The Dune Encyclopedia

by Willis E McNelly

  On the other hand, Jessica's Medial experiences introduced her to her psyche's very core — to the genuine, Archetypal Motherhood that the Bene Gesserit had almost persuaded her did not and could not exist. Even after she had understood her way past the Sisterhood's other pronouncements, she continued to believe the Bene Gesserit dogma that Archetypes were public relations illusions whose only use was to manipulate the gullible. Jessica's residual skepticism was seriously debilitated when as Medium she encountered the Great Mother within herself; her doubts fell utterly away when as Mother, centered in her new Material self-awareness, she sensed the Great Mother as an exterior presence as well — when she knew the grand, essential shaping force that Liet-Kynes, his Fremen followers, and above all her God Emperor grandson so passionately sought. Mother Jessica realized that humans (not to mention Worms) neither originate nor control generativity in any of its manifestations. She understood that all life-forms and all life-processes — including her own roles as lover, leader, and mother — really are channels for the Great Mother's creative and sustaining energies. This was the teaching she imparted to Farad'n, the teaching to which she devoted her mature life.

  In our age, when Arrakeen culture is imbued with the Motherly spirit, one can scarcely believe, much less comprehend, the resistance which Mother Jessica confronted in her contemporaries. In that desolate era masculinity still ruled throughout the Imperium, though only as the debased confraternity of brutal pragmatism (expressed by the Harkonnens and Sardaukar) and mechanistic rationality (the spirit of the Mentats and Tleilaxu). Most people then retained the traditional belief that intelligence, power, order — indeed, civilization itself — were essentially masculine property; but they knew, too, that even the best, most vitally Archetypal manhood was somehow insufficient, for Duke Leto Atreides, who perfectly incarnated whole Archetypal manliness, died defeated. So Jessica lived at the time when masculinity was losing its exclusive hold on people's psyches and feminine consciousness was just beginning to come into its own.

  Given its long-term investment in male chauvinism, the popular mind understandably hesitated to acknowledge the importance of being feminine. Partial glimpses were easiest: women were tolerable as Hetaira (witness Gamont), or (more reluctantly) as Amazons (witness the Fish Speakers), or (most reluctantly) as Mediums (witness the Fremen Reverend Mothers). Motherhood, in its pure Archetypal glory, was simply unthinkable. The reasons for these psychological blocks have been well explained: merely masculine thinking is esoteric, directed toward discovering and working with the facts of the external, (especially) physical world. By contrast, feminine consciousness is esoteric, or interior; it deals with the inwardness of reality. Meeting the Great Mother, as Jessica did, means realizing that the inward shapes and sustains the outward — that the physical universe has a spiritual core. Such a realization is inevitably shattering to the esoteric outlook: from the merely masculine perspective, the only Mother is the Terrible Mother.

  Jessica's children and grandchildren were the most pitiable yet instructive victims of the then-pervasive anti-Maternal bias. Paul, first modern man to liberate his feminine intelligence, nonetheless imprisoned himself and the Fremen in Muad'Dib's stereotypical masculinity and eventually blinded himself rather than face the ultimate Motherhood he feared. Alia rejected Motherhood because she identified it with Jessica's invasion of her pre-born mind and the consequent Medial awareness that made her a freak; she used her Hetairal energies to escape Motherhood and her Amazonian energies to fight it. Leto II was comfortable with the Hetaira, Amazon, Medium, and Mother within himself, but was sure that the Terrible Mother governed all natural events; he sacrificed his subjective humanity to buy time from the objective monster Mother Nature he imagined. Ghanima agreed with her Bene Gesserit ancestresses that "motherhood" was preferable to "Motherhood"; to preserve her sense of personal identity she needed to control, even to diminish the Archetypal, viewing it in safely personal terms.

  For Jessica, however, Motherhood could not be evaded, rejected, distorted, or diminished, because for her the Great Mother was irresistibly attractive. Her entire life was a quest for the Mother. It was a long and arduous ordeal, requiring great personal growth, constant psychological balance, and unremitting courage, vigor, and determination. She had both to become Mother and to be Mother in a time when neither had been done before and among a people to whom "Mother" meant "witch."

  Important though this quest was for Jessica, it was absolutely vital for Dune. Jessica arrived on Arrakis at precisely the moment when the fantasy of the subject-object gap threatened to devastate that planet with powerplay after powerplay. Liet-Kynes and the Fremen intuitively knew that there needed to be a more balanced, conscious relationship between humans and nature and that the way to that relationship was understanding the lifeforce that binds "subjective" and "objective" in a single interpenetrating continuum. But these ecological visionaries lacked the Archetypal experience to reach their goal. It was left to Jessica to complete the quest and by so doing show others how they might meet Mother themselves.

  First Jessica and later, through her School, more and more of her followers became initiates. Each initiate underwent an excruciating alienation from his or her original mindset, transformed his or her thinking by direct, protracted awareness of the Great Mother, and labored to refashion every element of Arrakeen culture in accord with Motherly views and values. Jessica, the very first such initiate, sacrificed much more than her successors did. She endured alienation from her Sisters, her children and grandchildren, most of her Atreides associates, and all of Dune's common folk. She refused to play "mother" in the Bene Gesserit way of frightening others into psychological childhood, but instead let people make up their own minds about the Archetypal reality she embodied; and so she sacrificed the satisfaction of knowing whether her transformation had really benefited anyone but herself.

  Jessica's sacrifices were genuine and (unlike Leto II's) necessary, for, as she well knew, Archetypal Motherhood was bound to confound the very thought that most languished for lack of it. There is, however, a deep and horrible irony in the dismal fact that while Jessica was living Archetypal Quest, Initiation, and Sacrificial heroism (the major masculine Archetypes) and, simultaneously, incarnating the four major feminine Archetypes as well, her contemporaries mostly reviled or ignored her and focused their hopeful attention on the grand but misguided careers of her children and grandchildren. Even Dune's historians were shockingly slow to recognize that the real Dune story is Jessica's.

  J.H.

  Further references: ATREIDES, GHANIMA; ATREIDES, DUKE LETO; ATREIDES, LETO II; ATREIDES, PAUL MUAD'DIB; MOHIAM, R.M. GAIUS HELEN; Harq al-Ada The Mother of God, tr. Harq al-Lutag Atreides (Grumman: Tern); Ghanima, Elaine, and Leto II Atreides, The Book of Ghanima, RRC 13-A700.

  ATREIDES, DUKE LETO I

  (10140-10191). Last Duke of House Atreides to rule on Caladan; father of Duke Paul Muad'Dib; prescribed over the change from Caladan to Arrakis. Duke Leto I was born on Caladan in 10140, the only child of Duke Mintor out of the concubine Bekah, who died in delivery. Leto took the reins of power at the age of twenty-three, and it is a tribute to his determination and magnetic personality that he wore the Ducal Ring for twenty-eight of the most turbulent years in the long history of House Atreides.

  Leto was only partway through his military training, under the general tutelage of the famed household mentat Thufir Hawat, when Duke Mintor was killed in the Corrida in 10163. The new Duke demanded the right to avenge his father's death on the horns of El Muerte, an act which was not only symbolic, but also politically astute. By this one action, Duke Leto revealed his bravery, won the imagination and support of the populace and proved that he was completely prepared — both psychologically and physically — to take over the Dukedom. Leto killed the bull using his father's estoque, thus linking his power with that of his ancestors; he never entered the Corrida again.

  Leto trained as a matador, received combat training in operations on Wa
llor Tertius, and served on the Atreides flagship Van Atreides as a subaltern. He was granted authority early in life, when then-Duke Mintor sent the sixteen-year-old Leto as the Designated Observer for House Atreides to the revolt at Mask Prime. Leto unilaterally withheld the House contingent from a planetary assault whose strategy he felt was weak. He was proved correct in his assessment when three brigades and at least two cruisers of Houses Harkonnen and Kaastaar were destroyed, and an Imperial Inquest concurred that the attack plan was badly flawed.

  The Atreides forces were among the only survivors of the carnage at Mask Prime. A new contingent of Imperial levies was sent to their aid, but by the time of their arrival the na-Duke was in the Palace of Mask, in complete control of the rebellious planet. His patient and lifesaving tactics of siege, psywar and sabotage had worked brilliantly. His judgment and strong leadership won him the immediate loyalty of the Atreides forces, a loyalty which was to grow to somewhat legendary proportions over the course of Leto's reign.

  Soon after ascending the Ducal throne, Leto had the chance to cement the loyalty of his troops forever. By sheer force of personality and evidence of his unbreakable integrity, Leto put down a mutiny within his own troops on the planet Pinskau. Leto took the time and care to uncover the true reason for his troops' holding prisoner their own officers and to ensure that their totally justifiable grievances were dealt with. Throughout his lifetime, Leto showed the same faith in and care for his troops and commanders on hundreds of lesser occasions. His fairness and wisdom gained him a House force which was known as the most loyal, trustworthy and honorable in the Imperium.

  From 10158 until 10174, Duke Leto continued to make a name for himself as one of the most honorable of the nobility. Typical of the adventures he embarked upon during this period was the retaliatory, "black" (no flags or insignia, no declaration of war, no admission of participation afterwards) raid on the Harkonnen home planet of Giedi Prime in 10165, which Leto led himself in response to a Harkonnen raid on House Tipnear, a close ally of House Atreides. A combined force of Atreides Guards and household troops of Houses Chusak (another victim of Harkonnen raids) and Tipnear landed on Giedi Prime and took over the slave-market city of Baathaas: approximately twenty thousand slaves were freed, and immense damage was done to the Harkonnen slaving fleet based at Baathaas. The slaves were taken to Caladan where they were given their freedom and were offered passage to any of the systems that had taken part in the raid. (This, by the way, was the action that brought Gurney Halleek, into the service of House Atreides.)

  Leto's reputation brought him a considerable amount of trouble, as those less worthy than himself continually sniped at Leto, thinking his example to be a subtle insult against themselves, This attitude was not helped by the duke's refusal to marry for political reasons, nor was it eased by the Duke's victory in the Battle of Thar system (10167), for which he was granted the title Chevalier of the Imperium by Emperor Shaddam IV. The award was only the third in Shaddam IV's reign, and was taken, rightly, as a sure symbol not only of Leto's undeniable bravery, but also of Shaddam's growing respect for this old-fashioned, outspoken, hawk-faced man.

  Shaddam IV, a devotee of the Corrida, had taken a mild interest in Leto ever since his ascension to the Ducal throne on Caladan. After the mutiny on Pinskau, Leto was summoned to a private audience with the emperor. It is reported that the emperor wished to discuss nothing but the battle with El Muerte, and, when he dismissed Leto, did so only upon repeated urgings of his social secretary, whose schedules were being thrown off by the emperor's extended audience with the Duke. It is further reported that, later that day, the emperor told his personal secretary that "if they were all simply as correct and as sure of their place as the Duke, the Empire would be a paradise."

  The emperor's acknowledgement of Leto as an exemplar of correct Noble behavior very likely led, paradoxically, to Leto's death and the near-destruction of his house, since the emperor's obvious affection for Leto caused intense jealousy among those not so favored. The Court, never a very friendly place for outsiders in the best of times, was almost universally ill-disposed toward this upstart Duke from some unknown backwater planet where the only export was some distasteful item called "pundi rice"!

  Nevertheless, the Duke continued being Leto the Just, administering Caladan as best he knew how. One of his kinder actions, and one which greatly increased his prestige, was his habit of taking promising young orphans into the Household, where they were raised as members of his own family. At times, there were up to a dozen children in Castle Caladan, who would stay at the castle until they were apprenticed off to a good master.

  In 10175, one of the Duke's buyers, after careful investigation by the mentat Thufir Hawat, brought the Duke a present from the Bene Gesserit school on Caladan. Her name was Jessica, and she had been offered by the headmistress at the school as a Bound Concubine for the duke's household. The Duke had no concubine in Castle Caladan at the time (he had the habit of selling his concubines their own contracts after a short time, usually for a penny). The Duke also had a habit of dismissing his buyers with distressing regularity when they brought him a lady who eventually bored him.

  It was thus with some trepidation that the latest buyer introduced Jessica to Leto and discreetly removed himself from their presence. What took place between the Duke and the concubine during the next few hours is unknown, but when the Duke arrived for his meal a few hours later, he did so with the new concubine on his arm (a privilege never granted any other concubine) and during the dinner, he included Jessica in the table conversation. The next day, Leto summoned the buyer to him and announced that the buyer was dismissed. The buyer was stunned, and began stammering his apologies to the Duke, only to fall into shocked silence as the Duke continued, telling the buyer that he, the Duke, no longer required the services of a buyer at all, but that he did need a quartermaster-general to take charge of all trade to and from Caladan, and would the former buyer please consent to take the post?

  It was announced five months later that the Lady Jessica (as she came to be known) was to bear the Duke's first child. A boy was born four months later, and was named Paul.

  The arrival of Paul and Leto's obvious love for Jessica led the Duke to adopt a more domestic lifestyle. As he said, "I have all that an honest man could want — the love of a woman, the loyalty of my subjects, the respect of my peers, and a son." Though he still went on campaign with his troops whenever the Levy was summoned, and fought bravely in their front, he no longer paced the castle like a caged animal when there was peace; instead, he threw himself fully into the education of his son, determined that he would grow up worthy of the Atreides crest. With the able assistance of Warmaster Halleck and Swordmaster (later Warmaster) Idaho, Leto began training Paul in command as soon as Paul could speak. Thufir Hawat gave Paul his general education, and Lady Jessica also took quite an active role in Paul's training.

  Unfortunately, storm clouds were massing on the horizon. The emperor's affection for his "Red Duke," as he called Leto in reference to his Chevalier's Title, had led to a steady and consistent effort by jealous nobles to undermine Leto's position at the court. Their whispering campaigns began to have their effect, especially when, in the battle of Grumman (10176), Leto's Atreides forces again saved the day. Shaddam IV, like all emperors, was a suspicious man, and realized that too much success on the battlefield is much worse than too little: he knew, and his counselors agreed, that Duke Leto might become too powerful, too popular, to hold in check. His incredibly loyal troops and his almost perfect rapport with them made him a threat to the throne, in spite of his obvious loyalty.

  Thus it was that by 10190 Shaddam IV was responsive to a plan, hatched by enemies of House Atreides, to require the transplantation of House Atreides from Caladan to Arrakis, in the guise of a reward. By 10191 Duke Leto was dead — the victim of a hideous plot by House Harkonnen which included forcing Dr. Wellington Yueh, a trusted Atreides retainer, to betray his Duke — and his House destroye
d. Leto's beloved Jessica, now pregnant with a daughter Leto would never see, and son Paul were able to flee into the desert and escape the Harkonnen forces. This, of course, is the beginning of the story of Paul Muad'Dib.

  W.A.I.

  Further references: ATREIDES, HOUSE, FOUNDATION OF; ATREIDES, HOUSE, PROMINENT MEMBERS; ATREIDES, HOUSE, AND IMPERIAL RULE; ATREIDES, PAUL MUAD'DIB; Alvar Hoomwil. The House of Atreides in Historical Perspective, 22 v. (Caladan: Apex).

  ATREIDES, LETO II: GOD EMPEROR OF DUNE

  (10209-13724). Older than the fabled Noah, more godlike than any previous messiah, be it Maometh, his father Paul Muad'Dib, or even Jehanne Butler, Leto II has proved more mercurial, more difficult of understanding, even in the centuries since his timely/untimely death than any other figure in the entire history of humanity on hundreds of star systems or thousands of planets. He is a myth enshrouded in legend, and it may be that he himself created both myth and legend. It may be, in fact, that we will never know the truth about this erratic genius, this predator of the galaxy, this wormlike, wormy god... the epithets could be multiplied exponentially and we will never come near the final truth.

  What then are the facts of his life? Born to Paul Muad'Dib, the first Atreides emperor, and his consort, Chani Liet-Kynes, he overthrew the tyrannical rule of the Abomination, Alia Atreides, his aunt, took on the sand-worm skin in a move that fundamental religionists have always hailed as the Incarnation, and ruled as God Emperor for over 3,500 years. He died in a fall from a bridge, although the Church of the Divided God claims that the stunted sandworms that still may be found in one small spare desert on Rakis are embodiments of Him — they use the capital letter — and that He will return as the fully grown, terrifying, majestic Shai-Hulud, Old Father Eternity, to restore Arrakis, His home world, and the Fremen, His faithful disciples, to greatness.