Details of the post-Jihad reorganization of the order into a publicly acknowledged, influential agency are given by Voice Reverend Mother Tercitus Marianna Clarique. The reorganization made public the primary ranks of the order, but the Sisterhood continued to use Hidden Rank as needed. Some of the more important chapter houses became well-known empire research institutions (the Komos Chapter House was reorganized as the Primary Research and Genetic Science Institute on the newly named Ix). But the political strength of the Bene Gesserit in its new public role came not so much from its educational institutions as it did from its ideology of "humanness."
The Sisterhood gained access to political centers by serving as "truthsayers." During the Machine era, leaders depended totally on "lie-detectors" to determine veracity in any negotiation. With the loss of these machines, and as Voice Clarique adds, "with no reestablishment of human trust," the Bene Gesserit truthsaying training made the Sisterhood a necessary part of all major, and most minor, political and economic meetings. The Bene Gesserit was employed in this service within every major House and later also became involved with the Guild. As Voice Clarique notes, there were few secrets from the Bene Gesserit. She adds that the order also made public its "gom jabbar" test as a means of insuring that no machine-bred animals were allowed to masquerade as humans. The public remained hostile to these machine-breeds for centuries, a condition that allowed the Sisterhood more freedom to test its own breeding line for sensitivity and for Kwisatz Haderach potential. The details, also, of the Bene Gesserit activity in the C.E.T. and the influence of the Azhar Book on the Orange Bible are discussed by Voices who participated in the work Fatha Mecq, expert on the Guard Bible, contends that remnants of the Sisterhood's influence can still be found in the Holy Church (see her monograph, "Azhar Echoes for Today" Sofia 489:191-250).
Later Voices also claim that the Bene Gesserit was known throughout the Imperium as a religious service and teaching order: women devoted to truth and virtue whose mission was to lead society out of the holocaust following the machine era into a new era based on the combined powers of intellect and intuition. Late in the second Imperial millennium, the Sisterhood added an amendment to its Creed: "Reserve an attitude of distrust for anything that comes in the guise of logic." This addition came partly in response to machine-thought but also as a counter to a new, competitive teaching order, the Mentats (founded in 1234), who sought to replace machine-thought with perfect human logic. While the Sisterhood employed many of the same analytical methods as the Mentats, the order argued that the universe could not be completely or accurately understood through isolated objective analysis. Such analysis was useful in individual events, but synthesis was gained through intuitive interpretation. Throughout this period, though, the Voices agree that though the overt image of the order was that of service, the actual objective of the educational and breeding programs was to gain control of the power bases of the empire. The ancient desire for a humanity united by an active male consciousness apparently had been forgotten, submerged in a single-minded objective of breeding a Kwisatz Haderach who would rule the empire. As Xlecthian of Ix said early in the God Emperor's reign, "The problem of getting what one wants comes in discovering too late what one has asked for."
In her Commentaries to the Voices, Our Lady and Mother Ghanima discusses the irony that both the jihads in our history were begun by Bene Gesserits, but she also points out the differences between the two women. Jehanne Butler began with a well-thought-out purpose and with the full support of the order but Lady Jessica, Our Lady's grandmother, deviated from the order's plans, disrupted its purpose, worked against her own mother, Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, and began a course of history which eventually deprived the Bene Gesserit of most of its power. Our Lady and Mother adds that the motherline of the God Emperor had been obscure until her work with the Voices. Leto II refused to acknowledge his connections with an order he so clearly detested, and Our Lady adds that her discovery was further hindered by the suppression of Mohiam's Voice by the Voices of both Jessica and Paul.
When Lady Jessica produced a male rather than the prescribed female child, the order discounted the birth, even though Jessica's daughter would have been bred to produce a Kwisatz Haderach. More importantly, when Mohiam tested her grandson with the gom jabbar, discovering an unusual degree of strength in him, she kept the test results a secret, giving the Sisterhood no warning that a potential Kwisatz Haderach was among them. [The Emperor Paul confirmed the gom jabbar test, but we have only the word of the Bene Gesserit that the R.M. Gaius Helen Mohiam did not report its results. Why should she not have informed her order about the possible success of a twenty-thousand-year plan? One need not be overly skeptical to suspect that the B.G. failure to coopt Paul is here being extenuated by making a scapegoat of Gaius Helen Mohiam, — Ed.]
Thus Muad'Dib's power came as a surprise to the order, and its attempts to control his breeding proved completely ineffectual. Our Lady, in her Commentaries, is quite critical of the Sisterhood:
One must understand the stance of the Bene Gesserit during Jessica's time to appreciate how completely off-guard they were to the possibility of an "accidental" Kwisatz Haderach. For eight thousand years at least this group of women had been deeply embroiled in their breeding charts and their marriage bartering, all in the name of producing their "savior." The possibility of such an event actually occurring was lost in the immediacy of their struggle to attain profane power. Also, they had no real experience in dealing with a "savior." The nearest they had come was Hasimir Fenring, a man they and everyone else took much too lightly. Therefore, when Jessica produced a son rather than a daughter, the Sisterhood was more angry than alarmed. And when this child was tested by the gom jabbar, no one had enough sense to pay attention to the results. They had really lost track not only of their purpose but also of their history, unable to foresee the possibilities presented when this extraordinary boy was placed within an ancient culture, prepared by tradition for the arrival of a superhero. The order had "mislaid" the Fremen and with them the seeded mythos preparing them for a savior. The Bene Gesserit received a well-deserved fate.
The Eulogy for an Ideal, an anonymous poem included with the Commentaries, indicates that when Leto II gained ultimate power and preempted the Sisterhood's breeding program, the order lost its most valuable entree into the power structure. The Journals also show his constant antipathy, if not outright hatred, of the order. Leto managed to change what had been a potent political force into a subservient order of educators and historians. Because Leto controlled the spice supply, the Bene Gesserit had little choice but to accede to his wishes, to humor him, and to serve him as efficiently as possible. Through this period, though, the Journals indicate that the Sisterhood was never completely subdued. There is evidence that the order was involved, periodically, in conspiracies to destroy him.
Leto also took control of the Sisterhood's seeded mythologies, turning them into the basis for his new religion, and that action must have been the ultimate degradation to the order. Only after the Scattering and the Starvation did the Bene Gesserit regain some of its status. Its ancient axiom had held true: "Survival is the ability to swim in strange waters." From the records still guarded in the Archives, we learn that the waters following the God Emperor were strange indeed, and that the Bene Gesserit went through many overt shape shiftings in its attempt to survive.
The universal consciousness for which the ancient Sisterhood strove apparently was fulfilled in Leto II, but at super-human cost. As The Holy Books of the Divided God indicate, the universal consciousness which might have given stability to a tribe of Terran primal humans became, instead, the force that changed the texture and pattern of our complex universe. We have learned enough from these initial investigations of the Bene Gesserit material in the Rakis Hoard to show us how little we really know of a past more ancient than we had supposed possible.
J.A.C.
THE BENE GESSERIT LIBRARY ON WALLACH IX
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nbsp; The holdings of the Bene Gesserit Library on Wallach IX and the cooperation of its staff have been most valuable in understanding many of the crystals in the Rakis Finds. Our thanks are due the Council of Reverend Mothers, who have allowed outsiders access to parts of the restricted portion for the first time. Obviously, it was naive to have thought of the above-ground General Collection as the entire holdings. If the Sisterhood had shared only the recordings of the voice of Paul Muad'Dib, their contribution to the study of Leto II's diaries would have been significant, but there has been much more. Admittedly, some members of the Dar-es-Balat research team still insist that the Bene Gesserit were acting selfishly when they opened the Chapter House collections. These critics cite Leto II's prohibition of mentat training and its crippling effect on the retrieval capabilities of the Sisterhood's holdings as prime motivations for their new generosity. Indeed, the God Emperor's conspicuous mental superiority over the most adept Reverend Mothers, even the legendary Gaius Helen Mohiam, drastically reduced the marketability of the Bene Gesserit-trained teachers and soothsayers among the houses Major and Minor. This loss of income, along with the God Emperor's control of the Sisterhood's spice quota and the almost complete unavailability of it after the Scattering, prevented the Bene Gesserit from purchasing all but the least sophisticated of Ixian memory and retrieval devices. And there is no question that researchers found the Bene Gesserit holdings, even the most secret ones, in disarray. A taskforce of the Library Confraternity is now cataloging and indexing large amounts of unprocessed minimic film and piles of written and coded reports using the very devices that the Sisterhood has been unable to afford since the second century of Leto IVs reign. — Ed.
Even in obvious decline, the Bene Gesserit Library still echoes the glory and comfort of its prime. Cleverly designed as a respite from the severe training and service duties imposed upon the acolyte, some of whom began their training as early as seven years old, the main reading room is distinguished by its great metaglass windows that overlook the starkly beautiful landscape of the planet. These twenty-meter panoramas at one time alternated with massive murals and richly colored hangings. Sadly, most of the murals and hangings were sold to support the order, and the ones from Rakis were long ago consumed for their melange content. All that remain are numerous reproductions. Here, it is supposed, weary acolytes and retired agents came to find intellectual relaxation, the only kind the former were allowed. One can imagine an aging Margot, Lady Fenring seeking a moment away from her teaching duties to write or reread her own memoirs, Arrakis and After, amid the lush plantings from even the most exotic of worlds or a young, harried acolyte curled up in one of the hand-crafted, fur-covered chairs reading the illustrated plays of Harq al-Harba. And there is no doubt that the contents of the General Collection, as distinct from the restricted holdings of the special collections of the Chronicles of the Chapter House, were selected for their combination of the inspirational and the entertaining with the instructional. Featured were narrative highlights of the over 2,300 years of the Missionaria Protectiva, including those of Attus Marge Corina, the first of the Sisterhood to make contact with the Fremen. Selected editions of the Orange Catholic Bible, along with other selections from the richer hoard of religious writings in the vaults, flanked the main, crystal-faced display case. Opposite in an ornate case of jade-pink petrified elacca, made supposedly from the desk of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, were a set of the Master Breeding Records, their cryptic codings reflecting over eleven hundred years of futile pursuit of the Kwisatz Haderach. Missing from the General Collection set were the volumes depicting the catastrophic failures of Paul Muad'Dib and Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen and the highly sensitive and secret Mating Index.
Descending into the restricted and ancient catacombs, the visitor finds the scene has changed little. The austere rows of identical plasteel carrels, each with its own solido projector (many now inoperable), embody a spirit of austere scholarship. The numerous vaults, each sealed with locks of varying degrees of antiquity, point to extreme secrecy. The entry desk is thought to have been supervised by only the most adept Reverend Mothers, and this compulsory duty partially explains the mysterious absences that have been typical of the highest of the order since its beginning. The sealed vaults are divided into three collections: the Xenocultural Collection, the complete Master Breeding Records and the Mating Index, and the Reference Collection and the Bene Gesserit histories and records. Only this last section is specifically named the Chronicles of the Chapter House, a title that has been mistakenly applied to the entire complex.
The Xenocultural Collection astonished scholars with the extent of its contents and the startling smugness of the Bene Gesserit definition of what constituted "alien" material. While it is not surprising to find complete copies of the original Fremen Dunebuk (including one of the few remaining copies of the forbidden rite of human sacrifice to Shai-Hulud), the Tleilaxu, Godbuk, The Zensunni Codex, The Mentat Handbook, The Spacing Guild Manual, The Dune Gospels, and the Qizarate Creed here — it is shocking, to find that the Bene Gesserit also classified the Orange Catholic Bible (O.C.B.) and the histories of Houses Major and Minor, including the Atreides, under the xeno-heading1.
In the separate sub-section reserved for the O.C.B. are a complete set of the variorum edition and a copy of the Orange Liturgical Manual. Researchers were delighted to discover the only known complete collection of the Commentaries of the Commission of Ecumenical Translators (C.E.T.) along with a large volume of working notes and drafts that were long thought destroyed by the C.E.T. While the public histories of the Bene Gesserit indicate that the Sisterhood used the period of the O.C.B. to refine its own philosophies and practices, especially the Missionaria Protectiva, the Bene Gesserit copies of its C.E.T. holdings are filled with notations and cross-references suggesting the Sisterhood's malevolent collusion in the chaos and panic that surrounded the preparation and release of the O.C.B. However, any firm conclusion must wait until the Ixian collators and analog-retrievers can compare the O.C.B. situation with the Sisterhood's own records.
The lack of organization of the Atreides Collection seems directly related to the rise of that house and indicates the truth of the contention that the Bene Gesserit had viewed that conflict as just another among similar power struggles. Atreides records are much more carefully catalogued following the fall of House Corrino. This changed attitude supports other information pointing to a lack of conscientiousness in the entire affair and explains the minor attention given to the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam's vague report on Paul Atreides' extraordinary performance under the gom jabbar. Among the later, better-kept records are the numerous studies of Princess Irulan Corrino, herself a product of the school on Wallach IX. Also included in the Atreides portion of the Xenocultural Collection are the writings of Harq al-Ada — The Holy Metamorphosis, The Book of Leto, The Dune Catastrophe, and The Story of Liet-Kynes — as well as the invaluable recordings and brief memoirs of Paul Atreides, the Hayt Chronicles (Duncan Idaho-10208.), and The Book of Ghanima, probably written by the young Leto II.2
Many other volumes in the adjacent sections of the Xenocultural Collection are devoted to historical and analytical studies of all aspects of major events and institutions, including a definitive history of the development of the Combine Honnete Ober Advancer Mercantiles, compiled and edited by Reverend Mother Sapphos Swene Altar, an expansive study of House Harkonnen by Lady [Demos] Obric Harkonnen (a Bene Gesserit of Hidden Rank), and even a fully annotated and corrected version of the discredited Pirate History of the House Corrino.
The existence of the Xenocultural Collection shows that the Sisterhood fanatically followed the edict to know thy enemy. One may only speculate that their perspective on "alien" knowledge may have led to an intellectual isolationism contributing to their fall from power. Nonetheless, Leto II often laughingly referred to the Xenocultural Collection as "that ghafla dump."
An entire wing of the large subterranean vault is devoted to the keeping of
a complete set of the Summa: Master Breeding Records and its Mating Index. Some evidence indicates an abortive attempt to shield this section with a primitive Ixian Globe in a futile attempt to hide information from the God Emperor Leto II. Scholars have yet to examine these records, and no one knows whether the Bene Gesserit leadership will ever allow access even though the failures of the Paul Atreides/Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen attempts render these records inconsequential. However, they undoubtably contain documentation of Bene Gesserit manipulation of major figures (i.e., Count Hasimir Fenring), and there are unverified reports that both the records and the index are still open files and continue to the present. These rumors are obviously absurd given me success of Leto II's breeding program and the Siona Atreides/Duncan Idaho union.
The third major section of the vault is devoted to the Bene Gesserit Reference Library and the Sisterhood's own records. The Reference Library duplicates some items in the other sections, and many unique items, such as the complex code keys, are of little immediate interest. But the extensive religious materials are invaluable. This information, much of it unique, was the source material used to compile the astonishingly complete Azhar Book3, the bibliographic compendium that preserves the secrets of even the most ancient faiths. Among these are priceless copies of the Zensunni Codex, a much more complete copy of the Fremen Dunebuk than the one in the General Collection (which was a popularized version edited by Irulan Corrino), the Buddislamic Codex, the Navachristian Bible, the Mahayana Lankavatara Blend Books, and the Muadh Quran as well as other duplicates from the Xenocultural Collection and its Atreides section. Appropriately, the Sisterhood's source books, anthologies, and instruction manuals for the Missionaria Protectiva and the Panoplia Propheticus are also housed in this section while the less sensitive teaching texts were readily available at varied locations on Wallach IX and in the branch chapter houses on other planets prior to their destruction by Leto II.
The Dune Encyclopedia Page 29
