“Another Festival so soon?” the Lord Leto asked.
"It has been ten years," the majordomo said.
Do you think by this exchange that the Lord Leto betrays an ignorance of time's
passage?
-The Oral History
“Another Festival so soon?” the Lord Leto asked.
"It has been ten years," the majordomo said.
Do you think by this exchange that the Lord Leto betrays an ignorance of time's
passage?
-The Oral History
What am I eliminating? The bourgeois infatuation with peaceful conservation of
the past. This is a binding force, a thing which holds humankind into one
vulnerable unit in spite of illusionary separations across parsecs of space. If
I can find the scattered bits, others can find them. When you are together, you
can share a common catastrophe. You can be exterminated together. Thus, I
demonstrate the terrible danger of a gliding, passionless mediocrity, a
movement without ambitions or aims. I show you that entire civilizations can do
this thing. I give you eons of life which slips gently toward death without
fuss or stirring, without even asking 'Why?' I show you the false happiness and
the shadow-catastrophe called Leto, the God Emperor. Now, will you learn the
real happiness?
-The Stolen Journals
Our ancestor, Assur-nasir-apli, who was known as the cruelest of the cruel,
seized the throne by slaying his own father and starting the reign of the
sword. His conquests included the Ururnia Lake region. which led him to
Commagene and Khabur. His son received tribute from the Shuites, from Tyre,
Sidon, Gebel and even from Jehu, son of Omri whose very name struck terror into
thousands. The conquests which began with Assur-nasirapli carried arms into
Media and later into Israel, Damascus, Edom, Arpad, Babylon and Umlias. Does
anyone remember these names and places now? I have given you enough clues: Try
to name the planet.
-The Stolen Journals
From that welter of memories which I can tap at will, patterns emerge. They are
like another language which I see so clearly The social-alarm signals which put
societies into the postures of defense attack are like shouted words to me. As
a people. you react against threats to innocence and the peril of the helpless
young. Unexplained sounds, visions and smells raise the hackles you have
forgotten you possess. When alarmed, you cling to your native language because
all the other patterned sounds are strange. You demand acceptable dress because
a strange costume is threatening. This is system feedback at its most primitive
level. Your cells remember
-The Stolen Journals
When I set out to lead humankind along my Golden Path. I promised them a lesson
their bones would remember. I know a profound pattern which humans deny with
their words even while their actions affirm it. They say they seek security and
quiet, the condition they call peace. Even as they speak. they create the seeds
of turmoil and violence. If they find their quiet security. they squirm in it.
How boring they find it. Look at them now. Look at what they do while I record
these words. Hah! I give them enduring eons of enforced tranquility which plods
on and on despite their every effort to escape into chaos. Believe me, the
memory of Leto's Peace shall abide with them forever. They will seek their
quiet security thereafter only with extreme caution and steadfast preparation.
-The Stolen Journals
Let there be no doubt that I am the assemblage of our ancestors, the arena in
which they exercise my moments. They are my cells and I am their body. This is
the favrashi of which I speak, the soul, the collective unconscious, the source
of archetypes, the repository of all trauma and joy. I am the choice of their
awakening. My samhadi is their samhadi. Their experiences are mine! Their
knowledge distilled is mfr inheritance. Those billions are my one.
-The Stolen Journals
I am beginning to hate water. The sandtrout skin which impels my metamorphosis
has learned the sensitivities of the worm. Moneo and many of my guards know my
aversion, Only Moneo suspects the truth, that this marks an important waypoint.
I can feel my ending in it, not soon as Moneo measures time, but soon enough as
I endure it. Sandtrout swarmed to water in the Dune days, a problem during the
early stages of our symbiosis. The enforcement of my will power controlled the
urge then, and until we reached a time of balance. Now, I must avoid water
because there are no other sandtrout, only the half dormant creatures of my
skin. Without sandtrout to bring this world back to desert, Shai-Hulud will not
emerge; the sandworm cannot evolve until the land is parched. I am their only
hope.
-The Stolen Journals
Some say I have no conscience. How false they are, even to themselves. I am the
only conscience which has ever existed. As wine retains the perfume of its
cask, I retain the essence of my most ancient genesis, and that is the seed of
conscience. That is what makes me holy. I am God because I am the only one who
really knows his heredity!
-The Stolen Journals
The singular multiplicity of this universe draws my deepest attention. It is a
thing of ultimate beauty.
-The Stolen Journals
Given enough time for the generations to evolve, the predator produces
particular survival adaptations in its prey which, through the circular
operation of feedback, produce changes in the predator which again change the
prey etcetera, etcetera, etcetera .... Many powerful forces do the same thing.
You can count religions among such forces.
-The Stolen Journals
“Make no heroes,” my father said.
-The voice of Ghanima,
From the Oral History
Think of it as plastic memory, this force within you which trends you and your
fellows toward tribal forms. This plastic memory seeks to return to its ancient
shape, the tribal society. It is all around you-the feudatory, the diocese, the
corporation, the platoon, the sports club, the dance troupes, the rebel cell,
the planning council, the prayer group . . . each with its master and servants,
its host and parasites. And the swarms of alienating devices (including these
very words!) tend eventually to be enlisted in the argument for a return to
“those better rimes.” I despair of teaching you other ways. You have square
thoughts which resist circles.
-The Stolen Journals
You must remember that I have at my internal demand every expertise known to
our history. This is the fund of energy I -draw upon when I address the
mentality of war. If you have not heard the moaning cries of the wounded and
the dying, you do not know about war. I have heard those cries in such numbers
that they haunt me. I have cried out myself in the aftermath of battle. I have
suffered wounds in every epoch-wounds from fist and club and rock, from
shell-studded limb and bronze sword, from the mace and the cannon, from arrows
and lasguns and the silent smothering of atomic dust, from biological invasions
which blacken the tongue and drown the lungs, from the swift gush of flame and
the silent working of slow poisons. . . and more I will not recount! I have
seen and felt them all. To those who dare ask why I behave as I do, I say: With
my memories, I can do nothing else. I am not a coward and once I was human.
-The Stolen Journals
As each day passes, you become increasingly unreal, more alien and remote from
what I find myself to be on that new day. I am the only reality and, as you
differ from me, you lose reality. The more curious I become, the less curious
are those who worship me. Religion suppresses curiosity. What I do subtracts
from the worshipper. Thus it is that eventually I will do nothing, giving it
all back to frightened people who will ,find themselves on that day alone and
forced to act for themselves.
-The Stolen Journals
Oh, the landscapes I have seen! And the people! The far wanderings of the
Fremen and all the rest of it. Even back through the myths to Terra. Oh, the
lessons in astronomy and intrigue, the migrations, the disheveled flights, the
leg aching and lung-aching runs through so many nights on all of those cosmic
specks where we have defended our transient possession. I tell you we are a
marvel and my memories leave no doubt of this.
-The Stolen Journals
What is the most immediate danger to my stewardship? I will tell you. It is a
true visionary, a person who has stood in the presence of God with the full
knowledge of where he stands. Visionary ecstasy releases energies which are
like the energies of sex-uncaring for anything except creation. One act of
creation can be much like another. Everything depends upon the vision.
-The Stolen Journals
Groups tend to condition their surroundings for group survival. When they
deviate from this it may be taken as a sign of group sickness. There are many
telltale symptoms. I watch the sharing of food. This is a form of
communication, an inescapable sign of mutual aid which also contains a deadly
signal of dependency. It is interesting that men are the ones who usually tend
the landscape today. They are husband-men. Once, that was the sole province of
women.
-The Stolen Journals
Unceasing warfare gives rise to its own social conditions which have been
similar in all epochs. People enter a permanent state of alertness to ward off
attacks. You seethe absolute rule of the autocrat. All new things become
dangerous frontier districts-new planets, new economic areas to exploit, new
ideas or new devices, visitors-everything suspect. Feudalism takes firm hold,
sometimes disguised as a politbureau or similar structure, but always present.
Hereditary succession follows the lines of power. The blood of the powerful
dominates. The vice regents of heaven or their equivalent apportion the wealth.
And their know they must control inheritance or slowly let the power melt away.
Now, do you understand Leto's Peace?
-The Stolen Journals
Odd as it may seem, great struggles such as the one you can see emerging from
my journals are not always visible to the participants. Much depends on what
people dream in the secrecy of their hearts. I have always been as concerned
with the shaping of dreams as with the shaping of actions. Between the lines of
my journals is the struggle with humankind's view of itself-a sweaty contest on
a field where motives from our darkest past can well up out of an unconscious
reservoir and become events with which we not only must live but contend. It is
the hydraheaded monster which always attacks from your blind side. I pray,
therefore, that when you have traversed my portion of the Golden Path you no
longer will be innocent children dancing to music you cannot hear.
-The Stolen Journals
Your Lord knows very well what is in your heart. Your soul suffices this day as
a reckoner against you. I need no witnesses. You do not listen to your soul,
but listen instead to your anger and your rage.
-Lord Leto to a Penitent,
From the Oral History
Sometimes I indulge myself in safaris which no other being may take. I strike
inward along the axis of my memories. Like a schoolchild reporting on a
vacation trip, I take up my subject. Let it be . . . female intellectuals! I
course backward into the ocean which is my ancestors. I am a great winged fish
in the depths. The mouth of my awareness opens and I scoop them up!
Sometimes... sometimes I hunt out specific persons recorded in our histories.
What a private joy to relive the life of such a one while I mock the academic
pretentions which supposedly formed a biography.
-The Stolen Journals
The female sense of sharing originated as familial sharing-care of the young,
the gathering and preparation of food, sharing joys, love and sorrows. Funeral
lamentation originated with women. Religion began as a female monopoly, wrested
from them only after its social power became too dominant. Women were the first
medical researchers and Practitioners. There has never been any clear balance
between the sexes because power goes with certain roles as it certainly goes
with knowledge.
-The Stolen Journals
The trance-state of prophecy is like no other visionary experience. It is not a
retreat from the raw exposure of the senses (as are many trance-states) but an
immersion in a multitude of new movements. Things moue. It is an ultimate
pragmatism in the midst of Infinity, a demanding consciousness where you come
at last into the unbroken awareness that the universe moves of itself, that it
changes, that its rules change. that nothing remains permanent or absolute
throughout all such movement, that mechanical explanations for anything can
work only within precise confinements and, once the walls are broken down, the
old explanations shatter and dissolve, blown away by new movements. The things
you see in this trance are sobering, often shattering They demand your utmost
effort to remain whole and. even so, you emerge from that state profoundly
changed.
-The Stolen Journals
I tell you this in the hope that it will help you understand why I ad as I do
in the full knowledge that great forces accumulate in my Empire with but one
wish-the wish to destroy me. You who read these words may know full well what
actually happened, but I doubt that you understand it.
-The Stolen Journals
The Duncans always think it odd that I choose women for combat forces, but my
Fish Speakers are a temporary army in every sense. While they can be violent
and vicious, women are profoundly different from men in their dedication to
battle. The cradle of genesis ultimately predisposes them to behavior more
protective of life. They have proved to be the best keepers of the Golden Path.
I reinforce this in my design for their training. They are set aside for a time
from ordinary routines. I give them special sharings which they can look back
upon' with pleasure for the rest of their lives. They come of age in the
company of their sisters in preparation for events more profound. What you
share in such companionship always prepares you for greater things. The haze of
nostalgia covers their days among their sisters, making those days into
something different than they were. That's the way today changes history. All
contemporaries do not inhabit the same time. The past is always changing, but
few realize it.
-The Stolen Journals
I have isolated the city-experience within me and have examined it closely. The
idea of a city fascinates me. The formation of a biological community without a
functioning, supportive social community leads to havoc. Whole worlds have
become single biological communities without an interrelated social structure
and this has always led to ruin. It becomes dramatically instructive under
overcrowded conditions. The ghetto is lethal. Psychic stresses of overcrowding
create pressures which will erupt. The city is an attempt to manage these
forces. The social forms by which cities make the attempt are worth study.
Remember that there exists a certain malevolence about the formation of any
social order. It is the struggle for existence by an artificial entity.
Despotism and slavery hover at the edges. Many injuries occur and, thus, the
need for laws. The law develops its own power structure, creating more wounds
and new injustices. Such trauma can be healed by cooperation, not by
confrontation. The summons to cooperate identifies the healer.
-The Stolen Journals
The Duncans sometimes ask if I understand the exotic ideas of our past? And if
I understand them, why can't I explain them? Knowledge, the Duncans believe,
resides only in particulars. I try to tell them that all words are plastic.
Word images begin to distort in the instant of utterance. Ideas imbedded in a
language require that particular language for expression. This is the very
essence of the meaning within the word exotic. See how it begins to distort?
Translation squirms in the presence of the exotic. The Galach which I speak
here imposes itself. It is an outside frame of reference, a particular system.
Dangers lurk in all systems. Systems incorporate the unexamined beliefs of
their creators. Adopt a system, accept its beliefs, and you help strengthen the
resistance to change. Does it serve any purpose for me to tell the Duncans that
there are no languages for some things? Ahhh! But the Duncans believe that all
languages are mine.
-The Stolen Journals
It required almost a thousand years before the dust of Dune's old planet-wide
desert left the atmosphere to be bound up in soil and water. The wind called
sandblaster has not been seen on Arrakis for some twenty-five hundred years.
Twenty billion tons of dust could be carried suspended in the wind of just one
of those storms. The sky often had a silvery look to it then. Fremen said: "The
desert is a surgeon cutting away the skin to expose what's underneath." The
planet and the people had layers. You could see them. My Sareer is but a weak
echo of what was. I must be the sandblaster today.
-The Stolen Journals
Most civilization is based on cowardice. It's so easy to civilize by teaching
cowardice. You water down the standards which would lead to bravery. You
restrain the will. You regulate the appetites. You fence in the horizons. You
make a law for every movement. You deny the existence of chaos. You teach even
the children to breathe slowly. You tame.
- The Stolen Journals
Safaris through ancestral memories teach me many things. The patterns, ahhh,
the patterns Liberal bigots are the ones who trouble me most. I distrust the
extremes. Scratch a conservative and you find someone who prefers the past over
any future. Scratch a liberal and find a closet aristocrat. It's true! Liberal
governments always develop into aristocracies The bureaucracies betray the true
intent of people who form such governments. Right from the first, the little
people who formed the governments which promised to equalize the social burdens
found themselves suddenly in the hands of bureaucratic aristocracies. Of
course, all bureaucracies follow this pattern. but what a hypocrisy to find
this even under a communized banner Ahhh, well, if patterns teach me anything
it's that patterns are repeated. My oppressions. by and large, are no worse
than any of the others and, at least. I teach a new lesson.
-The Stolen Journals