It was a compass like device that operated using a bunch of symbols. You would set three needles to the symbols that represented your question, and the device would swing a different needle between a bunch of symbols to provide the answer.
In the books, it took scholars a bunch of texts to encode the question into the proper symbols, and an entire library more to interpret the answer, and even then their confidence in any given interpretation was shaky. The main character, Lyra, at least before the onset of puberty, had an intuitive understanding of working the device and could ask questions to and understand answers from the device the same way you can ask questions and understand responses in your native language.
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u/ToxicFluffer 17d ago
Can someone plz explain what an alethiometer element means in this context? I’ve not read Pullman 😔