[Reading Dune for the first time] Update 4: A couple observations on what I’ve read so far.

Paul Atriedes and Lady Jessica, son and mother, are both highly trained in the Bene Gesserit order. Jessica was a nun (if that’s the right word for her position) before being sold to Duke Leto as a concubine. You can see in that statement why nun doesn’t seem like the precise word for her. Others call her a witch and call the Eastern mystical quality of Bene Gesserit ways witchcraft. But what they do doesn’t look like magic at all. It looks like highly accurate intuition, mental processing power, and even kung fu.

At the same time, Jessica frequently criticizes signs of manipulative indoctrination she finds on the desert planet. There’s no indication of universal truths or God Almighty who calls people on every planet to himself. They never speak of faith, only of training. It seems somewhat, but not entirely, secularized.

Contrasted with this is faith of the Fremen, which Jessica would say has been delivered to them by emissaries of the Missionaria Protectiva. This part of the Bene Gesserit order is defined in the glossary as being “charged with sowing infectious superstitions on primitive worlds, thus opening those regions to exploitation.” Paul looks at the honest faith of the Fremen as a seedbed for jihad.

If the Atriedes would speak of universal moral truths or spiritual realities just once, it could remove the cynical smear of every other characterization of faith. But I don’t think they will.

Despite their jaded religious training, they take a remarkably pro-life stance on Jessica’s unborn child. Several times Jessica’s pregnancy has come up, never in the bizarrely clinical way some people talk today, and at a point when she feels compelled to risk her life for the greater good, Jessica asks herself if she has the right to risk the life of her child as well. In 2021 A.D. America, that’s an incredible statement!

I’m a little worried matriarchs of the Bene Gesserit order will emerge to play the part of Big Organized Religion Bent on Evil. Maybe they won’t in this book.

Photo by Francesco Ungaro on Unsplash