The image is also connected to John Milton's Paradise Lost in which God uses a golden compass to circumscribe the universe.
The R&H designers also worked on the spy flies and divided shots with Digital Domain on the alethiometer (the golden compass itself).
Due to confusion with the other common meaning of compass (the navigational instrument) this phrase in the singular became the title of the American edition of Northern Lights (the book prominently features a device that one might label a "golden compass").
The "golden compass" is mentioned multiple times throughout the film as an "alethiometer".
God takes the golden compasses (line 225) to carve the world out of Chaos, and it isn't obvious that the Son is meant here.
In the film version, the alethiometer is specifically referred to as a golden compass.
It also the source of precognition, pariticularly when using a "golden compass".
Elliott finds a corpse in the caves, holding a golden compass with the words Via Domus (Latin for "The Way Home") inscribed on it.
Not a breath of breeze stirred, but the eight-pointed star, like a golden compass rose, seemed to shift against Cadsuane's hair.
Lyra is also given something called a golden compass.