By Linda Harvey
"Guess what? I have my own demon!"
That's what some children may soon be telling – or not telling – their parents, encouraged by the movie "The Golden Compass," starring Nicole Kidman, which opens Dec. 7. Chances are your child's friends will be rushing to see it, but parents: beware.
In this movie, every human has a personal "daemon" (pronounced, yes, "dee-mon"), and on the film's official website, you can "Meet Your Daemon," which happens after one answers a questionnaire. The site explains that these daemons take the form of an animal and represent a person's soul living outside one's body.
And that's just for starters. As the pagan worldview continues, much of action in the film centers around a golden compass, which is a tool of divination. Only the girl heroine, Lyra, knows how to interpret its mysterious signs and symbols. A colorful representation of this device is featured on the film's website to further intrigue our youngsters, and plans are in the works for a toy replica. Soon, adoring fans can be seers right in their own bedrooms.  
This lavish production has Oscar written all over it. Based on the novel by Philip Pullman, "The Golden Compass" is an epic of global power struggles with hostility toward Christianity at the center. Pullman has been quoted in interviews as saying he is an atheist, but that label is highly misleading. There is spirituality here, and it's as blatantly occult as it gets.  
Pullman's tales combine clever plots grounded in dark nihilism with a default pagan cosmology. Everyone believes in something, and Pullman does, too, whether he will admit it or not. The plot revolves around spiritism, magical thinking, mysterious visions, parallel worlds, and yet as always with pagan beliefs, they come off as glitteringly empty. The lonely hopelessness of the child characters in the book made me want to jump off a cliff, and that's a researching adult's reaction. How would a vulnerable child feel?
The main character, Lyra, is a neglected pre-teen girl (played in the movie by Dakota Blue Richards), raising herself while residing among the scholars at Oxford University, in a world with similarities to early 20th century Britain. Lord Asriel (played by actor Daniel Craig) is her "uncle" who turns out to be her father, a powerful scholar/explorer researching the spiritual/molecular phenomenon of something called Dust. A cold, egotistical man, he pops in and out of Lyra's life as does her glamorous, calculating mother, Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman).
These two conceived Lyra in an adulterous union while Mrs. Coulter was married to another man. She became a widow when Asriel killed her former husband. Somehow, Mrs. Coulter still heads a shady agency of the ruling religious Magisterium. This group kidnaps children and in an Arctic laboratory performs experiments related to Dust, which we learn is the same as Original Sin, only in measurable particles. Children have little of it; after puberty, humans start attracting Dust.
Meanwhile, Asriel has also traveled far north while researching Dust and has been captured by a kingdom of armored bears. (Don't you just hate it when that happens?) So Lyra sets out toward the Arctic with a team of explorers to try to find the children and her father. She discovers the children are being horribly mutilated and killed. The mutilation? They are severed from their precious animal "daemons." And, naturally, the "Christian" church is behind it! Like ripping away the pagan version of teddy bears from little kids. Yes, my church does that to any child we can find – how about yours?
And poor Lyra's heart breaks as she learns about the involvement of both her mother and father in these gruesome experiments on children in the name of science fiction. These are your "Golden Compass" family values.
The ruling Magisterium answers to a not-so-powerful god. From the get-go, the Magisterium and its deity are the enemy. Somehow, young Lyra is destined to contend with this body in a future contest, and for those unfortunate enough to read this book and its sequels, we learn her "destiny" is to be the new Eve who will overturn the myth that sin is bad.
The plot element that will resonate the most with youth, however, is the animal "daemons." Traditional witches call these "familiars," and it seems the same here. The talking daemon animal has its own name and reflects its human's personality. Lyra's daemon, Pantalaimon, is ever-changing since she's still a child. Nicole Kidman has a golden monkey daemon, Lyra's father a white snow leopard. The website highlights this theme and kids are sure to be enchanted, literally.
Welcome, children, to Paganism 101, as you learn to worship animal spirits and shape-shifters.
Because it's a visually exotic, sweeping production with sophisticated animation, high drama, battle scenes and a courageous girl heroine, lots of folks will be ecstatic over this movie. The Pullman novels are international best-sellers in the young adult market category, so there's a ready- made audience of eagerly waiting fans. So, parents, arm yourselves ahead of time, since media giant Scholastic Publishing (publishers of the Harry Potter books) has already sent home "Golden Compass" promo flyers in the backpacks of kids all over the country through its school book fairs.
And if the occult spirituality wasn't bad enough, all the elements of political correctness are here, too – the brave, spiritual female child of dubious parentage with an unchangeable destiny for greatness; cruel adults who can't be trusted; a beautiful, insightful witch who, along with other witches, has been persecuted by the ruthless Christian church; religious leaders obsessed with human sin and offering no redemption; yet "faith" is available through science fiction, talking animals – including armored polar bears– and a magical truth machine. What more could Hollywood invent in its relentless goal to de-flower, de-Christianize and paganize Western youth?
One gets the impression Philip Pullman is a man with huge issues, and his destructive agenda is crystal clear. Why it's being glamorized and sold to children is anybody's guess, but mine is the same as for the Potter books: Undiscerning adults are allowing greedy publishers aligned with bitter and unstable writers to take over so-called "literature" produced for children, with nightmarish results.
The dark spirits encircling this movie, as with the books, are palpable and will eat our young alive. If you love God and your children, don't dishonor Him and confuse them. Keep children away from "The Golden Compass."
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