From: "Tony Ellis" <LittleSense@necronomicon.co.uk>
Subject: (urth) Daemon. And on. And on.
Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2001 20:07:05 +0100

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:

>because said child has read a moderate amount of SF/F, she has no
>problem adapting when the word is revealed to mean something like an
>externalized soul.

And later:

>From all of which I stand by my
>original conclusion: that it is fairly unlikely that a child,
>reading THE GOLDEN COMPASS, will (as you originally put it)
>learn that a word used by Christianity to mean an
>incarnation of evil originally meant something as
>harmless as "spirit."

If the word 'daemon' is at some point "revealed to mean something like an
externalized soul", right at that point the child -knows- that a word with
Christian connotations of evil is being used to mean something as harmless
as 'spirit'. If she's spared my lesson in political etymology, fine. She's
still being given something to think about, which was my original argument.


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