Item from Dune by Frank Herbert
The bile of a drowned sandworm — a lethal poison that a Reverend Mother can internally transmute into an awareness drug, unlocking ancestral memories and prescient vision at the risk of agonizing death.
The Water of Life is the most dangerous substance the Fremen possess. Produced by drowning a small sandworm (a 'little maker') in water — an act the Fremen consider sacred sacrifice — the bile it releases is instantly fatal to anyone who drinks it untransmuted. Only a Reverend Mother, using Bene Gesserit internal body chemistry control, can convert the poison into the awareness drug that unlocks Other Memory — the genetic memories of all female ancestors stretching back to the dawn of humanity. The transformation ceremony is the defining ritual of both the Fremen Sayyadina tradition and the Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother ordination. Many die in the attempt. Those who survive gain access to millennia of accumulated experience and wisdom — and the terrible burden of carrying all those lives within their consciousness. Paul drank the Water of Life and survived — something only the Kwisatz Haderach could do. The male psyche had always died at the threshold the Water of Life opens. Paul crossed it, gaining access to both male and female ancestral memories and full prescient vision. The cost was seeing the jihad that would be carried out in his name, and knowing he could not stop it.
A blue-tinged liquid with an intense spice smell magnified a thousandfold. It glows faintly in darkness. The color deepens with concentration — at full potency it is a deep, luminous blue. Even the vapor is psychoactive; proximity to an open container of Water of Life produces altered perception. The smell is unmistakable: concentrated melange essence, organic and ancient, with an undertone of something that the hindbrain identifies as danger.
Also known as: the Water, the poison of Shai-Hulud, the awareness drug