loremaster wrote:Atreyuh..... some things are made known by their opposite, in this case, reading semuta's post and seeing what he doesnt say.
Exactly! This use of very basic polarity is evident as a storytellers construction tool all the way throughout Dune. Remember that Frank is working on a lot of levels at the same time for very much of the text. He admits that by using devices such as 'foldspace' where the Navigators must align the whole universe to discover the safe trajectory. The idea of following all the threads; ALL of the threads, that we can perceive, so a to discover the safe path, the balanced center, is established repeatedly in many contexts throughout.
So it is very possible that there are perceptual levels in there (the books) that individual readers are at first unaware. I didn't know the half of what he was talking about when I first read Dune sextet; I had to go away and study a great many things before I could see what Frank is getting at. Dune is not just a linear story, its very subject matter reveals that. It is what he is discussing and exploring. Dune is a teaching book, of conscious perception. The Sleeper must Awaken. It is a Sufi manuscript. The more that I study these things, the more often I find a reference within Dune that reveals an insight that Frank is in fact referring to many existing schools and their symbolic codes. His use of the Panoplia Prophetica confesses to his own research and conclusions about this very thing. So it is quite natural that there are connections in the story for disciplines that the reader has not yet encountered, to make sense of. Instead of attacking any insight into this perception it is a better method to ask oneself, How can that be?
Going back to folding space and seeing all the threads; there is a left and right hemisphere. There is an up and a down. These polarities are referenced especially when dealing with both Prescience and Other Memory (before and after). When you fold a piece of paper there is a crease down the center of the page. When you fold a 3D globe in half... I postulate that you come up with a mobius loop. This globe is full of stars and the journey of each star as we fold this globe is a thread, a storyline, described in symbol. Very often these are repeats and simmer down into very simple plain story elements. But here we get into the realms of storytelling methods for creative fiction (subplots that either verify or contrast the main plot) and also scientifically the holtzman physics.
From Polarity we can achieve Balance. That gives us three stable reference points; left, right, & the axl. Here we have a triangle. This is schoolkids stuff but it is also a foundation course in basic egyptian freemasonry. I am not writing to offend anybodies intelligence; I am writing to establish a basic approach to understanding Dune & the issues at hand, that of Leto~Harum. From one source (Harum) grew many tributaries, which can be seen as a family tree, a society, or a generational hierarchy system; again we have triangles. It does not stay in 2D for very long.
semuta wrote:There is a description in GEoD that Leto gives to Moneo about Harum (in my memory at least, although it is quite a few years since I read it) where Leto describes Harum as being a pyramid thinker, generating pyramid structure societies.
loremaster wrote:Harum was one of the first practitioners of the pharaonic model, thats as far as it goes. Pyramids arent mentioned, pharaonic societies are.
It is very confusing with a story as big and alive as Dune. Simplification of everything helps. Frank had certainly studied Egyptian Hieroglyphs and Cartouches; these symbols are designed to work on several layers of meaning. That itself is a teaching of why Egyptology is based upon a tiered pyramid model of awareness. Harum of course the first pharoah is a concise symbol for the diversification that generations of culture founded by him, represent. I will post a picture in here shortly that will further discuss it; once the symbolism is understood. There you go, a crash course in egyptian symbols necessary to understand the symbolism of Dune.
Dune is resonant. Full of resonant symbols. Often the story contains shorthand symbols referring to more advanced thesis existing in cultural lore. Egyptology is a brilliant place to start. Usul may mean the Base of the Pillar but the word 'Mastaba' is Egyptian for the same, translating in polite conversation to 'bench' it obviously has a secondary meaning referring once again to the Kundalini serpent. I feel that I should not need to make analogies between that shamanic concept and the Sandworm nor the dragon motifs worn by the Honored Matre. Egyptology and Franks study into it is a very definite root source for Dune. What Frank is saying with the Dune books relates not only to Egyptology but also to other cultures. I will elucidate about Maya shortly.
Contrasting with triangle which represents Law is chaos. Harum is a symbol in the story for all of this. It depends if you read Dune as a stand~alone fiction, or as a manuscript in reference to existing traditions, thus opening the genius of this masterwork to other hidden layers of meaning. Frank did both.
semuta wrote:This itself gives us an insight into how Harum is establishing a structural working system for dominance over all the other selves within Leto's Other Memory, as well as an idea of how the new hybrid personality (of Leto, as he faces the prospect of dreaming within the worm) may be thinking. The pyramid is also essential as a mentational device when Leto projects his prescient vision.
loremaster wrote:Harum may have been the speaker for the internal committee, but leto was in charge. If you want to persist with a pharaonic model, imagine Harum as the king of england, bestowed by god with power over all other subjects, but still ultimately answerable to Leto.
Yes Leto was in charge, although his sweet personality is such that we contemplate the drastic conclusions he came to from the vantage of his role in 'Life'. We see how he too was bound by Fate and therefore concluded that the very best gift he could achieve is to awaken us to our own individual uniqueness and remove the cycles of Fate from human culture. In doing this we become unpredictable. Species survival depends upon such ingenuity.
semuta wrote:Leto himself speaks of the Safaris he takes into his mind, evocative of the wild jungle. In mayan shamanism there is identified the left and right hemispheres of the brain as the chaotic and lawful, or creative and logical. The correct terms used by mayan shamen are the Nagual and the Tonal. Here, the pyramid & Harums personality come to represent the Tonal (logical) aspect of Leto's persona. His own self stands as the gate between that, and the shadow of the wild worm that increasingly threatens to consume Letos self~identity and wrestle control over the Tyrants body, plunging him into an endless dream.
Frank Herbert used this sort of symbolic analogy quite a lot, sidestepped a frame of reference from the cultural acceptance of a theme, to come at it from a fresh angle and also that the initiate would be reading the story in a different way to the non initiate. A typical Masonic strategy.
loremaster wrote:I have no idea where you've pulled this from, but i dont remember Harum being referred to as logical, or any such similar reference. Nor do i rememeber Frank describing any sort of Mayan origin. Why did you include all this?
Harum is used to help Leto structure his Other Memories so that they do not take possession of him. He has achieved a useful working balance with Harum. Harum is of all resources available to Leto the one he considers his best chance of structuring the other voices. This requires logical thinking. Again the use of symbolism here to steer the reader so that structured thinking is associated with Harum. Since Harum is a pharoah... (the word translates into english as both 'far~seer' and 'one whose voice travels', to use the word 'king' is shorthand, comprising of african components; 'ki' means flow of energy and 'ng' is from 'glottal stop' which means 'to make' and 'of matter' ~ so we use the word King in a similar way; the King is the one whose flow of energy makes the world. I study etymology it explains a great deal.) Since Harum is a pharoah he is associated with Egyptology and to study that reveals the pyramid based systems involved with discovering
balance.
Aside from the spiritualisation of Inundation of the Nile measurements, the famous picture known as 'the weighing of the heart ceremony' has for its symbols a feather (symbol of Maat which is where we get the word Maths, therefore = logic) and heart (representing chaos because it is associated with emotions). All this basic background to egyptian culture highlights why I associated Harum with these concepts. In Leto's position these concepts are indeed relevant. I hope that this adds another layer of depth to your enjoyment of GEoD without setting myself & my research up as a target for people who have not followed the same research. I will be the first to ask what understandings any accusers have of these things! But lets not get personal, thats a waste of time, as the Bene Gesserit teach us.
The strong Mayan element in Dune is because the Jaguar Priesthood that was the Egyptian priesthood left at the sixth dynasty to found the Aztec Jaguar priesthood whose symbolism is a direct transition from the Egyptian symbolism. It is the same priesthood. I properly use the term 'Mayan' to cover many south American cultural groups all influenced by the same wave and affected backstage by the priesthood because the word means 'Dreamtime' in many languages. When we invoke the physics of dreamtime, lateral sense breaks down and this itself is one major point being discussed in the story. There are many references to Mayan culture in Dune the same as with Egyptology but for now I feel that I have left a lot of information here already for the reader to digest and so I will pick up on that thread at a later date.
semuta wrote:Leto knew that a pyramid society is fallible. He sought to deny such society any ability to found itself thus cause enslavement. His utopian ideal is a free~forming continually reforming every writhing culture, perpetually.
The importance of a pyramid structured society is highlighted in relevance to the projections of Letos prescience, the Golden Path. Mentational ability contrasted with the random chaotic nature of tomorrows universe. This is like a recap, shorthand symbolism, for the same subject as it has been explored in the earlier books. In GEoD Frank symbolises that whole concept and has a god debate/explore it within his minds eye.
loremaster wrote:
I'm not sure i really see what you're saying here either? Leto used the memories of ancestors to show him a million ways not to do it, and in his own words those memories "illuminate my path". He saw from internal observations of ancestral experiences that fixing upon a leader, remaining grounded in tradition and choosing easy options lead down into stagnation which is precisely what leto wanted to avoid, that way meant death.
Remember, Leto does not judge his ancestors, (I am not the iron hammer - which is one of the coolest lines in the best book, IMO). He simply uses their experience to show what new strategy must be followed.
Yes I agree, that's what I was saying.
semuta wrote:Frank is doing a few things in similitude here, that the story speaks of both at once, with the same words and passages having multilayered meaning and often playing one off against the other. The 'normal prescient mentat' consciousness that has already been explored with Paul Maud'Dib and with guild Navigators.
loremaster wrote:You dont need to be a mentat to be prescient. obviously, not all mentats are prescient. Examples of prescients but not mentats include Edric, Alia, Ghanima, Odrade.
I have placed Mentat ability and Prescience in the same basket here because they contrast as a polarity to chaotic thinking. I have assigned them with the motif of 'triangle' or 'pyramid' because they are a polarity with circle thinking. These are two models for societies.
Here I draw upon a teaching from the mayan shaman which is also a model in western psychology. That the frontal lobes of the brain are associated with logic on the one hemisphere and creativity on the other hemisphere. It should be evident by now that we are attempting to achieve a balance between these two hemispheres, that is the path of indefinite flow; visualising the Golden Path.
Prescients can see into the possible futures or where a nexus is due to occur, the one solid future to which we are predestined. Letos achievement was to deny us the ability to do this, a double edged achievement because now we cannot see in advance where a nexus might occur, but that also gives us the ability to get on with our lives without being scried upon by prescient politicians. It is also said that by looking into the future, we shape it; the observer affects the observed.
Mentats are pure logic and given enough datum can work out what is due to occur in the near future and what is happening around us now. This can be similar to Prescient ability in the ability to know the future.
A third group would have to be the Ixian No~ships Nav comp, although this mechanical device is not at the time of the Dune books self aware nor capable of prescience. It requires spice mutation to become prescient. Mentats are known as 'human computers'.
semuta wrote:
With Leto this is mutating and taken another step further. While His new insights (the necessity for the development of people who are invisible~to~prescience) are drawn from the techniques of observation applied from his traditions, from his teachings; as consequence of Leto's development of prescient ability, he raises the stakes and therefore the observers awareness level beyond his predecessors. When Leto is looking into the future, it is macrocosmic and all encompassing. After the debate of whether a prescient creates or merely observes the future, Leto determines the answer; by observing, he is establishes the future into which many generations will experience as their lives. In doing so he sets the gameboard fo their lives; they know that he has already seen this. They are fated. And so his gift is to set them free of it.
loremaster wrote:I agree, Leto used his ancestors to show him the way forward. Stagnation, hero worship, tradition were all limiting humanity. Prescience was another trap. Spice addiction a third. By driving the desire to travel, by eroding all tradition (homogenising life) and by forcing people to be creative, he stopped the downward spiral of stagnation and tradition. To avoid prescience, he created siona and semi-intentionally drove the ixians to create no-fields. To remove spice addiction, he weined society from it over 4,000 years, and in the same time drove tleilaxu to create artificial spice which could be reproduced anywhere, freeing humanity from ties to arrakis.
By this time the Tleilaxu Facedancers had already taken over the Ixian civilisation. In GEoD and beyond, the Ixians are a front for Tleilaxu. Ixian No~technology is actually Tleilaxu No~technology. Leto knows this of course. He has been watching the blind spots. He might tell us that he barely uses his prescience but I think that is part of his dumbing down campaign. He would not have survived if he was not using it often; I believe that explains what his 'Safaris' are all about.
semuta wrote:So that when we observe that which is to come through Letos eyes, during his lifetime, as we read GEoD; we are analysing His mind to the best of our ability; as a prescient mentat. This is the pyramid. Yet we know that He is functioning on a level of higher awareness spectrum. He can see further ahead, and as the story progresses the consequences of His alterations to our previous insightful visions are explored at the same time. It has the effect of throwing us out of time, out of linear sequence; away from the pyramid; off the grid.
loremaster wrote:Just... what? Leto didnt look beyond his lifetime except out of the corner of his prescient eye to see that the golden path continued.
He only told us that. Leto saw it ALL. It is like when Jessica returns to Arrakis at the beginning of CoD, and the children are lied to. Atreides lie to cover their arses. Even to their own. This is a tool of statecraft. Read it again with this in mind and you will appreciate an entirely different Duniverse. Remember, NEVER TRUST A POLITICIAN!
FTR I am not claiming that lying is the same thing as
'higher spectrum awareness' although it is an easy parallel. To assume these as the same is to crash & burn. What I originally meant by the statement is something more spiritual. Neither am I boasting about having myself acheived
HSA, although at times we all do. I delight and am in awe of Frank Herberts ability to engane the readers mind at multiple levels of cognitive awareness. It adds great credibility to the characters in the story who are functioning on such levels as well as training the reader. Dune is that engaging that we are still puzzling over it many years later, because it goes this deep.
Our minds are unhinged because we do not know what is happening and at what levels the other characters are functioning. Only when Odrade matures does Frank appear to pick up this thread, because she represents what we are capable of, accelerated. By this era the humans are faster, smarter, better than us.
This had always been the case. Siona was the new, (And all her descendants) because she felt siaynoq. Because she was fast, agile, free from prescient control and always tried to create the new ("restore the outward view"). Siona was the start.
loremaster wrote:what?
No!!!
loremaster wrote:What?
pmpl
loremaster wrote:What?
ask HOW!!!!
and incidentally, did you read Sandchiggers comment;
what ho?
Our minds surf energy threads, and we make statements relating to them, based also upon the release of emotional incentive from the heart.
These are signifiers of how Mayans teach time to work.
Frank is teaching us such an attunement throughout the books. That is how I know he has studied mayan shamanism. The jaguar priests teach reincarnation/transmigration. Now think about the ghola Idaho recalling all his past life memories. This is comparable to Other Memory. In the original terms established by Dune book 1, that qualifies Idaho as the only true male reverend mother; and just at the point where he comes to understand this about himself, he slips through not only the Sisterhoods fingers, but also leaves the known world... and ends the series.
So much for universal superbeings.
loremaster wrote:
Siona wasnt a trap, or a test, siona was an achievement. She wasnt there to keep him focussed. She was what he was focussed on creating!
She is both. She is his pet project, she was a very strong point of his interest. Im not even going to argue this, it works both ways. The focus necessary to achieve the creation.
Hwi was the trap because she caused Leto to listen to his heart above his mind. Curious Tleilaxu, in trapping him they set him free.
Idaho is the steady focus for contrast against this ever clouded backdrop of a growing world beyond the grasp of Leto's sight. The awakening consciousness of the ghola who is himself developing similar related abilities. Importantly the ghola is not invisible to Leto's prescience. When I read the book a second time I considered that Idaho remains visible to Leto even after he jumps the No~ship into the Scattering at the end of Chapter House. What happens next is what Leto was watching, creating, forming a culture through thousands of years merely so that this event could occur. It represents survival, encapsulated.
loremaster wrote:Leto didnt look beyond his death, he says so himself. Duncan was a dampener, he was routinely bred back into the breeding program as a sort of baseline human. I cant remember a quote offhand but their is one. GEoD, i think leto is explaining to moneo the purpose of the duncans.
He did continue to manipulate events though. I believe (though many disagree) that humanity isnt out of the woods yet, and that part of the golden path included maturing of the bene gesserit to have his wider definition of humanity. The message on the wall is designed to goad the BG into becoming custodians of his golden path. To get off their elitist horse about what constitues humanity, and to stop being a manipulative secret society.
Leto gave it to Moneo in a context that Moneo could understand. Moneo really is not that important in the overall scheme of things other than as a companion for Leto. Moneo had something about him that Leto has identified in 3500 years of observation to be a rare intelligence amongst humans. I recall he is Siona's uncle or father. Leto was not above lying to pacify Moneo. Leto looked into the future because he left a message for Odrade at sietch Tabr. He looked into the future a lot more than he admitted to people. And what he saw there caused him to simplify everything. He simplified everything by creating people who are invisible to his own prescience. That when he looks into the future now, he sees nothing. It is a beautiful paradox. I question that this is an act of madness, not of sanity.
Humanity is never out of the woods. We are only just beginning to awaken to the fact that there are things lurking in the woods that are nastier than narwolf, and superior to ourselves in many ways. Things that are predatory in ways that we require breeding gods to understand them. Right back before Paul was born, the Bene Gesserit began a project to create a man who might have insight into such monsters. By the end of the series we are discovering that out there in the scattering are The Onesof Many Faces, and super~evolved facedancers, and worse. Entities that toy with us, could crush us with a whim, and which our most evolved groups are tentative to discuss even amongst themselves. All we know is that as consequence, our elite are raising our abilities in specific ways, and they tell us that this is for species survival. Wake up.
semuta wrote:Fundamental to understanding the development of Leto's strategy, what he achieves with the GP and what it means, is the readers belief of whether His prescience is Absolute, or limited. The consequence of the Siona line is integral to this question. Leto limits his own prescient vision with his breeding program. Why would he do this? He could have remained a bored god infinitely. That was not his agenda.
loremaster wrote:Leto wanted to remove the idea of a centralised figure, not become it indefinately (which like chigger said he couldnt do anyway). I believe Leto's prescience to be much more powerful than Paul's, but still limited, and prone to failure. The fact is that he didnt use it on the macrocosmic scale you suggested earlier. He limited it to small uses like "prescient scans" (GEoD) to help manipulate events, he didnt look beyond his time except to see the golden path continued, the direction of the golden path was shown by his past (ancestry). Siona was created to free humanity from ALL prescients, not just his.
We do not know how far Letos prescient ability extended. We have to be objective. Read it once and consider him a god of limited power. Read it twice and consider him a true god with infinite prescience. Leto created the Golden Pathway but that path was to counter an event which might not have happened during the chronicle. Whatever Idaho travels onward to face explains why Leto acted in the way he did, the changes he made to humanity. He gave us the fight for individual freedom and abilities to hide. Now why would our God do this, do you think?
Is Leto paranoid, or does He know something that he is not telling us? something we have to work out for ourselves for us to believe and face it. I remind you that Dune is a teaching book, and an important plotline within it is the idea of entities writing manuscripts through human channels. Apply it.
semuta wrote:
Odrade's discovery of sietch Tabr and Leto's message. The scope of Leto's prescience is a big question that the Bene Gesserit still have not resolved even by the end of Chapter House. Frank leaves us as he does the Faithful with this debate, a riddle. In doing so the paradox becomes a koan, and one of the major turning factors that bind such querents to His path. It is a strategy; to keep people steered through the aeons by pondering, are we out of the tunnel yet?
loremaster wrote:I've done this bit. Leto didnt leave that message through prescience because a)he said so and b)Odrade is Atreides anyway, (siona gene).
And yet He still saw the need for it, Leto foresaw the event of 'a reverend mother' reading the message He had left there. Even to somebody invisible to prescience.
Does anybody recall who she was accompanied by on this trip? Because Leto could have seen the activities of any non~Siona gene bearing people who accompanied her and worked it out from this. Alternatively he foresaw other events, perhaps a parallel timestream that the message diverted or perhaps something occuring later that the message is responsible for. At any rate He is still steering society years after his own death with a few key factors.
loremaster wrote: Are we safe yet? I personally dont think so, not until the BG step up, swallow the numbers of the HM (giving them the numbers to operate on the big scale) and take an active role in humanity, living, loving and dying for it, like leto did.
[/quote]
okay I have had it with humungous drafts of text, I'm out of here until someone writes something that catches me fully in the urgent need for my response. Otherwise I'm going to get banned again like what happened last time on another Dune forum.