Spice essence

Spice essence is a fictional substance from the Dune universe created by Frank Herbert.

Qualities

Spice essence is a bright blue liquid. It is a concentrate made from Melange, a substance obtained from the giant sandworms on Arrakis. It has a distinctive odor, described as, "bitter cinnamon," by Murbella in Chapterhouse: Dune. At some point after the transformation of Dune to Arrakis and the extinction death of the sandworms, it appears that spice essence replaced the Water of Life, at least as used in the rituals of the Fremen and the Bene Gesserit.

Uses

Because it is a concentrated form of melange, spice essence is utilized in many of the same fashions.

Spacing Guild

Spacing Guild Navigators use the spice to induce the prescient trance which allows them to see through time. Only in this trance can a Navigator plot the safest course through space-time. This is the course that allows the Heighliner that they are piloting to avoid objects with mass.

Bene Gesserit

The Bene Gesserit use the spice essence as a drug in the spice agony, which gives her potential contact with her Other Memory. She must use her Bene Gesserit-trained metabolic control to change the chemical structure of the essence, rendering the poison harmless. Achieving this unlocks ancestral memories; failure results in death.

The only two men who have ever consumed spice essence and survived are Paul Atreides, the Kwisatz Haderach, and his son Leto Atreides II.