The Canons show a governance structure composed of an executive, a legislative, and a judicial branch, all intricately related. The general legislature was composed of two houses: the House of Sisters and the House of Mothers. Each house was composed of thirty-three women, the House of Sisters elected from the order at large and the House of Mothers elected by and from the Reverend Mothers — twelve from chapter houses, twelve from schools, and nine from the Reverend Mothers at large. The legislature drew up the budget, determined general policy for the order, and taxed the Sisterhood using a system called the "tithe." Although the property of the order (chapter houses, Mother house, and schools) was owned by the Sisterhood, individual Bene Gesserits could possess private property and income. The records show quite wealthy Reverend Mothers, and in some cases, those of Hidden Rank were among the wealthiest people in the empire. Thus the legislature had an interesting source of revenue to tax. The Treasury records (B.G. File nos. F22077547 — F9563872) also indicate that both the order and some individual Sisters and Reverend Mothers were involved in CHOAM dealings. Only in the reign of Leto II do these records show financial distress, particularly after he had confiscated most of the holdings of the order and some of the wealth of individual Reverend Mothers. At this point, the legislature appears to have become dependent on revenue derived from the schools now open to the general public.
The executive branch consisted of a General Council of thirteen Reverend Mothers. Ten of these women, the Matres Felicissimae, were elected by the Proctors General and the Proctors Superior from Reverend Mothers in these ranks. The other three members of the Council, the Matres Executrice, held hereditary positions, supposedly in direct descent from the three Controlling Mothers directing the Bene Gesserit prior to the Great Revolt: Mother Glenna Riche, Mother Sabhaatha Moyiam, and Mother Shanni bin Aqid. The Council met regularly to consider and ratify motions from the legislature. In the ratification process the Matres Felicissimae, with majority consent, held a general veto, but this veto could be overturned by the Matres Executrice, who also held individual vetoes on any action. If the Matres Executrice found severe disunity among themselves during a ratification process, they were privileged to adjourn to executive session, allowing privacy in which to resolve their differences.
The five Matres Aequus of the Judiciary Council were appointed for life by the Matres Executrice from members of the Mater Superior rank. The Judiciary Council had quarters within the Mother House on Wallach IX, as did the members of the General Council. The Matres Aequus were housed in the Judiciary Wing, which held their apartments, residential accommodations for their staff, their offices, the Canonical Library, and the Great Court. Great Court sessions occurred three times a year for three weeks per session. The Sisterhood maintained a subsidiary system of local courts within the outlying eleven chapter houses to deal with minor infractions of canonical law. Appeals of the minor court judgments were held quarterly, with single Matres Aequus presiding on a rotational basis. A case concerning major canonical infractions was heard by the Judiciary Council itself, with the Matres Executrice in attendance. The Matres Executrice served as an appeals court for decisions made by the Judiciary Council, and no decision of the Judiciary Council was final until approved by the Matres Executrice.
The Bene Gesserit Judiciary Files show decisions of interest to historians concerned with the God Emperor period. In 10177 the Judiciary Council found the Lady Jessica guilty of violating pellex instructions, in conceiving a male rather than a female from the Atreides line. In 10192, however, the punishment cited by the Council was negated at the request of a Mater Executrix (who, according to evidence from encoded files and from The Book of Voices, might have been the mysterious R.M. Gaius Helen Mohiam). In 10211 the Judiciary Council, this time with the complete support of the Matres Executrice, found Alia of the Knife to be an "Abomination to be Abhorred." The Council threatened severe punishment for any Bene Gesserit who accepted her as a participant in the "Waters of Life" cycle. Records show a ruling of a later Judiciary Council which found Leto II guilty of bestiality in the 250th year of his reign. From later notations, it appears that this decision was never made public. Actually, none of the work of the Judiciary Council seems to have affected history in any significant way, but the files add notes of historical oddity.
The Executive Council itself met only when the Judiciary Council and the legislature were in session. The Matres Executrice, however, were in residence at the Mother House and were in perpetual session. From all the information available, it appears that these three women, for all practical purposes, ran the Sisterhood with the aid of their Familia, a "kitchen cabinet" described in the Familia Manual. From the following positions listed as permanent Familia offices, one can understand the ramifications of this executive system:
Faecatrix Arboris — in charge of the breeding index
Mater Cogita Vera — in charge of the truthsayers
Mater Ambakhtaz — in charge of the ambassadorial service and the embassies
Mater Pecuniam Collocate — in charge of the investment portfolios (also, usually the chief negotiator with CHOAM)
Mater Praefecta Aerariae — in charge of the finances
Procuratrix — in charge of concubinage and arranged marriages
Speculatrix — in charge of the espionage system
Docitrix Vocis — in charge of Voice use in political situations, also use of "sealed tongue" commands and "embedded" commands
Mater Salsa — in charge of the melange supply and procurement
Recordato Vitae — in charge of the Reverend Mother memory transference records
Mater Magna — in charge of the Mother House
Mater Minima — in charge of the chapter houses
The officers of the Familia reported directly to and received orders directly from the Matres Executrice. The Familia apparently functioned efficiently for millennia until Leto II, in 11295, dissolved the Mother House. This was the final of three actions he took to cripple the political activities of the Bene Gesserit — the first being his seizure of the breeding indices in, the second year of his reign and the second action being his closure of all chapter houses except the one on Wallach IX in 10573.
Through Leto's reign, the order functioned primarily within its schools. The closure of all but three of its embassies and Leto's refusal to allow a permanent Bene Gesserit embassy on Arrakis severely limited its overt political activities. Notations in the legislative files from the final twelve hundred years of Leto's empire show a drastic reduction in the membership. Reverend Mothers, once numbering in the thousands, were fewer than three hundred during any five-year period at the end of the empire. With membership decreasing, responsibility for governance was no longer limited to an elite group. Rather than becoming specialists, Reverend Mothers had to become generalists. For example, the Welbeck Abridgement of the annual empire assessments shows that by 13500 Reverend Mothers sent on ambassadorial missions also had to serve as emissariae espion and CHOAM negotiators.
By this late period of Leto's empire, the Bene Gesserit had formed auxiliary canons for emergency governance situations. Apparently these canons were used to run what remained of the Sisterhood during the Scattering and the Starvation. The auxiliary canons detail a loosely structured Council of Proctors General and Proctors Superior who handled policy and judiciary matters as well as basic governance. Unfortunately many of the records and documents of this period are fragmented and in disarray. It does appear, though, that some governance was maintained through the school system still left to the Sisterhood. Whether or not there is any connection between the governance of the historic Bene Gesserit and that of the modern order is impossible to ascertain because the documents pertaining to the modern order are, not available to us. Rumors claim the Matres Executrice line still functions, but the portion of the Archives holding current canons is sealed; thus, the records which could support or deny the stories are unavailable.
J.A.C.
Fu
rther references: B.G. RANKS; B.G. HISTORY.
BENE GESSERIT HISTORY
Discoveries in the Rakis Hoard, particularly in shigawire tapes of Our Lady and Mother Ghanima's Book of the Voices, present a possible Bene Gesserit history which stretches back into Terran prehistory. To those trained in Bene Gesserit institutions, the varied and ancient traditions of the order described in these tapes prove fascinating, both professionally and personally.
ANCIENT TERRAN HISTORY. Apparently, the order which became known as the Bene Gesserit originated in the rituals of a Terran group which migrated from the central plains of a major land mass, east and south around a sea through areas remembered by the Voices as Harappa and Mesopotamia, carrying with it the genetic capacity for group consciousness within the family type. The Voices report that after millennia of migration the males eventually lost group consciousness abilities, but continued to carry latent genes for the trait. Anthropolinguist Maro Ghappato of the University of Paquita theorizes that the male latency was caused by psychological repression, since evidence indicates the trait was dominant. Ghappato, in Miraculous Voices at Raids, states that males, primary defenders of the culture, were unable to function efficiently in battle when they could feel the immediate pain of their wounded or captured companions. Ghappato also supports the validity of Voice reports that the men's conscious participation in birth pangs tended to produce impotence, thus preventing the reproduction of male bearers with dominant active genes.
As the number of women in whom the trait remained active also decreased, the family group developed rituals, traditions and eventually religious structures to perpetuate the memory of group consciousness. Gradually, a serious problem arose: the active females only retained the memories of past active females, thus losing half the personal history of the family. Thus was born the desire to breed an active male strain to regain complete memory and consciousness.
Ghappato conjectures that the culture was matriarchal for millennia, dominated by the active-trait females who controlled their society through various Mother Goddess religious structures supporting both breeding program with detailed mnemonic records, and an extensive training and indoctrination program for active females. Both programs were embedded within primary religiopolitical structures, and both were disseminated through tribal migration and interracial marriage, eventually dominating two continents. Voice Inanna describes rituals perpetuating the desire for the whole and rituals giving a tantalizing past through the memories of active females. Voice Inanna shows the active females' attitude toward death in an axiom still found in Bene Gesserit texts: "Do not count a human dead until you've seen the body. And even then you can make a mistake." This belief in universal consciousness through transferred memory was incorporated into Terran mythos through the idioms of demonic possession and reincarnation.
Voice Inanna also reports the establishment of archives, one in a place named Nippur, for records of the breeding lines and of the mythos dissemination. These locations also became training centers for gene carriers sent into new territories as ambassadors, historians, scribes, educators, and concubines, and later became schools for aristocracy of both sexes. This Voice also speaks of a relatively new doctrine just becoming established in her unit, the doctrine that an activated male consciousness would be able to understand the future as well as the past. The doctrine was difficult to disseminate because it openly challenged the older "permanence" doctrine of a Goddess- or God-directed fate. She recounts that some tribes used a son/husband resurrection figure, "saved" by the mother/wife, mythic figures she calls Au Set and Au Sar. Ghappato notes that the matriarchal group's interaction with various patriarchal religions produced political and religious traditions as widely diverse as the harem system, licensed and religious promiscuity of women, tightly censored sexual activities, and religious inhibitions against association with menstruating women.
A later Voice, Euanthes, discusses the structure through which the breeding program and the training program were continued over these millennia of tribal dispersion. According to her, the gene-carriers were trained through tribal units, but the units were controlled by an intertribal group called The Mothers. Within each tribe, the leading gene-carrier was designated the Great Mother, who represented the tribe in the intertribal group while retaining power over her own local unit. The Mother title was hereditary, but used openly only in the few remaining matriarchal power structures. Within patriarchies, the Mothers became a secret order, married to aristocratic leaders and usually having as their Great Mother the wife or mother of the tribal leader. Only some of the Mothers, of all the gene-carriers, retained group consciousness, tribal memories, and perhaps limited prescience. Through these "sybils" the "gods" spoke to their culture, and to the Motherhood the sybils formed a network which tied together all the major political powers north and south of the Great Sea. Voice Euanthes also gives the details of memory transference techniques used by the Mothers, but the Order has confiscated this portion of the tape, prohibiting its translation for academic use.
We do retain the portion of tape, however, in which Voice Euanthes describes the ritualistic use of a mate savior. In all the tribes the Mothers longingly proclaimed this savior as a superhero who would "shorten the way" to a release from "silence" or "bondage" through "redemption," "rebirth," or "rejuvenation," whichever terms were appropriate to the specific mythos at hand. Using a male savior accomplished two objectives: protection for pregnant women, even those who were foreign or "odd"; and provision of a cultural reminder of a "better" past, of a history which held a different and preferable tribal consciousness. Within their own order, the Mothers developed their own desire for the power gained from a savior who could understand the future. In some southern tribes, the term applied to this savior appears to have been Hdarak (meaning "to last, or to be everlasting"), a term which Ghappato links to the Bene Gesserit term Kwisatz Haderach.
THE BENE GESSERAT. From Voice Vanghu comes the account of a near savior in her era, a man from northeast of the Great Sea, the result of twelve centuries of careful breeding. He conquered much of the territory surrounding the Great Sea, reuniting gene-carriers separated for centuries. During his empire, a great library was established, staffed by southern women trained for mnemonic breeding-chart retrieval. These women integrated the lost charts into their own, forming the tradition which later became the Bene Gesserit Summa. When the empire collapsed with the death of its emperor, communication survived among a core of Mothers, who continued to direct the reestablished breeding charts. This core was eventually directed by a unit from a northwestern territory, a unit originally outside of the coalition but a part of the power structure which would later dominate the same geographical area. Voice Cornelia tells of what must be the prototype Bene Gesserit group. She cites the political oddity of her society, a republican form of government granting citizenship to aristocratic women, as the major reason these gene-carriers were able to organize a cohesive and lasting structure. Her group was named the "Bene Gesserat," a pun which publicly labeled them a service group, devoted to bearing and rearing good citizens. But to the members the name meant women who "bear well," who strive to breed a savior, a living god, to activate the female/male consciousness of the past, the present, and the future. These women seem well aware of the political power of such a person, a power which would eliminate both internal and external threats to their nation.
The next Voice, Claudia, details the Bene Gesserat's elaborate training program for women who, with their military husbands, would colonize conquered territory. These "missionaries" contacted a northern family unit which had retained active consciousness within selected men as well as within women. Though Voice Claudia's nation enslaved the newfound unit, their bloodlines were introduced into the breeding charts. From what Voice Claudia explains of the Bene Gesserat's intricate political and educational structures, it is understandable that they would dominate the more loosely structured coalition of gene bearers.
Voice Clau
dia also describes the history of a potential, and probable, active-trait male in her territory. He declared himself a living god-emperor, and through marriage to Bene Gesserat Livia produced several generations of active-trait males. One appears to have been the first known Abomination, a man who heard "voices" and claimed to be both male and female, but whose actions were so perverse that Voice Claudia refuses to describe them. She does say, however, that the Bene Gesserat then prohibited certain memory-transference practices and began new training procedures to safeguard active females against the possibility of personality "possession." Voice Claudia recited the "Prohibition against Abomination": "In the male and female consciousness there reside personalities of such evil and such power that they endanger the species. They stand ready to dominate any untrained soul. When one's soul becomes dominated, possessed by such an ancestral evil, one becomes an Abomination, a fleshly house inhabited by a monster. Immediate death is the only release for such a soul. The order will take precautions to guard a bloodline while extinguishing the power of the Abomination."
The period when the Bene Gesserat was active seems unusually well populated by tribal "saviors." From the southern unit came a savior strong enough to produce disciples who proselytized deep into the northern territories. Later Voices continue reports of his power, but our, analysis of this entity is inhibited by the Holy Church's impounding all references made to this figure in the tapes that have been translated. Guard Bible specialists are the only people allowed access to these translations. Another active male is reported by Voice Morfudd to have known both the ancient past and the distant future. His lineage shows a conjunction of the Bene Gesserat lines with the newer northern family lines. This particular male, Voice Morfudd tells us, rejected the role of savior, choosing to be an adviser to a king rather than the king himself (she notes social prohibitions against his taking power, being outside the regularized marriage lines of either group). Voice Morfudd tells strange stories disputing this man's "death," dormancy myths like those told of Leto II in the Holy Books of the Divided God. She also notes that his powers were transferred through folk myth to the leader whom he served, a man known for millennia in his culture as "The Once and Future King." Ghappato surmises from the Voices after Morfudd that these reincarnation and resurrection myths reflect a family group within which an active-male strain existed for many centuries, at least. When the genealogies transmitted by these Voices are incorporated into the Summa breeding charts, Bene Gesserit Archivist Reverend Mother Maurius Iris gCopaleen hopes to be able to trace some of the more influential lines into the active lines produced by our empire, perhaps even to Leto II himself.
The Dune Encyclopedia Page 27
