Frank Herbert's Dune: of Worms, Water of Life, and Jungian Alchemy
- pontos fathom podcast ep05
Welcome fifth episode of the pontos fathom podcast - Frank Herbert's Dune: of Worms, Water of Life, and Jungian Alchemy - - pontos fathom podcast EP05. This episode we begin our exploration of esoteric influence on Frank Herbet's Dune starting with the psychology of Jung. We discuss aspects of Jungian Alchemy in Dune's The Water of Life, The Sandworms, and Muad'Dib. Thanks for watching and let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
Welcome back everyone to pontos fathom press this is our pontos fathom podcast number five and we will be discussing frank herbert's dune some influences and details from carl jung and his work in the collective unconscious alchemy and his magnum opus the mysterium conjunctionis as it relates to doom so this is the first of a number of dune podcasts we'll do this month other ones will include topics about dune and other interesting findings so hopefully you guys if you're interested in dune and interested in some correspondence between dune and some of frank herbert's influences or maybe not necessarily influences but some resonances with some other areas of knowledge this might be the podcast for you also just want to call out dune revenant we have a hardcover edition with the 25th anniversary introduction for dune revenant the original seventh dune book fan fiction presented in hardcover before the prequels back in the days of usednet dune revenant was compiled as a fan-ish attempt at completing the saga that frank herbert began without all of the baggage of the prequels and sequels so it's kind of a time capsule this edition also captures some of that those early communications from the usenet days and an interview with frank herbert from 1973 so it's a great compilation links below if you want to support the channel can also support us by liking and subscribing love to see your comments and looking to build the channel so that we can do these podcasts with a bigger live audience so your subscription helps and can check out our patreon as well so let's let's jump right in.
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So anyone who's read dune knows that frank herbert has really done one of the epics of world building in science fiction in his writing of dune and not only in dune but in the sequels that he wrote after june the the richness of the dune world is one of the main reasons why it resonates but but why is it so why do people love dune so much what what went on with frank we know frank herbert was a very interesting character if you read the biography of him by o'reilly or the biography by brian herbert to a lesser degree but we we get to see a lot of frank's interests in conservation a lot of his knowledge of the current worldview but also his interest in jungian psychology played a key role and we'll do another podcast where we really focus on the benny jesuit and some of that maybe some misconceptions around jungian influence but in this podcast we're really going to focus on those influences of jung i've got the later jung works out here which i think are really relevant to herbert also obviously his jung's work in archetypes is key so maybe we can go into a bit of of this and how it overlaps with frank herbert so an interesting anecdote from the frank herbert biography by brian herbert is recalls a process that frank herbert went through when he was writing dune where he utilized jungian mandalas now when we say the union mandalas we're really talking about a feature that jung explored and i'll show you an illustration from this book so the feature that jung explored was in his clinical works jung would use mandalas and eastern kind of thinking to help coax out some details about his cases so he would use these mandalas and he'd also study actual mandalas from religion but you can see in this one there's a air world earth world with birds and serpents and again the serpent motif is present you can also see separation of the light in the darkness here something below the ground something above the ground so herbert was said to have used these roles of the mandala to help him flesh out characters so for example in the case of baron harkonnen right we have an extreme version of corruption cruelty war mongering right we have and then so herbert in his working out the the ranges of human experience and characterization he would kind of look toward these jungian persona and then he would he said he pushed them to the extremes for maximum effect so this is where you could see leet kinds as sort of the wise old sage or stilgar as the protector you know and a lot of this comes into jung's work in ion and i'm going to just show you a diagram here where here's a an idea of the relation between man the lapis which is sort of the the philosopher's stone the serpent and the anthropos so the idea here is between man serpent and the lapis there's sort of a cycle between the higher man and the lower man and the world in the world serpent something like this right and these forces as jung kind of maps in this mandala like structure pits the anthropo so the human between the serpent which is the satan or the shaytan as we would call it in dune and the higher man which is you know christian lord it's the christos but in the dune lore it's the mua deep
so we kind of see this jungian jungian play some and in the way that joseph campbell is a jungian philosopher let's say of you know there's humankind under heaven and in our mythology we have christ and satan but in in the dune lore we have chitane the worm on the one hand and we have the moadiv as the prophet on the other hand and then we have dune the desert and then we have you know maybe the fremen way versus the imperial way and those are put at odds together you know and they feed each other so in the in the mandala circuit let's call it we have worm spice dune empire and then paul is that bridge that transformational character who can be both fremen and be imperial paul is both human and he's also taken the water of life to become the kwitzat's hedorak right so i i wanted to point out this one image here from it's from william blake dante's purgatory but you can see this figures walking up the side of the rock and i couldn't help but see paul and jessica clinging to the rock of their first night in the desert after the harkonnen attack right so you can kind of see how many of the themes are themes of archetypes and we and when we say archetypes what jung thought is the archetypes are human relations and human encounters and specifically human types of activities that happen in myth and throughout history that we find ourselves participating in so it can be anything from you know being in love or being at war or being a son or being a brother or being a mother all of these archetypal forms are things that humans find themselves participating in but it's very interesting here this a dream a dangerous walk with father and mother up and down many ladders right or this one here a voice says you are still a child right so we see paul starts out as a child but then he goes from the boy of caladan to the prophet and then finally to even more so he's emperor prophet demigod right so just a quick reading here it says it was said that ducalido blinded himself to the perils of arrakis and that he walked heedlessly into the pit would it not be more likely to suggest that he had lived so long in the presence of extreme danger he misjudged a chance of its intensity or is it possibly he deliberately sacrificed himself so that his son might better find life all indicates the duke was a man not easily hoodwinked from wadeeb family commentaries by the princess ireland you know frank herbert wrote dune in the 1960s i believe he was working at probably in the time of the kennedy administration and i can't help and maybe it's a topic for our last podcast that we'll do but i definitely want to do a podcast on duke lado and jfk and how that time was probably resonating with frank herbert a lot i'm not sure about frank's politics i'm going to re do some research into this but everybody was moved by the kennedys at that time and and for you know kennedy to be assassinated and duke lato to be sort of betrayed someone sort of has a resonance there but that we'll save that for that podcast we really want to focus here on some of these other topics that kind of fit in with the the uroboros let's call it that's that serpent that's eating its own tail
i think if we have a look into psychology and alchemy we can see an image here of the uroboros right so it's the it's the snake or the dragon that's eating its own tail and again this is a mandala type figure but it's also the idea of the closing of the loop and you know we have really clearly in the dune ecosystem this closed loop i mean it's it's almost a mantra in and of itself where you know we know from the david lynch movie dune desert planet right the spice the dune is the spice the the worm is the spice you know this sort of mantra this kind of dragon eating its tail and we see in fact the sand worm is that which produces the spice which actually is the key to the benny desert prophecy it's the key to muadeeb's prophecy it's the key to paul's transformation right so if we look at if we look at an example of that we see here again another world wheel these mandalas really speak to this circle of transformation right and you have this mandala of christ carrying the cross the golden flower mandala and these mandalas of transformation right so i think that we see echoed here the kind of mandala that paul finds himself in right so and this takes us to the worm right part of the the mystery of dune is the revelation we have into the nature of the sand worm and i want to just read a couple of these things you know we talk about the quitsat hadarak is ingesting the water of life just like a reverend mother would but as a male and he can ingest that water of life and transform the water of life into something that gives prophecy and i kind of just wanted to talk a little bit about the role of the worm right so we see here is where is this golden mercurius the radical moisture dissolved in sulfur and salt become the animated seed of the metals it is a spirit of light that descends from the sun a living spirit that teaches all creatures at the spirit of wisdom and teaches men the art whereby the soul and chain to the elements may be freed from mercurius comes the illumination of the adept this mercurius duplex ascends it is the uroboros which is the snake that eats its tail although the poem takes mercurius chiefly as a spirit of light we see it here as the worm right and we see another parallel about the worm that old serpent the devil and the they call shaytain shaytain is like satan so in old germany the concept of worms snake and dragon coalesces as they do in latin vermis serpens dracco as signifying hell in the grave the warmer serpent is an all-devouring death the ada's say a hole did i see far from the sun on the shore of death the door to the north dripping poison drops from the roof the chamber walls are bodies of worms hell in the old english is the worms hall and in middle high germany is the worms garden like the heroes and spirits of the dead the gods too are associated with the snake right and in comparison the gods of a snake remind us of the catholic form of the underworld as the rejuvenated phoenix first takes form as a worm so christianity borrowed a good deal from the egyptian religion and so does dune i mean dune follows this kind of worm sign let's say and then it says here worm therefore signifies the second adam christ and mentions the worm as an allegory of christ in the sense that it's from beyond the grave and it's from below right the aquarium spectrum so the alchemist experienced the anthropos which is the spirit of humanity and imbued it with a new vitality a freshness and an immediacy that reflected this enthusiastic tone the negredo not only about decay suffering and death so in the alchemical cycle there is something that is about the different states of the alchemy transformation so when paul transforms the water of life or the benny jesuit transformed the waters of life this is one of those topics that we're sort of referencing here the transformation of the water of life so we can go in with this in alchemical transformation is not only does it bring decay suffering death the torments of hell and the melancholy but it's visibly cast the eyes of the alchemy alchemist is also cast the shadow of its melancholy over this the solitary soul in the despair which was not his own and of which he was merely the poisonous dragon from inner necessity the dragon destroyed itself and changed into the lion right so this is the transformation that paul undergoes right destroy the worm destroys the old paul and then risen like a phoenix from this is more deep right the dragon ate its own wings as the eagle did its feathers these grotesque images reflect the conflict of opposites which the researcher curiosity had led him the works begin with a catabasis a journey to the underworld so again we have that journey to the underworld in a way for paul is when he is cast out into the desert and they go into the cave right and he fights james and they escaped their first sand worm right but also in the case of the fanciful christian rosencruts the descent to venus led only to his being slightly wounded by the hand of cupid's arrow paul's first vision is a vision of his love johnny who says tell me of your homeworld usual right so he has that dream back on caledon of a venusian dream right so bedeviled and shameless is led to all those who wish to investigate fall into a madness through ignorance so again we have this reference of falling into madness you know where the benny jesuit cannot look right the benny jesus are not able to see in the place that paul can see for all he saith in all obscurity shall heal the sickness of mind the author's intention isn't some to teach them they are adepts in the cypargeric medicine and that's such a small dose by a grain of mustard seed however it be taken to cure all diseases indifferently by reason of simplicity of union effective in the medicine so that no variety of the multitude of melodies may reign so again here's like the talking about the power of this small mustard seed of medicine to conquer all but in paul's case it's the transformation of the water of life in which the spirit animus is darkened and impaired by the single aspartic medicine and perfectly cured it only then restores the health to the spirit amino but sharpens the ingenuity and mind of men and all things may be miraculously easy as is easy for paul now to see the future for them in understanding intellectual the perception perceptu and nothing be hid from them which is in the upper or the lower world so again here we have writing jung's mysterium conjunctions some sense of a precedent of the prophecy that the transformation of the worm brings to brings to paul so let's go on to that we'll talk about this fremont religious adaptation then is the source of what is now recognized as the pillars of the universe whose kizara tafwid among us are all the signs and proofs of prophecy they bring us the arakin mystical fusion whose profound beauty is typified by the stirring music built in the old forms but stamped with the new awakening who has not heard and been deeply moved by the old man's hymn and it goes on to play that force it says i drove my feet through a desert whose mirage fluttered like a host voracious for glory greedy for danger i roam the horizons of al khalib watching time level mountains it is in search and its hunger for me and i saw the sparrows approach a pro swiftly approach bolder than an on rushing wolf they spread into the tree and i heard the flock of my branches and was caught on the beaks and the claws from the arrakis awakening by princess ireland so again we see this relation to the prophecy to the old desert ways right it's part of this heroic journey part of this alchemical journey right and with alchemy jung young portrays that alchemical journey through the various stages of alchemy as paralleling those stages of personal transformation and yet with paul we take those that heroic aspect of that journey and we amplify or herbert amplifies it so now not only is paul on a heroic journey of a boy becoming a man not only is he on the heroic journey of a prince finding himself alone in a strange world his crown usurped and not only rising to the level of his father but even rising beyond to the level of an emperor by the end of june and finally you know sort of like in the jungian ion he also finds himself on this ladder of the quartonario where he is trans transforming from anthropos into some kind of christos right it is significant that the gnostic philosophy found in connection to alchemy mater alchemica is one of the moderns of modern science it has also penetrated into the secrets of psychology and evolution and made the very roots of life itself an object of investigation in this way the human mind has sung deep into the sublunary world of matter thus repeating the gnostic myth of new who beholding his reflection in the depths below plunged down and was swallowed in the abrasive physics so the mind descended down into the matter right so thought became matter right the climax of this development was marked in the 18th century by the french revolution in the 19th century by scientific materialism and in the 20th century by political and social realism which has turned the wheel of history back a full 2000 years to see the recrescence of this despotism the lack of individual rights the cruelty and dignity and slavery of the pre-christian world whose labor problem was solved by the ur gat stolen the convict camp the trans-evaluation of all values is being enacted before our eyes and here too we see a parallel you know in in not only is the prophet who is freeing men with his quits sort of christ-like state but he's also a revolutionary of the people power right he's also a political statement and again this goes back to that kennedy point moadim allies with the fremen who are the secret power of dune right without those fremen the spice will not flow the spice that the beni jesuit depend upon for their reverend mothers the spice that the tulilaksu depend upon for their golas and their mentats the spice that the guild navigators depend on and yet it's all in the hands of this almost kind of like from the harkonnen perspective the fremen are seen as almost slaves right and yet they're they're the keepers to the gate they're the keepers of the prophecy right so let's go back to dune and just talk about this prophecy again prophecy impressions how can they put to the test in the face of the unanswered question consider how much is actual prediction of the wave form as modi referred to his vision image and how much is the prophet shaping the future to fit the prophecy what of the harmonics inherent in the act of prophecy does the prophet see the future or does he see the line of weakness a fault or cleavage that he may that he may shatter with words or decisions as a diamond cutter shatters his gem with the bowl of a knife from private reflections of moadi by the princess ireland get their water a man called out in the night said and paul fought down his fear get their water right maybe we'll close out this topic because i think this is very powerful stuff and i think there's a wealth of information here to to to conclude but i want to talk a bit about those exact waters that we're transforming here right so i i want to see this as some symbols of the unconscious let's look to those waters and then finally we'll have a close out talking about the prophecy again so again we talk about self-knowledge the alchemy alchemical solution right so one of those tasks that the alchemists were key to discover was this water of life this philosopher's stone and it says is it evident from the statements that dorne understood the alchemical solutio primarily as a spiritual and more and moral phenomenon and only secondarily as a physical one so in his philosophical chemical dorne warns or certs dissolution is knowledge or the spheric union of the male with the female the latter receiving from him all that ought to be received this is the beginning of the special generation whereby the effect of our spiritual spa jericho marriage is sensually apprehended namely the union of the twofold seed to form the embryo but again there's a resonance here with the benny jesuit secrets to their other memory which we'll discuss in another in another podcast this month like what is the secret of that other memory in the benny jesuit power what is what is behind that and also the fact that there is a male component to the benny jesuit the quitsats hedorak right so the spiritual and moral solutio is conceived as a spagyric marriage an inner psychic union which by analogy and magic correspondence unites the hostile elements into one stone right it transforms the waters right so we can go right in here into the waters it says egocentricity is a necessary attribute of consciousness and it also its specific sin but consciousness is confronted by the objective fact of the unconscious often enough as an avenging deluge right and here we have water is at all forms sea lake river spring one of the most commonest typifications of the unconscious as also the lunar femininity that is closely associated with water this dissolution of the heart in water would therefore correspond to the union of the male with the female this marriage right the wisdom corresponds to salt and is coordinated with the moon and again we have the moon is modib the the mouse shadow in the moon so the embryo whose equivalents are the homunculus and the lapis the lapis of course is the symbol of the self so i i think in in that sense you know there's a quick reading also about how that sand worm is transformed from dune revenant just to just a quote like a fan-ish attempt at this but i think it's also on that in the days before he first took the spice the hermit would play games with the sand worms he would allow them to take notice of him and rise toward the surface from the depths of the dunes and when the worm surfaced to consume its found prey it would emerge to find the hermit had vanished so powerful was his way that he could elude shaitan himself by burrowing into the sand or slipping into a shadow or evaporating like a noontime mirage which disappears faster than water itself so in this way shaihalud was taunted and the hermit lived on a long time in the desert longer than he could remember few others saw him but children remember tales of their parents telling the time of the old desert herbert came to st to the siege to repair a soul stew still suit boot pump they remembered these tales and held the image of him to adulthood and they would tell their children as an adult these children grown would shriek when an ancient man would emerge alone out of the desert wearing a still suit of a style that was old in the time of their grandparents he would need to replace a catch tube or a synth skin and he would again return to the desert from which he emerged legends grew around the hermit but none could be verified and only centuries later would the first spice dreamer discover his past the oral histories of the first femin for he lay at the root of many a life history when he first crossed the path of shahulud that he knew shai hulud and that was said he spoke with shahulud right these are the new paths new paths of lato perhaps okay so that's a that's a quick overview i hope that was interesting to you guys let me know what you think i'd like to do more of these deep dives into jung hey your your subscription to channel your liking and sharing the video will help grow it grow the channel and i would love to continue there's a world of dune frank herbert jungian connections we can make check out the upcoming podcasts i'll have one about the benny jesuit and samuel butler in the origin of the butler in jihad and another one talking about what we are doing when we imagine into the far future you know what is this imagination sort of going into both some anthroposophy some theosophy and even jung's black books and how it relates to frank herbert's imagining 10 000 years into the future of the earth and what it really kind of means psychologically like what are we what are we doing when we do this transhumanist projection what are we doing what are we're doing this future projection and how does it relate to history so hope these topics are interesting please check out the link pick up a copy of dune revenant to support the channel i will also be doing a review of dune revenant and readings from this on our patreon so you can check those out there looking forward to your comments and feedback and we'll talk to you soon thank you for watching and making it this far bye bye
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