I've always felt that Herbert's prescience was Frank's take on the collapse of the wave function in quantum mechanics. The act of prescience, of observation, locks the vision and collapses the wave function into one particular reality. It's why Paul was ultimately trapped by his visions. Chani died because he saw her die, and so forth. Leto II sought a way escape that trap, creating a paper chase of endless iterating possibilities. But that's just my take on it. Thank you for the upload.
paul saw possibilities too. he wanted the jihad to not happen. but he couldnt see a future which could achieve that, he even considered his death, but saw that wouldnt achieve the purpose. he saw the golden path, and i dont remember why, but he didnt want to do it himself. and simply didnt do it. him seeing it didnt lock him inside doing it. but i agree, dune, like every book, has plot problems. but its admittedly one of the more internally consistent of such books.
Paul saw what was necessary for the Golden Path to work and he couldn’t do it. He had already caused billions to be killed by taking the messianic path. Causing more death and suffering by going from messiah to god emperor was too much for him to contemplate.
@@QuinnsIdeas In case you hadn't already read it, I recommended Peter F. Hamilton's "Night's Dawn" trilogy to you in a previous comment section (the galactic empires one) - but because of this vid, I thought that I should mention it again. That's because Hamilton also brings a 'science fiction type of mysticism' that he uses to successfully introduce horror and spiritual elements into his epic space opera. Well worth checking out if you haven't already.
What i appreciated about Dune is the way Herbert presented advanced human capabilities as just that, a result of no longer relying on technology, and instead, probing the mysteries of the mind. George Lucas said 'To hell with it, here's a magical force'.
I always loved that as the reader, we can see how Paul gained his abilities in a sci-fi way; product of a specific human breeding program, trained as a mentat and a bene gesserit, intake of spice and the water of life - yet we can also see that the Fremen DON'T have such knowledge. So while we are able to see him as a product of his genetics and upbringing, it's also easy to see why the Fremen declare him as their God.
Planet of the Atheists to be fair, prescience and genetic memory in dune are pretty unrealistic but they are real scientific concepts in the dune universe. If you read a lot of fantasy books , you can see that magic is basically just science to the people living in a fantasy universe even if it’s not possible in our universe so prescience and genetic memory could be considered magic.
Man, you are pumping out high quality content day after day. I really appreciate all the hard work. You probably wont see this, but I wanted to thank you for being one of the last good channels on TH-cam.
For a while I didn't think Mysticism didn't have a place in Science Fiction cause you can always chalk things like Prescience up to science that has yet to be explained, although it's a bit of a stretch. It just felt wrong to try to combine the 2 but when I watched Neon Genesis Evangelion I have no doubt that Mysticism has a place in Sci Fi and really every genre for that matter. I think writers should just lean into it and readers should be open to it. In my opinion there's no more beautiful way to look at Prescience than a deep connection with the spirit of humanity with a layer of scientific realism painted over it.
I've had Neon Evangelion on the watch list for quite some time. This comment has put it at the top of that list. I'm diving back in tonight. Thank you.
Thank you so much for your content! I really love Sci-fi and having you break down some of these works has opened me up to great works of fiction. Can't wait for the next one
I remember the mentats doing something like crude prescience with their "prime projections". It's worth remembering that Paul begins as a mentat who is then able to interact with the spice on a Bene Gesserit level. The spice hyper-sensitises the user, allowing them to pick up on minute stimulaie on an intense level. This level of input fed back through the predictive mechanisms of a mentat is what gives Paul his level of prescience.
You know, I want to commend you for the excellent quality of your videos. You narrate well, your pictures are beautiful, your information is well thought out and well presented. You don't waste time with unnecessary details and too many personal opinions. Your channel is superb! I watched one of your videos and subscribed!
Just wanted to say I love your videos, specially the sci-fi stuff, so glad you're doing Hyperion content. Videos like this are awesome, and I can't wait for the Chapterhouse episode.
Yeah I really want to see him exploring Odrade's memories and nightmares. Sea Child... She always seemed to me a kind of Frank Herbert's female alter ego.
I recently discovered your channel. I have to say - very few channels match the quality of your videos, you deserve more views and subscribers. I will do my best to spread the word, people need to see your videos. I am a diehard Dune maniac and your video explaining the Dune universe was out of this world. Your voice, the background music, the art, the editing...its all perfect! I would also suggest 2 book series for the channel. If you have the time please do consider them. 1) H.P. Lovecraft's stories - I feel you could do real justice in bringing out the Cthulhu mythos and Lovecraft's understanding of the Cosmos. 2) The First Law Trilogy by Joe Abercrombie - Your ASOIAF videos are brilliant. The First Law parallels ASOIAF in many ways and the character depth is majestic. Can't wait for the next vid!
Theres so much lore and storytelling that you do so very well, im new to yer channel m8 and im impressed you remind me of the best of 90s Warhammer 40k alot of it came from dune and hyperion.
I always thought the strongest aspect of the prescience was not the pattern recognition ability to see the future, but, the ability to tap into previous consciousness' and learn and gain experience from them. Therefore if all consciousness is eternal, and just an amalgamation of our past lineages, that was the essential threat of possession. Kinda like the concept of ghosts and how mediums commune with them, but scientifically identified.
I've been watching a few of your vids now and wanted to say thank you for these. As soon as I also saw Hyperion, I went Yes!! Dune tops my list but the Hyperion Cantos is one that has brought me back to it again, and probably not for the last time.
No, starwars ripped off a lot of the best sci-fi literature and oversimplified it to appeal to the general public. Which, IMHO, was a good thing since to created a wider interest for sci-fi in general
One of the things I love about good SF writers is that they are the prophets of the modern world, warning us on how future technologies can impact the human experience.
Ok, so, I consider myself a mystic, and lemme tell you something, just like you said, from all my studies and epiphanies, I have discovered that, as you said, "magic" and "supernatural" phenomena *arent* some strange outside/separated force enacting on our world, but rather, that all is the Universe. There is no escape from nature and all our understanding is only of nature, because we *are* nature/the Universe. We say, the arcane and the mundane are one and the same. Magick *is* mundane. It's natural, all of it. Lovely video I love these topics. Now I'm really interested in looking into your Dune content. Tbh only came on here for ASOIAF, and GOT, but there's so much more! Thanks again.
"All explanations are an attempt by humankind to divide itself from the world. An explanation without including the explainer is as a tree without the trunk. One is inseparable from the other. No system of knowledge can avoid this limitation. Numbers are not the true face of measure. Words are not the true description of things. The world is the explanation."- The Fifth Science
Re-watching a lot of these. “Need more content soon” :) Keep up the great work though, have such a great narrative voice, definitely enjoy your deep dives & thoughts on these various books/series..
Thank you for another great video. You mentioned that prescience was a kind of calculation when talking about the guild navigators. I always interpreted prescience as a kind of "hyper-calculation". If you have the data of a current situation, and understand the patterns of existence, you can "calculate" probable future events.
Dune is my favorite book series and the books are my favorite books of all time! I really admire the writing style of Frank Herbert and I can't help but say "how did he come up with these brilliant words" every time I give the books a read. I love how poetic and philosophic they are. I imagine the dune universe in my head and it looks and feels amazing. It never happened with the technology-centered scifi books. I much prefer Frank Herbert's way of storytelling. He was a genius. I'd be interested in a video on the family trees/family connections in the dune universe, going way back.
I appreciate how you articulate the plot points, not easy to do with Frank Herbert's Dune works. It helps me expand my own understanding of these complicated concepts. You're going to make me re-read the Hyperion cantos....
I never really looked at pre science as pattern recognition. Thats something a mentat could do with ease. Prescience was always to me more like intuition taken to further extremes, made exceptionally powerful with Paul's preexisting mentat abilities, but the two have always been differing things. Like a builder that builds with the natural patterns, making something that compliments, enhances and extends and a builder that builds something that wont last 100 years without maintenance. Both without preexisting knowledge or books. One just sees, whilst the other figures out threw trial an error.
With ASOIAF over, and the super epic Villeneuve film on the horizon, I hope your Dune series inspires people to explore the novels before the film debuts.
you should do Dan Simmons - Ilium & Olympos Roger Zelazny - The Great Book of Amber Michael Moorcock - Elric of Melnibone Peter F. Hamilton - The Commonwealth Saga Neal Stephenson - Anathem (also) The Diamond Age Robert A. Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land Alan Dean Foster - The Damned Trilogy
Wow, you just hit on something crazy for me right now, a major revelation. In the Dune saga one may see the golden path as a suspension of free will, a sort of predestination of fate, but those who can see the patterns, those with preciance, have the free will to do as they wish. They, unlike most of humanity, have the ability to "walk without rhythm" through the sand dunes of time & safly,traverse the dessert that is the universe. Ooh ooh & Leto becoming a,sandstorm, there's a connection I'm on the cusp of making, can't land it yet though
Minority Report helped me understand Dune's prescience a little better. The idea of the rolling ball being stopped before it fell off the table without knowing whether or not it would actually fall, but to an astronomic degree. Seeing the possible patterns and being able to discern which would likely happen.
Great I am enjoying the videos this week, I am looking forward to your review of the Culture series I am ploughing through the series at the moment and I have been enjoying them.
Paul realized that his actions would indirectly cause the death of millions of people, and that he was powerless to stop it. The dude was moderately horrified and still soldiered on down a path which at least offered somewhat fewer casualties. His son, Leito 2nd, realized that saving the human race as a whole would mean several millenia of slavery, as well as butchering them by the billions. He took that prediction and ran with it, up to and including the sacrifice of his own life. Because he considered it to be a matter of acceptable losses for the greater good. This while his Paul was sufficiently traumatized by that vision to pack up shop, renounce every title he ever had, and vanish off the face of the planet for aprox 10 years. Its a matter of perspective i suppose. But yeah... not on my top list of super powers to wish for.
I always had a hard time with the "dune tarot" in Dune Messiah. Didn't seem to really fit the mode. Couldn't really get my head around why this was even a thing, let alone something a Bene Gesserit would be using? Because I never thought of the Bene Gesserit as being literally psychic--just very tuned-in masters of mindfulness and meditative technique--to the point of being able to interpret subtle cues in everything. As for the prescience thing, it's something that neither has a fully material explanation nor a fully mystical/ metaphysical explanation either. Genetics has something to do with it, but Herbert never really delves too deep into the mechanics of it. And maybe that's a good thing
Agreed the tarot was so weird and it's one my issues with Messiah as well. During my first Reading I assumed that it was mystical marketing related to Muad'Dib and Alia of the knife to impress pilgrims.
I always thought there could have been a pseudoscientific basis in memory encoded in matrilineal mitochondrial DNA, but then he was inconsistent and allowed for visions through male line, and telepathy between Paul and Leto II, which blows that.
1. How is it possible to use pattern based prescience to predict safe flight paths as navigators do as they map pass through a section of space with dangerous rocks in the ship's path that no human has passed through so how do they get their prescient knowledge of a safe path? 2. How does Paul predict attacks down to location, time, number of people etc to redirect forces to counter them? Even knowing patterns of behavior and human nature can't tell you the details of exactly when and where as there are so many variables that influence this including weather which a prescient being surely can't predict. 3. Let's plan seems quite easy to appreciate once explained so why did Seona and all the Duncan's never get on board with it. Their reaction always seemed like childish, rebellious, simplistic teen push back for self absorbed reasons. Even taking the brutal methods Leto used, surely they were educated and mature enough to appreciate that humanity's survival depended on it and get on board; especially Duncan who was a mentat. 4. So in a sense, the Bene Gessirit's goal was more noble as rather than just making sure some humans survived even if 99% were enslaved and tortured for most of history, the Bene Gessirit's goal was to change nature of all humanity so there is nothing to hide or run from. 5. Who the hell was that inter dimensional former human Butler woman who became some kind of god or inter dimensional AI being (was it Butler) and why did she not seem to give a crap about humanities survival and wanted to 'get back to her other dimension to deal with crap' and what was the crap she was dealing with?
"How is it possible to use pattern based prescience to predict safe flight paths as navigators do as they map pass through a section of space with dangerous rocks in the ship's path that no human has passed through so how do they get their prescient knowledge of a safe path?" The way I understand it, they see the pattern in chaotic distribution of space debris in interstellar void. They can make a fairly accurate guess of where the space debris probably is, based on position an movement of stars and known debris. They can then pick the path that is most likely to be safe. That's the whole point of presience - ability to reliably predict chaotic systems. It is possible in principle. Whether such a level of prediction is humanly feasable is the fictional part of the story.
Well, they, all included in your comment, can't basically. Aside from navigators, who in my personal opinion, as calculators and users of pure math and physics, do the most accurate calculations. (As expected) Even our computers now can course a good route in space, calculating millions of years before and after us. And I suppose tiny meteorites need not be calculated that precisely, because, this is a galaxy where each human that can afford has personal shields, it should not be that hard to create giant shields for highlighters. And who said as a space faring monolith, guild is not watching (observing as bene gesserit put it) the bodies of space, and their life cycle?s. Even them can't. Maybe Norma cenva could, though highly unlikely. she was on a very different level, surpassing every navigator after her, and surpassing bene gesserit without any having gained other memory. As far as I can remember. Can be wrong. That's the easy part. Let's come back to the humanities. Here we have a group of people who by some freak occurance can gain part of the memories of their ancestors. Some select have not only maternal but paternal too thus gets all their (definitely Not all humanity's) memories. The epitome of this accomplishment himself said he saw in his memories that humans basically react the same in given conditions. But even himself, knowing this, could not calculate all and everything everyone around him does or did. He had a very good idea, but couldnt know. Paul couldn't too. Noone can. That's the point. If they WERE seers, they would know precisely, exactly. They don't. What they see changes when they change themselves, or someone who can see gets into the picture. Someone who has the same knowledge evens out the playing field thus no sight for both. If they were seers, they both would have no problem to go on seeing. Seeing maybe the different parts of the elephant, but seeing the elephant nonetheless. Being wise, or clever, or insightful, or knowledgeable, doesn't make one immune to idiotic acts, see exhibit paul, knowing he will loose her one way or the other he rejected golden path. Worse, knowing alia is a preborn, he left her to both rule the known universe, and look after his children. Alia was how old then? And Without ordering Jessica to come back and take responsibility too!!!! Damn!!!! Alia had the right idea trying getting rid of that two lazy asses , why, that much responsibility can crack anyone. Anyways, basically, you re right, they can't, and they are idiots about some things, and geniuses about others, in short they re human. Including Mentats. And bene gesserit too. Most accomplished were guild navigators, but they both didn't have the memory bank cheat, and didn't care about humanities aside from spice production, thus their social foresight is necessarily limited. Bene gesserit had both, still couldn't. Mentats have only humanities, so is the weakest of them. Future wise that is, otherwise, Mentats are damn good. And bene gesserit don't want their capabilities to be known. And navigators can't be bothered to care, aside from spice.
Did you ever notice that in the 90s movie, when the Navigator folds space, there is an image of a swirling blue circle or tunnel. Later on when Paul takes the Water of Life, this same image is used. I love this, it's my favorite part of the movie. They are showing how Paul's awareness and consciousness are expanding. This was an aspect that I felt was missing the mini-series, it didn't seem to put as much emphasis on the effect of the spice on Paul.
Nights Dawn trilogy, peter F Hamilton gets tricky with fermi's Paradox and the great filter making the soul a thing and possession possible causing havoc on the culture who happens to stumble upon this particular reality dysfunction.
I can only think of a few enduring Sci-Fi authors who were *purely* science-fiction. A great deal of Sci-Fi from the past which continues to be read today involves levels of mysticism or esoteric elements.
Good vid, I started studying mysticism 40+ yrs ago, you get to a point you can't explain it to ppl not in it due to human terms not evolved enough to describe non corporeal dynamic things.
omg so cool to see your face :D looove your voice - sometimes i put your longer Dune vids on to relax with your voice xD -- so then, nice to meet you :D
Honestly the plank space of hyperion sounds very much like how I view the real world, that there is a universal consciousness field that we all share, we all return to when we die and we emerge from when we live. I think of acid trips and meditation induced enlightment sending one's mind into an explosion of vastness
Do you like military sci-fi? If so, have you read The Forever War or A Hymn Before Battle? I would love to hear what you have to say about those books.
@@michaelguth4007 sure, for the sake of expediency I'll call it military sci fi. The Forever War is like the anti Starship Trooper, another great book. Space vietnam.
I always viewed the prescience part as science-fictiony magic and leto and paul's ability to make sense and navigate the patterns a consequence of their kwisatch haderach genetics and mentat training. I guess i will have to reread them again 😀
for genetics not being end alll be all, my example is navigators. navigators are not a brood of seers, they are a collection of different people who are very capable mathematicians, but they see too. without a giant knowladge base like genetic memory to base it to boot. how grand an accomplishment! god emperror should cry his eyes out! aaaand bene gesserit disregard them, but in this case bene gesserit are arrogant and arrogance makes them blind about this. navigators are not social and biological sciences focussed as opposed to b.g., and havent stumbled upon genetic memory too. because as all sane people would do, they Dont Drink Poison to play russian roulette, lets see if this friend of ours will live trough this poison! if they were that greedy about power/knowledge to the point of recklessness, all sentient creatures would be ruled by their navigator overlordSSS, not one god emperror.
Thank you for all the great videos and all the hard work and time that you devote to them. Your video on the book "God, Emperor of Dune" was extraordinary and revealed aspects of the novel that I had not noticed. I have a few small quibbles with your conclusions but overall I applaud your insight into the entire "Dune universe ". I agree with you that the "Expanded Dune" universe created by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson should be read and regarded as an different "universe " as I feel that the novel's written by those two are entertaining, but not in the same "universe " for want of a better term as the novel's of Frank Herbert. Some of the novels are fairly close to Frank Herbert's plotline while most are not even close in my opinion. I liked many of the prequels though I thought that they badly missed the "Frank Herbert " Butlerian Jihad and created their own version. I wish that you would do a video or two on where you thought Frank Herbert would have gone if he had been able to publish books beyond "Chapterhouse Dune" which I feel was rushed and not quite as good as "Heretics of Dune?" I know that you will probably not want to try such a project but I am interested in finding out your thoughts since you are such an expert in the "Dune Universe." I wonder if your ideas and my thoughts on the subject would be similar or wildly different. Just a thought for when you have nothing else to do...lol. A fellow fan, George Williams
I love everything you are doing to promote Dune to the masses. Your attention to details is refreshing. One constructive criticism...and I may be hearing it wrong. It sounds like you are saying the word "betrayed." When you mean to be saying "portrayed." Like a dripping faucet, I cant stop hearing it.
Prescience in Dune is also paradoxical because the more prescient someone is, the less they are able to actually change the future. When they predict the future, they're also predicting their own effect on the future. So they essentially know what choices they have to make before they make it. That was too great a burden for Paul Atreides to bear.
Wasnt it also in Paul's case, a matter of him having generated a nearly divine image through his deeds along with the Bene Gesserit social egineering? Muad'Dib the man, had been completely eclipsed by Muad'Dib the icon and that icon would keep self perpetuating, growing ever more powerful and ever more terrible, no matter what he did. Paul was scared shitless of the Golden Path and took himself off the board in order to avoid it. Meanwhile Leto 2 embraced it and even comfortably micro managed the way towards it, over several millenia.
Interesting video (as someone who hasn’t read either series, but has heard a good bit about Dune). I would define mysticism most concisely as any practice/tradition concerned with (or often in pursuit of) direct experience of the divine- essentially experience of contact/merger with whatever that particular school of thought conceives of as god or the ultimate reality. This is what all forms of mysticism, from different varieties of ancient tribal shamanism, to Vedic Hindu mysticism, to Islamic mysticism (Sufism), to Jewish mysticism (Kabbalism), to psychedelic shamanism (using psychedelic compounds/plants to induce ego death, boundary dissolution, and experiences of merger with god/the cosmos/Brahman/the One/Absolute Spirit/the godhead- whatever you care to call it) share as their common core. There is great overlap between mysticism and shamanism, on the one hand, and esotericism or occultism on the other, as historically techniques of inducing mystical/shamanic experiences have long been considered as some of the deepest bits of esoteric/occult knowledge (some would argue these mystical experiences are perhaps even the root origin of all esoteric and maybe even broader spiritual thought), but esotericism/occultism deals with knowledge or questioning of these deep spiritual/theological/cosmological/ontological mysteries more broadly. Mysticism is about experiential union with that which resides below the surface of our world, whereas esotericism/occultism explores the nature of the divine through other means- contemplation, reason, mindfulness, whatever the case may be. Of course, we can use the word “mysticism” in more than one way. We can talk, as I’m talking, about the actual practices intended to commune with what is believed to really be the ultimate reality, the divine (I speculatively lean towards panentheism or pantheism and objective idealism, so I have my ideas about what that may be- and I’d argue everything which exists is an embodiment of and within that singular being, but of course there are many perspectives)... But in the West today “mysticism” is often used derisively (by the more metaphysically materialistic and atheistic in the academic/scientific/intellectual community) to describe ways of thinking which they consider to obscure and mystify reality with speculation which they’d say amounts to mythologizing and then claiming it’s the truth. I think it’s worth mentioning that, when we talk about a fantasy series in which people engage in mystical practices and esoteric theorizing, but in fact they are wrong and there is nothing divine about what they’re observing/studying, the implications of that use of the term “mysticism” can (at least in some cases) arguably fall more in the latter category. Depending on the finer points of how it’s portrayed, it could be kind of condescending, like the author has a higher perspective than them and is considering them as naive, or the reality of what they’re experiencing/observing might be so far-out and unfathomable that, far from condescending to them for their ignorance in assuming it’s a spiritual phenomenon, it could be taking more of a Lovecraftian approach- showing that what is beyond the grasp of our day-to-day senses is so unfathomable as to be reasonably mistaken for the divine. Either way, personally I dislike the term “supernatural.” After all, for all intents and purposes, “nature” is the natural world- it’s whatever really exists. If ghosts existed in the world, nothing about them would be anything other than natural. If some form of god exists, that is a truth about nature, about the nature of our reality- not something outside of it. I personally think that metaphysical/ontological categories and distinctions can provide a bit more rigorous and meaningful of a system of classification when we talk about this stuff. We can talk about the physical and non-physical, the material and the immaterial... Hell, I think that even the “normal” vs the “paranormal” is a better distinction than natural vs supernatural, because we can come up with meaningful categories of that which is an explained, understood part of our daily experience vs that which is empirically unexplained and therefore not part of the accepted norm. We could get deep into exactly how I’d outline each of these ontological categories (my working definition of “material” reality or “material” phenomena more or less comes out of certain dialectical materialist tendencies, and I think it’s a lot more meaningful and accurate than the colloquial use of the term, and part of that is because a lot of people tend to internalize Cartesian dualist kind of thinking about the mind/body and some sloppy assumptions that come out of that, but that’s a whole thing), but I’m getting a bit tangential so I’ll leave it there.
Ideas, have you ever thought about a comparison video of Paul Muad'ib and Neo from The Matrix? How they both follow the Hero's Journey, and esp. how both end up, alone and blinded but with sight beyond their eyes, sacrificing themselves for a greater good (well, sort of, in Paul's case)...Could be interesting, esp if you throw Luke Skywalker into the mix!
I've always felt that Herbert's prescience was Frank's take on the collapse of the wave function in quantum mechanics. The act of prescience, of observation, locks the vision and collapses the wave function into one particular reality. It's why Paul was ultimately trapped by his visions. Chani died because he saw her die, and so forth. Leto II sought a way escape that trap, creating a paper chase of endless iterating possibilities. But that's just my take on it. Thank you for the upload.
Is that your take, or is this endless iterating possibilities a function of the golden path?
paul saw possibilities too.
he wanted the jihad to not happen. but he couldnt see a future which could achieve that, he even considered his death, but saw that wouldnt achieve the purpose.
he saw the golden path, and i dont remember why, but he didnt want to do it himself. and simply didnt do it. him seeing it didnt lock him inside doing it.
but i agree, dune, like every book, has plot problems. but its admittedly one of the more internally consistent of such books.
Paul saw what was necessary for the Golden Path to work and he couldn’t do it. He had already caused billions to be killed by taking the messianic path. Causing more death and suffering by going from messiah to god emperor was too much for him to contemplate.
@@spudthepug
🤔 ..... thats quite in character of him.
thank you👍
@@Mandolatron It is the Golden Path bud :)
Two Dune videos in less than a week! Thank you!
Actually there have been three Dune videos this past week!
@@QuinnsIdeas I'll have to look back. Thanks!
@@QuinnsIdeas In case you hadn't already read it, I recommended Peter F. Hamilton's "Night's Dawn" trilogy to you in a previous comment section (the galactic empires one) - but because of this vid, I thought that I should mention it again.
That's because Hamilton also brings a 'science fiction type of mysticism' that he uses to successfully introduce horror and spiritual elements into his epic space opera.
Well worth checking out if you haven't already.
@@tsopmocful1958 remember, when Commodus in the Gladiator movie said the Pretorians raped Maximus wife "again... and again..."? 🤔
@@Filemonefly9
Yes.
What about it?
What i appreciated about Dune is the way Herbert presented advanced human capabilities as just that, a result of no longer relying on technology, and instead, probing the mysteries of the mind.
George Lucas said 'To hell with it, here's a magical force'.
I always loved that as the reader, we can see how Paul gained his abilities in a sci-fi way; product of a specific human breeding program, trained as a mentat and a bene gesserit, intake of spice and the water of life - yet we can also see that the Fremen DON'T have such knowledge.
So while we are able to see him as a product of his genetics and upbringing, it's also easy to see why the Fremen declare him as their God.
Planet of the Atheists to be fair, prescience and genetic memory in dune are pretty unrealistic but they are real scientific concepts in the dune universe. If you read a lot of fantasy books , you can see that magic is basically just science to the people living in a fantasy universe even if it’s not possible in our universe so prescience and genetic memory could be considered magic.
The entire genetic memory thing has always bugged me a little.
Remember the Atreides manifesto
Exploration of "inner space" was a big part of the SF new wave's revamping of the genre back in the 1960s.
Dune videos will come out more and more quickly until the release of the Dune movie, at which point we will enter Dune content Singularity.
VIDEOS WITHIN VIDEOS
I've got a sinking feeling that it's going to be even worse than the Lynch version. I hated Bladerunner 2049
Man, you are pumping out high quality content day after day. I really appreciate all the hard work. You probably wont see this, but I wanted to thank you for being one of the last good channels on TH-cam.
For a while I didn't think Mysticism didn't have a place in Science Fiction cause you can always chalk things like Prescience up to science that has yet to be explained, although it's a bit of a stretch. It just felt wrong to try to combine the 2 but when I watched Neon Genesis Evangelion I have no doubt that Mysticism has a place in Sci Fi and really every genre for that matter. I think writers should just lean into it and readers should be open to it. In my opinion there's no more beautiful way to look at Prescience than a deep connection with the spirit of humanity with a layer of scientific realism painted over it.
I've had Neon Evangelion on the watch list for quite some time. This comment has put it at the top of that list. I'm diving back in tonight. Thank you.
You have such thoughtful analyses of science fiction; your videos really are excellent.
Thank you so much for your content! I really love Sci-fi and having you break down some of these works has opened me up to great works of fiction. Can't wait for the next one
It's awesome that Quinn elevates Hyperion to where it should be among dune in Star wars and foundation. Keep up the good work.
Dude,.. gotta say, you are SLAYING IT lately! Keep up the good work sir. You are much appreciated.
Your intonation is much more natural and you've gotten that flatness out of your presentation. Much better!
I remember the mentats doing something like crude prescience with their "prime projections". It's worth remembering that Paul begins as a mentat who is then able to interact with the spice on a Bene Gesserit level. The spice hyper-sensitises the user, allowing them to pick up on minute stimulaie on an intense level. This level of input fed back through the predictive mechanisms of a mentat is what gives Paul his level of prescience.
I feel like your title needs to mention the Hyperion books too, for both SEO and viewers. Awesome video as always.
You know, I want to commend you for the excellent quality of your videos. You narrate well, your pictures are beautiful, your information is well thought out and well presented. You don't waste time with unnecessary details and too many personal opinions. Your channel is superb! I watched one of your videos and subscribed!
Just wanted to say I love your videos, specially the sci-fi stuff, so glad you're doing Hyperion content. Videos like this are awesome, and I can't wait for the Chapterhouse episode.
Yeah I really want to see him exploring Odrade's memories and nightmares. Sea Child... She always seemed to me a kind of Frank Herbert's female alter ego.
I recently discovered your channel. I have to say - very few channels match the quality of your videos, you deserve more views and subscribers. I will do my best to spread the word, people need to see your videos.
I am a diehard Dune maniac and your video explaining the Dune universe was out of this world. Your voice, the background music, the art, the editing...its all perfect!
I would also suggest 2 book series for the channel. If you have the time please do consider them.
1) H.P. Lovecraft's stories - I feel you could do real justice in bringing out the Cthulhu mythos and Lovecraft's understanding of the Cosmos.
2) The First Law Trilogy by Joe Abercrombie - Your ASOIAF videos are brilliant. The First Law parallels ASOIAF in many ways and the character depth is majestic.
Can't wait for the next vid!
Theres so much lore and storytelling that you do so very well, im new to yer channel m8 and im impressed you remind me of the best of 90s Warhammer 40k alot of it came from dune and hyperion.
im loving these dune specific videos my dude keep it up!
Man, I am so glad I found your channel! I don't have anyone near me to discuss the Dune series and it is my favorite series!
I always thought the strongest aspect of the prescience was not the pattern recognition ability to see the future, but, the ability to tap into previous consciousness' and learn and gain experience from them. Therefore if all consciousness is eternal, and just an amalgamation of our past lineages, that was the essential threat of possession. Kinda like the concept of ghosts and how mediums commune with them, but scientifically identified.
Constantly impressed to your devotion to this years-long series!
You are national treasure! Your videos have been compelling from the beginning, but you have continued to get better over time.
I've been watching a few of your vids now and wanted to say thank you for these. As soon as I also saw Hyperion, I went Yes!! Dune tops my list but the Hyperion Cantos is one that has brought me back to it again, and probably not for the last time.
Dude, this was perfect, I love exploring spiritual themes in sci-fi and fantasy series and this was a great deep dive into Dune and Hyperion.
One of the better channels on TH-cam. Definitely in my top five.
The Void which binds is also referred to by another name,
THE FORCE.
Or am I being unfair?
Nope. Quinn has done an entire video about how star wars ripped off dune
@@Galvion1980 the void is from Hyperion
Star Wars lends heavily from Sci-Fi concepts which came before it and Dune was a major factor in it.
No, starwars ripped off a lot of the best sci-fi literature and oversimplified it to appeal to the general public.
Which, IMHO, was a good thing since to created a wider interest for sci-fi in general
or the warp...
One of the things I love about good SF writers is that they are the prophets of the modern world, warning us on how future technologies can impact the human experience.
Hell yeah brother really appreciate the new videos! All about it. Keep it up.
Keep up the good work. Hope you get a butt-ton of views when the movie hypes and the masses go to YT to learn the canon/lore.
Well said, me too, this guy deserves to get big, great content!!
Ok, so, I consider myself a mystic, and lemme tell you something, just like you said, from all my studies and epiphanies, I have discovered that, as you said, "magic" and "supernatural" phenomena *arent* some strange outside/separated force enacting on our world, but rather, that all is the Universe. There is no escape from nature and all our understanding is only of nature, because we *are* nature/the Universe. We say, the arcane and the mundane are one and the same. Magick *is* mundane. It's natural, all of it. Lovely video I love these topics. Now I'm really interested in looking into your Dune content. Tbh only came on here for ASOIAF, and GOT, but there's so much more! Thanks again.
"All explanations are an attempt by humankind to divide itself from the world. An explanation without including the explainer is as a tree without the trunk. One is inseparable from the other. No system of knowledge can avoid this limitation. Numbers are not the true face of measure. Words are not the true description of things. The world is the explanation."- The Fifth Science
These videos are so great! I just wish they were more long form, because I can’t get enough
I like how prescience isn't magic in Dune.
Re-watching a lot of these. “Need more content soon” :)
Keep up the great work though, have such a great narrative voice, definitely enjoy your deep dives & thoughts on these various books/series..
Whenever i watch a Mandelbrot Fractal Zoom i think of Paul's prescience visions...
Altough short this has been one of my favourite videos so far, touching on an unusual theme in the books
dude your voice is so soothing, you should consider being a voice actor/narrator for some audiobook
Well presented. Thanks, great job. The Dune series particularly god emperor of Dune is one of my favorites.
Just finishing 'Chapterhouse' for the first time and your ep7 is coming just at the right time. Thank you!
Thank you for another great video. You mentioned that prescience was a kind of calculation when talking about the guild navigators. I always interpreted prescience as a kind of "hyper-calculation". If you have the data of a current situation, and understand the patterns of existence, you can "calculate" probable future events.
"There is a place...terrifying to us, to women"
"Try looking into that place you dare not look, YOU'LL FIND ME THERE STARING BACK AT YOU!"
Dune is my favorite book series and the books are my favorite books of all time! I really admire the writing style of Frank Herbert and I can't help but say "how did he come up with these brilliant words" every time I give the books a read. I love how poetic and philosophic they are. I imagine the dune universe in my head and it looks and feels amazing. It never happened with the technology-centered scifi books. I much prefer Frank Herbert's way of storytelling. He was a genius.
I'd be interested in a video on the family trees/family connections in the dune universe, going way back.
Man i would love for you to get a walk on role in the upcoming movie
Kenny Morgan YES!!
Have you read the expanse books? If so do you plan on making a video about them?
👌
👍👍
I seem to recall that he stated something about considering that possibility after finishing with the guides of the original books.
I appreciate how you articulate the plot points, not easy to do with Frank Herbert's Dune works. It helps me expand my own understanding of these complicated concepts.
You're going to make me re-read the Hyperion cantos....
This was so, so necessary!!! Thanks as usual. My lord, I'm expecting that last book, como agua de Mayo.
I never really looked at pre science as pattern recognition. Thats something a mentat could do with ease. Prescience was always to me more like intuition taken to further extremes, made exceptionally powerful with Paul's preexisting mentat abilities, but the two have always been differing things.
Like a builder that builds with the natural patterns, making something that compliments, enhances and extends and a builder that builds something that wont last 100 years without maintenance.
Both without preexisting knowledge or books. One just sees, whilst the other figures out threw trial an error.
reverend mothers were seen as capable of performing as a mentat. liet kynes thought so at least. and it turns out he was right.
I never really comment on these videos, but thanks for making them!
WOW!
Just discovered this channel and...
wow.
A great job, you are doing.
Just watched a handful of your Dune analyses vids, and was very impressed.
Could you do a breakdown of the Hyperion Cantos the way you did for the Dune series? Great series by the way!
With ASOIAF over, and the super epic Villeneuve film on the horizon, I hope your Dune series inspires people to explore the novels before the film debuts.
My man, you're crushing it. Thank you.
You are on a roll lately
you should do Dan Simmons - Ilium & Olympos
Roger Zelazny - The Great Book of Amber
Michael Moorcock - Elric of Melnibone
Peter F. Hamilton - The Commonwealth Saga
Neal Stephenson - Anathem (also) The Diamond Age
Robert A. Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land
Alan Dean Foster - The Damned Trilogy
Agreed about The Diamond Age, but please skip Anathem lol.
I love your work!! It’s helping me enter the universe of dune!
Sooo excited episode 7 will be out soon!!!
Hey, Quinn, is it possible you could do Ultimate Guides on other speculative fiction works like ASOIAF, Foundation, Hyperion, etc.
So good man, keep up the good work👍
Wow, you just hit on something crazy for me right now, a major revelation. In the Dune saga one may see the golden path as a suspension of free will, a sort of predestination of fate, but those who can see the patterns, those with preciance, have the free will to do as they wish. They, unlike most of humanity, have the ability to "walk without rhythm" through the sand dunes of time & safly,traverse the dessert that is the universe. Ooh ooh & Leto becoming a,sandstorm, there's a connection I'm on the cusp of making, can't land it yet though
I really love your channel. I don't know so mucb of sci fi but you make me see new aspects of it. I mean who does this kind of videos? It is soo cool
Minority Report helped me understand Dune's prescience a little better. The idea of the rolling ball being stopped before it fell off the table without knowing whether or not it would actually fall, but to an astronomic degree. Seeing the possible patterns and being able to discern which would likely happen.
Great I am enjoying the videos this week, I am looking forward to your review of the Culture series I am ploughing through the series at the moment and I have been enjoying them.
3 dune videos in a row hell ya!
The Void that Binds sounds a bit like the Force in Star Wars. I love this concept, I have to check out this series. Thanks!
Dreams, Time Distortion and theExperience of Future Events: ARelativistic, Neuroquantal Perspective
is interesting
One pities the Atreides for having such a clear view of the future. Prescience sounds like hell.
It is.
There are many ways to describe and experience hell, prescience is just one of them.
Paul realized that his actions would indirectly cause the death of millions of people, and that he was powerless to stop it.
The dude was moderately horrified and still soldiered on down a path which at least offered somewhat fewer casualties.
His son, Leito 2nd, realized that saving the human race as a whole would mean several millenia of slavery, as well as butchering them by the billions.
He took that prediction and ran with it, up to and including the sacrifice of his own life.
Because he considered it to be a matter of acceptable losses for the greater good.
This while his Paul was sufficiently traumatized by that vision to pack up shop, renounce every title he ever had, and vanish off the face of the planet for aprox 10 years.
Its a matter of perspective i suppose. But yeah... not on my top list of super powers to wish for.
I'd rather be able to use "the voice", for instance.
@@zannaifacedancer5915
The temptation to abuse that ability must be terrible though.
I always had a hard time with the "dune tarot" in Dune Messiah. Didn't seem to really fit the mode. Couldn't really get my head around why this was even a thing, let alone something a Bene Gesserit would be using? Because I never thought of the Bene Gesserit as being literally psychic--just very tuned-in masters of mindfulness and meditative technique--to the point of being able to interpret subtle cues in everything.
As for the prescience thing, it's something that neither has a fully material explanation nor a fully mystical/ metaphysical explanation either. Genetics has something to do with it, but Herbert never really delves too deep into the mechanics of it. And maybe that's a good thing
Agreed the tarot was so weird and it's one my issues with Messiah as well. During my first Reading I assumed that it was mystical marketing related to Muad'Dib and Alia of the knife to impress pilgrims.
I always thought there could have been a pseudoscientific basis in memory encoded in matrilineal mitochondrial DNA, but then he was inconsistent and allowed for visions through male line, and telepathy between Paul and Leto II, which blows that.
A good mystery trumps a mediocre answer
@@zannaifacedancer5915
I thought it was a device to muddy and weaken Paul's prescient sense.
But I might well be wrong about that.
I need more information about the tarot.
1. How is it possible to use pattern based prescience to predict safe flight paths as navigators do as they map pass through a section of space with dangerous rocks in the ship's path that no human has passed through so how do they get their prescient knowledge of a safe path?
2. How does Paul predict attacks down to location, time, number of people etc to redirect forces to counter them? Even knowing patterns of behavior and human nature can't tell you the details of exactly when and where as there are so many variables that influence this including weather which a prescient being surely can't predict.
3. Let's plan seems quite easy to appreciate once explained so why did Seona and all the Duncan's never get on board with it. Their reaction always seemed like childish, rebellious, simplistic teen push back for self absorbed reasons. Even taking the brutal methods Leto used, surely they were educated and mature enough to appreciate that humanity's survival depended on it and get on board; especially Duncan who was a mentat.
4. So in a sense, the Bene Gessirit's goal was more noble as rather than just making sure some humans survived even if 99% were enslaved and tortured for most of history, the Bene Gessirit's goal was to change nature of all humanity so there is nothing to hide or run from.
5. Who the hell was that inter dimensional former human Butler woman who became some kind of god or inter dimensional AI being (was it Butler) and why did she not seem to give a crap about humanities survival and wanted to 'get back to her other dimension to deal with crap' and what was the crap she was dealing with?
"How is it possible to use pattern based prescience to predict safe flight paths as navigators do as they map pass through a section of space with dangerous rocks in the ship's path that no human has passed through so how do they get their prescient knowledge of a safe path?"
The way I understand it, they see the pattern in chaotic distribution of space debris in interstellar void. They can make a fairly accurate guess of where the space debris probably is, based on position an movement of stars and known debris. They can then pick the path that is most likely to be safe.
That's the whole point of presience - ability to reliably predict chaotic systems. It is possible in principle. Whether such a level of prediction is humanly feasable is the fictional part of the story.
Well, they, all included in your comment, can't basically.
Aside from navigators, who in my personal opinion, as calculators and users of pure math and physics, do the most accurate calculations. (As expected) Even our computers now can course a good route in space, calculating millions of years before and after us. And I suppose tiny meteorites need not be calculated that precisely, because, this is a galaxy where each human that can afford has personal shields, it should not be that hard to create giant shields for highlighters. And who said as a space faring monolith, guild is not watching (observing as bene gesserit put it) the bodies of space, and their life cycle?s. Even them can't. Maybe Norma cenva could, though highly unlikely. she was on a very different level, surpassing every navigator after her, and surpassing bene gesserit without any having gained other memory. As far as I can remember. Can be wrong.
That's the easy part.
Let's come back to the humanities. Here we have a group of people who by some freak occurance can gain part of the memories of their ancestors. Some select have not only maternal but paternal too thus gets all their (definitely Not all humanity's) memories. The epitome of this accomplishment himself said he saw in his memories that humans basically react the same in given conditions. But even himself, knowing this, could not calculate all and everything everyone around him does or did. He had a very good idea, but couldnt know.
Paul couldn't too. Noone can. That's the point. If they WERE seers, they would know precisely, exactly. They don't. What they see changes when they change themselves, or someone who can see gets into the picture. Someone who has the same knowledge evens out the playing field thus no sight for both. If they were seers, they both would have no problem to go on seeing. Seeing maybe the different parts of the elephant, but seeing the elephant nonetheless.
Being wise, or clever, or insightful, or knowledgeable, doesn't make one immune to idiotic acts, see exhibit paul, knowing he will loose her one way or the other he rejected golden path. Worse, knowing alia is a preborn, he left her to both rule the known universe, and look after his children. Alia was how old then? And Without ordering Jessica to come back and take responsibility too!!!! Damn!!!! Alia had the right idea trying getting rid of that two lazy asses , why, that much responsibility can crack anyone.
Anyways, basically, you re right, they can't, and they are idiots about some things, and geniuses about others, in short they re human. Including Mentats. And bene gesserit too. Most accomplished were guild navigators, but they both didn't have the memory bank cheat, and didn't care about humanities aside from spice production, thus their social foresight is necessarily limited. Bene gesserit had both, still couldn't. Mentats have only humanities, so is the weakest of them. Future wise that is, otherwise, Mentats are damn good. And bene gesserit don't want their capabilities to be known. And navigators can't be bothered to care, aside from spice.
Don't know the butler ai person. Haven't read all the books.
Did you ever notice that in the 90s movie, when the Navigator folds space, there is an image of a swirling blue circle or tunnel. Later on when Paul takes the Water of Life, this same image is used. I love this, it's my favorite part of the movie. They are showing how Paul's awareness and consciousness are expanding. This was an aspect that I felt was missing the mini-series, it didn't seem to put as much emphasis on the effect of the spice on Paul.
Nights Dawn trilogy, peter F Hamilton gets tricky with fermi's Paradox and the great filter making the soul a thing and possession possible causing havoc on the culture who happens to stumble upon this particular reality dysfunction.
I can only think of a few enduring Sci-Fi authors who were *purely* science-fiction. A great deal of Sci-Fi from the past which continues to be read today involves levels of mysticism or esoteric elements.
Good vid, I started studying mysticism 40+ yrs ago, you get to a point you can't explain it to ppl not in it due to human terms not evolved enough to describe non corporeal dynamic things.
Amazing video... i'm currently writing a dissertation for my master degree analyzing prescience and synchronicity...
omg so cool to see your face :D looove your voice - sometimes i put your longer Dune vids on to relax with your voice xD -- so then, nice to meet you :D
Love your channel! Just a small correction: The Void that Binds gets its alternative name from German scientist Max Planck, spelled with a “ck”.
Dune and the dark tower series....most favorite books of alllll time.
6:30 Nailed it. Frank Herbert would be proud brother!
I am a hard core sci-fi fan. I read these books in college--6 times total. It is the ultimate world of futurism. Thank you for believing in Dune!
Honestly the plank space of hyperion sounds very much like how I view the real world, that there is a universal consciousness field that we all share, we all return to when we die and we emerge from when we live. I think of acid trips and meditation induced enlightment sending one's mind into an explosion of vastness
Do you like military sci-fi? If so, have you read The Forever War or A Hymn Before Battle? I would love to hear what you have to say about those books.
The Forever War is great, one of the best books i've ever read. Though i would call it anti-military sci-fi for it's non-glorifying approach.
@@michaelguth4007 sure, for the sake of expediency I'll call it military sci fi. The Forever War is like the anti Starship Trooper, another great book. Space vietnam.
Dude,thanks for so much video love to Dune, please keep at it (could you do the foundation series next?)
Thanks for another wonderful vid!
Midichlorians has been the #1 killer of Mysticism since the SW prequels.
Commissioning Chapterhouse Dune art? Incredible! I'm hoping that the new film encourages the creation of lots of new art as well.
I always viewed the prescience part as science-fictiony magic and leto and paul's ability to make sense and navigate the patterns a consequence of their kwisatch haderach genetics and mentat training. I guess i will have to reread them again 😀
for genetics not being end alll be all, my example is navigators.
navigators are not a brood of seers, they are a collection of different people who are very capable mathematicians, but they see too.
without a giant knowladge base like genetic memory to base it to boot.
how grand an accomplishment! god emperror should cry his eyes out!
aaaand bene gesserit disregard them, but in this case bene gesserit are arrogant and arrogance makes them blind about this.
navigators are not social and biological sciences focussed as opposed to b.g., and havent stumbled upon genetic memory too. because as all sane people would do, they Dont Drink Poison to play russian roulette, lets see if this friend of ours will live trough this poison!
if they were that greedy about power/knowledge to the point of recklessness, all sentient creatures would be ruled by their navigator overlordSSS, not one god emperror.
the best way to describe a prescient person would be an Uber Mentat
Thank you for all the great videos and all the hard work and time that you devote to them.
Your video on the book "God, Emperor of Dune" was extraordinary and revealed aspects of the novel that I had not noticed.
I have a few small quibbles with your conclusions but overall I applaud your insight into the entire "Dune universe ".
I agree with you that the "Expanded Dune" universe created by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson should be read and regarded as an different "universe " as I feel that the novel's written by those two are entertaining, but not in the same "universe " for want of a better term as the novel's of Frank Herbert.
Some of the novels are fairly close to Frank Herbert's plotline while most are not even close in my opinion.
I liked many of the prequels though I thought that they badly missed the "Frank Herbert " Butlerian Jihad and created their own version.
I wish that you would do a video or two on where you thought Frank Herbert would have gone if he had been able to publish books beyond "Chapterhouse Dune" which I feel was rushed and not quite as good as "Heretics of Dune?"
I know that you will probably not want to try such a project but I am interested in finding out your thoughts since you are such an expert in the "Dune Universe."
I wonder if your ideas and my thoughts on the subject would be similar or wildly different.
Just a thought for when you have nothing else to do...lol.
A fellow fan, George Williams
I love everything you are doing to promote Dune to the masses. Your attention to details is refreshing. One constructive criticism...and I may be hearing it wrong. It sounds like you are saying the word "betrayed." When you mean to be saying "portrayed." Like a dripping faucet, I cant stop hearing it.
That was super interesting. I could listen to hours of this kind of stuff
Prescience in Dune is also paradoxical because the more prescient someone is, the less they are able to actually change the future. When they predict the future, they're also predicting their own effect on the future. So they essentially know what choices they have to make before they make it. That was too great a burden for Paul Atreides to bear.
Wasnt it also in Paul's case, a matter of him having generated a nearly divine image through his deeds along with the Bene Gesserit social egineering?
Muad'Dib the man, had been completely eclipsed by Muad'Dib the icon and that icon would keep self perpetuating, growing ever more powerful and ever more terrible, no matter what he did.
Paul was scared shitless of the Golden Path and took himself off the board in order to avoid it.
Meanwhile Leto 2 embraced it and even comfortably micro managed the way towards it, over several millenia.
Thanks for the upload sir.
Love your content. Now I need to go and read the Hyperion Cantos.
What rock have I been living under?
You have such a nice voice.
Interesting video (as someone who hasn’t read either series, but has heard a good bit about Dune).
I would define mysticism most concisely as any practice/tradition concerned with (or often in pursuit of) direct experience of the divine- essentially experience of contact/merger with whatever that particular school of thought conceives of as god or the ultimate reality. This is what all forms of mysticism, from different varieties of ancient tribal shamanism, to Vedic Hindu mysticism, to Islamic mysticism (Sufism), to Jewish mysticism (Kabbalism), to psychedelic shamanism (using psychedelic compounds/plants to induce ego death, boundary dissolution, and experiences of merger with god/the cosmos/Brahman/the One/Absolute Spirit/the godhead- whatever you care to call it) share as their common core. There is great overlap between mysticism and shamanism, on the one hand, and esotericism or occultism on the other, as historically techniques of inducing mystical/shamanic experiences have long been considered as some of the deepest bits of esoteric/occult knowledge (some would argue these mystical experiences are perhaps even the root origin of all esoteric and maybe even broader spiritual thought), but esotericism/occultism deals with knowledge or questioning of these deep spiritual/theological/cosmological/ontological mysteries more broadly. Mysticism is about experiential union with that which resides below the surface of our world, whereas esotericism/occultism explores the nature of the divine through other means- contemplation, reason, mindfulness, whatever the case may be.
Of course, we can use the word “mysticism” in more than one way. We can talk, as I’m talking, about the actual practices intended to commune with what is believed to really be the ultimate reality, the divine (I speculatively lean towards panentheism or pantheism and objective idealism, so I have my ideas about what that may be- and I’d argue everything which exists is an embodiment of and within that singular being, but of course there are many perspectives)... But in the West today “mysticism” is often used derisively (by the more metaphysically materialistic and atheistic in the academic/scientific/intellectual community) to describe ways of thinking which they consider to obscure and mystify reality with speculation which they’d say amounts to mythologizing and then claiming it’s the truth.
I think it’s worth mentioning that, when we talk about a fantasy series in which people engage in mystical practices and esoteric theorizing, but in fact they are wrong and there is nothing divine about what they’re observing/studying, the implications of that use of the term “mysticism” can (at least in some cases) arguably fall more in the latter category. Depending on the finer points of how it’s portrayed, it could be kind of condescending, like the author has a higher perspective than them and is considering them as naive, or the reality of what they’re experiencing/observing might be so far-out and unfathomable that, far from condescending to them for their ignorance in assuming it’s a spiritual phenomenon, it could be taking more of a Lovecraftian approach- showing that what is beyond the grasp of our day-to-day senses is so unfathomable as to be reasonably mistaken for the divine.
Either way, personally I dislike the term “supernatural.” After all, for all intents and purposes, “nature” is the natural world- it’s whatever really exists. If ghosts existed in the world, nothing about them would be anything other than natural. If some form of god exists, that is a truth about nature, about the nature of our reality- not something outside of it. I personally think that metaphysical/ontological categories and distinctions can provide a bit more rigorous and meaningful of a system of classification when we talk about this stuff. We can talk about the physical and non-physical, the material and the immaterial... Hell, I think that even the “normal” vs the “paranormal” is a better distinction than natural vs supernatural, because we can come up with meaningful categories of that which is an explained, understood part of our daily experience vs that which is empirically unexplained and therefore not part of the accepted norm. We could get deep into exactly how I’d outline each of these ontological categories (my working definition of “material” reality or “material” phenomena more or less comes out of certain dialectical materialist tendencies, and I think it’s a lot more meaningful and accurate than the colloquial use of the term, and part of that is because a lot of people tend to internalize Cartesian dualist kind of thinking about the mind/body and some sloppy assumptions that come out of that, but that’s a whole thing), but I’m getting a bit tangential so I’ll leave it there.
Sweet hyped for part 7
I think that was a very thorough explanation.
Love your voice. 💜
Do you narrate any books?
wow you are commissioning art?!! that is dedication
Ideas, have you ever thought about a comparison video of Paul Muad'ib and Neo from The Matrix? How they both follow the Hero's Journey, and esp. how both end up, alone and blinded but with sight beyond their eyes, sacrificing themselves for a greater good (well, sort of, in Paul's case)...Could be interesting, esp if you throw Luke Skywalker into the mix!
Have you considered covering the Starship's Mage series by Glynn Stewart? I think it would be a nice fit for your channel. Cheers