The Dune Encyclopedia

by Willis E McNelly

  The next dozen or so Voices report an extensive period of female subjugation in both northern and southern cultures. The southern culture was ruled by a heavily patriarchal family empire, its women's breeder groups functioning primarily through a hareem system built on communication links within extended families. Any hope of these gene-carriers for overt influence in their society was frustrated for several millennia. But within the hareem, this group continued an extensive, though covert, training and breeding system. The northern unit had less success in maintaining continuity during this period. When the empire governed by the Bene Gesserat's nation collapsed, the northern group was separated from the southern group, and its own internal communication deteriorated. Political strife fragmented the territories held by the empire and made continuity of training north of the Great Sea almost impossible. Brief reunion with the south came when Mother Eleanor, accompanying her husband/king on an extensive political-religious excursion into the south, used her time (while her husband battled and pillaged) to restore some communications with the south. Unfortunately, the linkage was brief, and after Mother Eleanor's death the northern groups fragmented, losing any union with each other as well as with the south. The only continuity left at all was found in two groups separated by sociopolitical boundaries. The aristocracies continued to intermarry, and the remnants of the old Bene Gesserat attempted to continue secretly breeding and training within the extended families. Occasionally an aristocratic breeder would gain public power, such as the woman who briefly held a dominant ecclesiastical position. But in general, the order had to work through its members' husbands and sons. A broader and stronger organization developed in the trades and among the peasantry, a religious group called Wicca. Voice Helga Matra suggest that not only did this organization follow the programs established by the Bene Gesserat missionaries, but that it also practiced the "sciences" of the day, particularly the medical skills. But she also notes that political disruptions left pockets of uninitiated and untrained active women who, after centuries of alienation, were forced to interpret the evidence of their abilities within the patriarchal religious mythos of their territory. These women, hearing "voices," often went mad, and in the process were either venerated or executed by their neighbors, their fates dependent on the interpretation of their local priests. Voice Blanche Terese tells of one such woman whose "voices" drove her to become a national hero: she was martyred for defending her prince in battle.

  The northern branch also became active in conquering and colonizing territories newly discovered through more advanced navigational skills. This activity brought both of the northern gene-carrying groups together under social conditions which allowed their reunion. They also became involved with two more family types, each carrying similar genetic traits. The family inhabitating the conquered territory was almost annihilated by the conquerors, and the new genes were not successfully integrated into the general breeding pattern for several centuries. (Certain genetic identifiers in this group have raised the possibility that it, in some way, may be part of The Duncan's heritage. Minority geneticists have begun a careful study of this portion of the tapes.) Voice Mawaganawa gives some history of the second family group, one set in a slave position within the conquering society. She speaks of the long and painful period needed to resolve hostilities between the two groups of women. The integration of the four groups not only renewed the vigor of the original breeding line but also added genetic characteristics which enhanced this cultures' eventual technological progress.

  THE BENE GESSERRETTE. Voice Suzette comments on the rejuvenation of the Bene Gesserat by breeders in the northern territories. Her era saw the formation of women's groups that sought openly to produce a savior. Voice Lucienne says that eventually the north gained a self-proclaimed savior, a man born out of peasant gene-carriers and educated in the ancient traditions. He believed himself a god-emperor and set out to gain an empire. His conquests reunited the northern and southern gene-carriers, reopening communication through the female espionage agents he planted within the hareem system. He also sought through intermarriage of the aristocracy of the north to reunite the two northern lines. From women within the hareems and women within the northern Bene Gesserat was established the Bene Gesserrette, its mother house located in Wallachia, an area at the junction of the northern and southern units. Here the southern and northern breeding records were reunited in an updated Summa. The old Bene Gesserat training programs were reactivated across the north and sent to the newly occupied territories across a Western Ocean. Voice Maria reports that within three centuries, the northern and southern units had been integrated. Both units remained secret, but while the southern unit retained its traditional hareem structure, the northern operated under the guise of an educational religious order, providing cloistered education for aristocratic females and occupational training for working-class females.

  THE BENE GESSERIT. The northern culture experienced an improvement of technology, leading within less than a century to radical social revisions. The Mother House recognized the usefulness of technology and trained women to gain powerful positions within the northern group, particularly in the advanced western group. One women's group in the western territory became independent of the Mother House, calling themselves Daughters and trying to assert political claims by making their breeding charts the basis for social acceptability. They publicized their breeding charts, set standards of etiquette, bred male children for political office, and viciously attacked units of the Mother organization. They no longer believed in group consciousness, and they bred for a purely secular savior, trying to nullify the power of any other breeding group. Within two and a half centuries, the Mother House had successfully excommunicated them, deprived them of public validity, and retained only breeders who had not participated in the splinter group.

  For information concerning the technological era, the reports of three Voices become valuable. Voice Maura Macume details the work done with early thought machines which the Sisterhood saw as an expedient means of streamlining the programming of its breeding programs. The Mother House kept its own mnemonic records of the charts, into which the machine-programmed breeding charts were integrated, allowing more complex experimental breeding patterns. Voice Sierre Kaikilani describes at length the infiltration of the controllers of the thought machine by the Sisterhood. She was the chief programmer for the off-Terran exploration undertaken by a political coalition of the northern, southern, and western powers. From her commentary, it appears that the Mother House, through Voice Sierre and other women like her, used the expedition to develop the eventual seeding and breeding plans for off-Terran colonization.

  Voice Glenna Riche tells of the first global attempt to regularize the structure and training of the "Bene Gesserit," as it now was named. Since Wallachia had lost its name and political integrity, an extensive underground network of women working within their separate political jurisdictions developed centers where breeders were educated, where breeding charts were maintained, and where new skills such as psycholinguistic analysis were developed. At this time the southern unit had emerged from its millennia of political stasis to compete as an equal political power, strengthened by control of a major energy source. Thus the women of the south were finally free to join the Sisterhood as active participants.

  Another interesting point made by Voice Glenna concerns the process used for memory activation among the Reverend Mothers of her time. Apparently a rapidly developing chemistry simplified the physiological and psychological memory transferences. Until then, transferences were controlled primarily through non-chemical, physiological and psychological training techniques. Unfortunately for our purposes, the major portion of this tape is still being studied by chemical experts at the Chapter House on Ix. The portion of the tape available to us does include Voice Glenna's description of a radical southern Bene Gesserit unit which developed a chemical stimulant to activate latent males, and in the process produced a savior figure who led a jiha
d to rid the world of "corrupt Modern Infidels." After years of devastating war in the southern territory, the Mother House finally directed an assassination which eliminated the core of the jihad. Voice Glenna also comments on a northern radical unit which sought a chemical process to activate the male memory within an active female. This unit argued that men were extraneous, unsuitable saviors, having failed in this role over the millennia of the family's development. They planned to collect, flash-freeze, and store breeder semen and then to eliminate men completely. The Mother House dispatched this unit before they could implement their theory.

  Much time was needed to complete the global network, during which women gained some public power, even governing for brief periods here and there. For the Mother House this was a time to establish strong educational units in politically powerful societies. The schools developed basic training used by the Bene Gesserit for millennia, well into our own time, in an interesting combination of eastern, southern, and northern training techniques. Reverend Mother Cassius Ida Treac, Director of Educational Analysis at the Archives, offers her interpretation of Voice Glenna's information. Treac primarily compares the philosophy of ancient and modern techniques, noting that training programs in the Archives refer obliquely to apparently the same sources Voice Glenna discusses. Also, Treac notes that the implantation of chapter houses within educational institutions was continued by the Bene Gesserit into the empire. We surmise that such an activity may still prevail today. But Treac takes this opportunity to dispel a longstanding folk myth: "Neither our records nor the Book of the Voices links the Bene Gesserit in any way with Terran-based, male-oriented educational institutions administered by the ancient Jhesuits, no matter what the records of the Holy Church purport. If anything, the Book of the Voices indicates that the male group derived some of its educational techniques and principles from the Bene Gesserit, not the other way around." Treac's complete analysis of the Voices is in her "New Views of an Old System," Archives Quarterly Review, 15:199-253.

  OFF-TERRAN COLONIZATION. The Bene Gesserit was active, as Voice Sierre notes, during the Exploration period, and by the time of colonization had covertly taken control of programming the seeding machines. Both Voice Maura and Voice Sierre give information increasing our understanding of how the Imperium was populated. But during the same period, disputes raged over the basic purpose of the Sisterhood. For instance, Voice Glenna is caustic in her comments about the "primitive" breeders and their desire for a male savior. As spokesperson for her northern unit, she disdains the notion of a dominant male power and sees the premise of universal consciousness as an ancient, "unsophisticated" folk myth. For her, breeding for political and economic power is the order's primary goal. But western philosopher Voice Dorins says, "There are too many race memories and too many holocausts in our history for any sane person to assimilate." A southern Voice, however, disagrees with both. Voice Saadhiina argues that the "technocrats" are short-sighted because of their separation from nature and because of their lust for machines rather than respect for ecology. She calls her northern and western sisters "water-fat" and "machine lazy," asserting that they have lost their humanity and wish to breed with the thought machines. For her, a male savior is the primary goal. The Voices continue this argument well into the Age of the Machine. A poignant comment is made by Voice Sedilious: "We strive for one who ends our strife. But in our striving, we work for that which will work against us. Only by not knowing where we go can we advance. When we have found our future, we will be embedded in time as the fly is in the amber." Later Voices, however, speak disparagingly of Voice Sedilious, calling her an "Unheard Non-Breeder."

  Though the Sisterhood became heavily dependent on thought machines, one branch remained devoted to mnemonic records — preserving the Summa and the Mikkro-Fishedotte through the Butlerian Jihad. Other ancient volumes such as the Azhar Book and the Panoplia Propheticus were likely protected in the same way. R.M. Treac suggests that the Founding Legends, always assumed to be apocryphal, may actually be historical. For example, she notes that the Voices from this period consistently refer to Wallach IX as the Mother World, as if that planet had always been dominated by Bene Gesserit.

  A Voice Sabhaatha from a period well into colonization reports that the Sisterhood used thought machines to program an early missionary group sent to newly inhabited planets as cultural ecologists, but whose real purpose was to implant protective myths, the Missionaria Protectiva, for future breeders. Throughout this period, the Sisterhood continued to dominate the programming for colonization, carefully establishing breeding charts and programs, though it tried with mixed success to retain a public image as a religious teaching order. The noted cultural ecologist Corrihos Maliaronno theorizes that the recognized the relationship between ecology and social vitality, thus choosing positive though varied ecological settings for the breeders. From her work with the Voices tapes, Maliaronno surmises that offshoots of southern Terran cultures were particularly well situated on semi-arid and arid worlds, being historically compatible with the harsh climates and productive of hardy new cultures. She finds evidence that the Zensunni Wanderers and their descendants, the Fremen, inhabiting worlds drawing on their socio-ecological heritages, produced particularly vital breeding groups (vital enough to be eventual breeders of the Kwisatz Haderach). Maliaronno also argues that temperate worlds produced more sophisticated but less hardy breeders, the Atreides being an exception rather than a norm. She is also studying Voice Mahtinka from the Chapter House on Dendros because that purely agrarian world also produced hardy breeders.

  THE BUTLERIAN JIHAD. From the records in the Rakis Hoard authenticating the Voice commentaries, we are now sure that Bene Gesserit of Hidden Rank Jehanne Butler was the instigator and early leader of the Butlerian Jihad. [See Harq al-Ada's The Butlerian Jihad, Lib. Conf. Temporary Series 28, or R. Siik's The Emergence of Jehanne Butler (Thor: Valkyrie) far older and newer views less certain of the Bene Gesserit role in the Butlerian Jihad. — Ed.] Voice Maharinih gives information about the culture and the Bene Gesserit activities just prior to the Jihad. One dominant, pseudo-religious belief which developed during the early Exploration period was that a powerful anima, a feminine element governing intuitive understanding, was present in all psyches. This belief was actually a distortion of an early Bene Gesserit Mother Goddess ideology which had been submerged in a scientific discipline, psychology. With space exploration, humans venturing into the "heaven" of the gods, mythic beliefs were challenged by human technology, causing a conflict which the Bene Gesserit missionaries used to their advantage as they promoted intuitive reasoning to counter strictly data-based technological reasoning. This conflict between the rational and the intuitive continued well into the colonization period, but Voice Maharinih points out that as economic and political factions united in an inter-world trade federation, the technocrats gained control, dominating the less economically important "humanistic" forces. Because the thought machines controlled the economies of the new worlds, the people on these worlds became dependent on "machine-thought" — objective, non-emotional, non-intuitive behavior. The Bene Gesserit likewise became highly machine-dependent, teaching "rational thought" in its educational institutions, and limiting its intuitive work to the ideologists seeding mythos on new worlds. During this period the Bene Gesserit Creed of Linked Rationality was adopted: "Before us all methods of learning were tainted by instinct. We learned how to learn. Before us instinct-ridden researchers possessed a limited attention span — often no longer than a single lifetime. Projects stretching across fifty or more lifetimes never occurred to them." Only when the Mother House realized that machines were decreasing human control, breeding humans into non-intelligent work animals, and systematically aborting any Bene Gesserit breeder, did the Bene Gesserit plan a revolt. The order now added the famous "First Lesson" to the training program: "Humans must never submit to animals" — the machine-bred nonhumans must be eliminated along with the machines. The Chapter House on Komos became t
he center for planning, being one of the few planets not yet controlled by the machines. But the abortion of Jehanne Butler's daughter sparked the actual revolt: Sarah Butler would have borne the Kwisatz Haderach.

  Through the Jihad, the Bene Gesserit was preserved by the geographical locations of its Mother House and chapter houses and by its public association with religion, education, and humanism. Wallach IX, being a neutral planet, became a refuge for humanist intellectuals, most of whom had been trained in Bene Gesserit institutions. The Summa was thus preserved, the breeding records safe in mnemonic holders and in the ancient bound volumes in the Archives. At this stage the Sisterhood abolished its own experiments with artificial insemination, declaring that "For the Sisterhood, mating mingles more than sperm and ovum. We wish to breed and capture psyches, an accomplishment possible only through human to human interaction." The Summa shows that the Bene Gesserit continued its breeding program after the Jihad through planned marriage and selective concubinage, soon controlling the breeding lines of the Major and Minor houses which developed during the Imperium.