectre and lets Dust escape into the void between universes. Lord Asriel opens his own passage from Lyra's world to the Cittàgazze world at the end of Northern Lights, using the burst of energy released when a human and dæmon are permanently separated. At the end of the trilogy all windows must be closed, except the one leading from the world of the dead, to prevent the loss of Dust.
More in Theology & Metaphysics
Elsewhere in His Dark Materials
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