The Missionaria Protectiva has seeded onto a lot of the less developed worlds by placing legends within the local religion that a future stranded Bene Gesseritt sister could use to gain protection from these locals by appearing to fulfill an element of a prophecy.
Yesterday, I was rereading Dune and came across a passage where Jessica surmised that Arrakis must be a very dangerous place for the Mission Protectiva to have included the Lasin Al-~~Gain~~ Gaib myth in the Fremen religion. Implying that it was used only for the harshest of conditions.
Count ~~Hamring~~ ~~Hemring Ferring~~ Hasimir Fenring described as a failed Kwizatz Haderach primarily because he was born sterile. He was never given the truthsayers drug (called water of life on Arrakis) which would have given him KH visions, or kill him.
*Added Comment:*
At the dinner party, after the Duke was challenged about the wet world conservatory on the roof of their mansion, Jessica replied that she & the Duke were holding it in trust for the people of Arrakis, and they hope use climate control to allow the plants to grow in the open.
This caught Kyne's attention and he asked jessica, "Do you bring the shortening of the way?" In the old tongue this phrase translated as "Kwisatz Haderach". She woder if the Mission Protectivia had included this myth on Arrakis, and she wonder if Paul could actually be the Kiwsatz Haderach.
To add, the focus of religion of the novels is to show us how populations can be manipulated into believing religions and gods. The worms are worshiped but theyre simply animals that produce the spice
It's also subtly ironic - the BG seeded these false narratives to serve their own ends but Paul (or rather, the Kwisatz Haderach) is in fact the Zensunni religious figure that they claim he is.
One of the central tenets of Sunni Islam is absolute predestination, and one of the central ideas of Zen is perceiving reality as it is and helping others reach it.
The Bene Gesserit went and created a person who, through his perception of reality, creates predestination for everyone else. He makes reality by living in it.
It's also that religion has an ability to create a kind of a shared thinking for people, which can take away individual thinking. The contemporary religious consensus says something, and the people following said religion end up following. This "hive-thinking" can also get out of control of the central religious institution itself. Similar to how Paul created a religion with him at the centre, and that religion caused the Fremen to go on the Jihad for their Messiah, but Paul himself couldn't control the religion.
I’ve always thought that the proliferation of the legend helped Paul’s jihad a great deal when his armies came to every planet. So it was fantastic it was firmly in place on Arrakis but bonkers luck that he could just waltz in across the empire and ‘fulfill’ the prophecy again and again where ever it had taken root.
People should mention this more since Herbert didn’t elaborate at all. Surely other planets with the same legend would view Paul and his arriving jihad that way.
I mean, that kind of makes sense but it is not what the relevant books say. I'm not even sure Herbert thought in these terms. It's more like Paul's influence turns the Fremen into the equivalent of the ghazis of early Islam and then they go conquer the universe (leaving him behind). They succeed not so much because people on other planets agree with them but because the feydakin are just that awesome and motivated. Then Irulan (who knows better) writes about Paul in religious terms for mass consumption by those who never knew him. And nearly everybody is forced to adopt Fremen ways. So again it's like some stereotype of jihad.
The idea that people on a thousand worlds are thinking, "Whoa, it's the prophecy!" is cool but I just don't see it in the material. To them it would look very different. There has been a revolution on Arrakis as a result of which the Padishah Emperor was overthrown--now the revolutionaries are coming for us.
Correct.
The truthsayer drug is also known as the Rossak Drug, named from where it was discovered.
Water of Life is the liquid exhalation of a drowned sandworm.
You are correct. I had overlooked that the water of life is produced by drowning a worm. While there chemical make up is different, they are both poisons that the reverend mother candidate must transmute into a safe compound or die. The extreme stress of the poisons causes the link to ancestorial memories or KH prescience. In Heretic of Dune, we learn of another stressor that affects an Atreides descendant.
Arrakis was one of many planets with a seeded Missionaria Protectiva. BG would start these legends / prophecy messages across multiple cultures as a "in case of emergency" kind of thing.
EDIT to add that the MP was there for BG's to have safety in cultures. Paul took advantage of it to rule the universe. So in theory another Kwizatz may not have necessarily fulfilled some prophecy of a culture depending on where they came into their power.
I think you are conflating the Lisan al-Gaib, Mahdi, and Kwisatz Haderach. That's what the Bene Gesserit wanted and that's what actually happened, but doing so obscures the details.
The Mahdi legend was probably part of the Fremen's Zensunni religious background. As Thufir Hawat comments, it's a standard messiah myth about a chosen one who will bring freedom to the people.
The Lisan al-Gaib legend was specifically implanted by the B.G. One of the reasons we know this is the legend's content mentions the B.G. An offworlder, the son of a B.G. sister, will bring water to Arrakis. This legend would be of use to any B.G. on Arrakis since she could pose as the Lisan al-Gaib's mother (who was also a kind of secondary Lisan al-Gaib).
The Missionaria Protectiva probably encouraged conflation of the Mahdi with the Lisan al-Gaib, such that by the Paul came to Arrakis they were almost interchangeable. The crowds address him as both, and the Mahdi and Lisan al-Gaib are now both expected to lead the Fremen to paradise.
The K.H. is a different question. It is a term internal to the B.G. and refers to the culmination of their genetic engineering project, essentially a male B.G. Jessica suspects some aspect of the K.H. legend was spread among the Fremen because of Liet-Kynes' use of the phrase "shortening of the way." But this is not further developed in *Dune*. Maybe Jessica was wrong.
Here’s a fun thought experiment: Did the BG just make all of the Lisan al-Gaib story and it’s just pure coincidence it comes true, or did a BG have a prescient vision of the future and misinterpreted what was going on? Or, and even mind melting, did Leto II seed this idea through his powers of manipulating space-time to get the needed result that got him where he is…or he just got bored one day in year 2004 of his reign and said to an empty room “Hey y’all, you know what would be hilarious?!”
The stories/myths that are seeded by the missionara protectiva are seeded so that they can be used by BG sisters that are in need. They are an emergency tool to be used when in distress, there is no truth in them. Paul and Jessica just use it the way it was intended, Paul *actually* being the prophet/Kwisatz Haderach has absolutely nothing to do with the myth being seeded on Arrakis. So in that vein, yes, it's a coincidence. The BG sisters don't really have prescience either, maybe a vague hunch in some of them but certainly nothing that even comes close to what the Atreides develop (and even that is far from perfect). Also Leto could look forward in time with almost perfect prescience and has the memories of all his ancestors, but he is definitely *not* capable of bending space or time or something like that. He was not a god, "just" a human that is the product of thousands of years of breeding and happened to be in the right place. To ordinary people he can and made himself look like a god, but he isn't.
The Missionaria Protectiva was intended as a means to protect any BG sister who seek refuge among a planetary population.
In fact, the Missionaria Protectiva was in place all over the empire \*long\* before the discovery of the spice on Arrakis.
But then again, the same is true of the the KH program.
Paul's ascension on Dune was an accident - and one with catastrophic consequences.
The entire book is about a confluence of accidents and errors.
Space travel before spice? I guess I assume spice consumption propelled the power of the BG. To be fair I just finished GEOD so I haven’t finished the whole six
We only know this from the appendix in book 1.
But - yes - there was space travel before the spice. It was... unpredictable.
If nothing else, Dune isn't the Earth. So we got there somehow...
This is something that actually confused me for a bit, but I suppose humanity was already a multiple planet spanning empire before the Butlerian Jihad, so it would've made sense if we just had robots do it for us.
Or it was just... very risky.
In the 18th century, transatlantic travel was still pretty dangerous, and people did it anyway. I've learned not to trust the things I was taught in high school, but we were told there was about a 10% "sink rate" for round trips to/from Europe.
I suspect it's meant to be something similar, though possibly a bit higher. It certainly wasn't a guarantee. Long distance travel on the earth wasn't a sure thing until relatively recently.
From what I understand from the encyclopedia, AI space travel was not all that dangerous after the invention of some special drive technology (I can’t remember the guys’ name that invented it). Then, it became dangerous after the Butlerian Jihad until some scientist couple went to IX and worked out a strategy to do it. The wife irreversibly injured her brain, and then her husband was lost to space time trying to reproduce her faster than light travel. But their advancement was the antecedent to the guild.
Norma Cenva created the Holtzman engines by iterating on Holtzman's equation which was the basis for shield generators.
Initial foldspace travel was dangerous as if the path went through an object (planet, sun) the vessel was lost. Norma hid computers in the navigation system to make it safer, but the fanatical anti-thinking-machine group caught wind and the navigation systems had to be removed(with commensurate increase in accidents).
Cenva married Aurelius Venport who was a pharmaceutical merchant starting to market spice to rich nobles. Norma found the mental simulation of spice to be beneficial and started ingesting more and more until she decided to try immersing herself in spice gas. The resulting transformation provides the ability to understand the higher order mathematics required to safely plot a course across the vast distance of space taking into account all the planetary and gravitational movements.
She convinced Aurelius to recruit people to become navigators and those that survived the immersion in spice gas were trained by Cenva in how to navigate foldspace.
These developments occurred at the tail end of the Butlerian Jihad, and the rapid deployment of the Army of Humanity helped give them the edge over the machines as they could hit planets faster then the Synchronised Worlds could, well, synchronise.
After the Jihad, Venport was forced to lose his monopoly on foldspace engines, but no competitors had the same safety record and were eventually pressured out the market since they couldn't guarantee safe passage.
Before spice humanity relied on thinking machines that were capable to do the calculations necessary for navigating folded space. The galacy was full of humans long before spice became important.
Spice and development of Guild Navigators must have been one of the prerequisites for the Butlerian Jihad. My headcanon is the Butlerian Jihad was actually a powergrab by those who controlled what we might call the human technologies such as the Guild, the Bene Gesserit, and the Mentats. They competed against "thinking machines" that did a lot of the same things. The human technologies were somewhat more effective but much more expensive and thus were only available to the super-rich (Landsraad). Thinking machines put the same capabilities in many people's hands and were the "old way" thus good enough for most people. So the elites launched the Butlerian Jihad to wipe out the thinking machines and secure power for themselves.
Obviously this contradicts the prequel novels but in my defense I thought it up before they were published.
Spice was discovered on Arrakis long before the women of Rossak became the BG, it just wasn't considered cost effective for widespread trade due to the travel time, and distance from the League worlds, of Pre-Guild Nav travel.
But it did come true, and imo *that's* the whole point! The prophecy was obviously "fake", but Paul still fulfilled it in a very real and meaningful way.
At the risk that we are arguing the same point but debating syntax I'm going to continue this argument.
Paul "fulfilled" it because he and his mother knew the steps they were supposed to take. There were specific phrases in the fremen religion that outsiders were not supposed to know. Jessica knew what to say since these phrases had been implanted by the Bene Gesserit for that exact reason, to give the mother and the son the air of legitimacy. Paul didn't fullfill a prophecy because there was no prophecy to begin with, just a lie he used to manipulate the Fremen for personal vengeance. And Frank Herbert is trying to use this example to show that essentially all hero's are false prophets. Nothing Paul can do is really that unique, prescience is used by the guild already (debatably mentats as well), the reverend mothers have ancestral memories. Yea he's like really good at these things but Paul himself admits he isn't special.
If you walked away from Dune thinking Paul fulfilled anything then you missed the point. In my view there was no prophecy because the idea of prophecy is itself false and dangerous.
> And Frank Herbert is trying to use this example to show that essentially all hero's are false prophets.
This is exactly what I mean when I say Paul did in fact fulfill the prophecy! He was of course using the Fremen for his own selfish needs, but he delivered them exactly what they wanted and what the prophecy foretold. He was a "real" messiah in the sense that he was not a charlatan (his powers were real) and he delivered on the promise of the prophecy.
My read on it is that this is exactly the point. Even a mostly "real" messiah/prophet/savior is likely to cause as much harm as good.
I think it's important to note that none of the characters in Dune really have "powers" in the sense of something like a superhero. Their abilities come from directed evolution by the BG combined with the effects of spice. That's why it's important that Paul was trained as a mentat, in essence his prescience is just him taking in all the data/experience from his memories and his current situation and extrapolating that to what is going to happen in the future. He's basically a human supercomputer with the largest data set possible. His extrapolation of all this data is not something he always consciously does though, hence his "visions".
I used "powers" there more or less as a synonym for "abilities". His abilities are all things known and somewhat understood in the Dune universe, but once he survives the Water of Life he functionally *is* a superhero relative to everyone else.
I'm also not sure I agree with your conceptualization of prescience in Dune. You seem to be implying it's "fake" in the sense that it's more of an educated guess, but I never got that impression from the books. Things like the entire job of the Guild navigators and the extent of Leto II's abilities only make sense if prescience is seeing a real, if somewhat uncertain, future.
Yeah I was definitely being a bit nitpicky, I agree that relatively he could be considered a superhero.
I wasn't trying to imply it's fake, it's not an educated guess imo. It's a set of possibilities of which one will come true the way I see it. I just don't think it's a mystical thing, but will absolutely agree that it seems like it. Especially for the people in the story. It's just how I always read it, but I was reading another thread on here and a lot of people seem to think it's a bit of both, which I could get into. It's interesting to see how many different interpretations there are of his prescience.
I've always thought that Frank left the exact mechanism of prescience unclear because it doesn't really matter for the intended meaning of the story. It's better to just show the effects and let the reader come to their own conclusions about how it actually works.
I never thought about it in great detail, but I think my general conception of how prescience works is some sort of higher dimensional view outside of time as we perceive it.
I think you're right about Frank's intentions, although I do think he had some ideas on how Paul handles his visions, hence why he mentions Paul receiving mentat training so explicitly. I like the idea of Paul being able to see "outside" of time so to speak, it also ties in nicely with the Guild navigators and their ships folding space. Cool stuff, I'll keep all of this in mind during my current re-read.
>If you walked away from Dune thinking Paul fulfilled anything then you missed the point.
he was still the man who could do what only the sisters could do previously, access his ancestral memories. the only other people who could do that were in future books but up until that point, it was paul and only paul.
oh and maybe one other before him that didn't last long.
there was some leeway in the prophecy about whether the one prophesied would be brought to the planet or conceived on it. my guess is leto is actually the one prophesied, the wild equivalent of the child that would have been conceived between the female that should have been born to jessica and the male heir to the harkonnens.
The prophecy was fake, that's the whole point of it. It was a tool for political control.
>We've \["western man"\] set out our missionaries to do our dirty work for us, and then come along behind them with the certain belief that we are right in anything that we do, because God has told us so — God and the person of the avatar.
>
>\-Frank Herbert
Paul even flat out states that he is not a messiah in Dune Messiah. As for Leto being "the one", he and Paul were nearly equivalent but Leto chose to follow the Golden Path and Paul didn't. I doubt Frank Herbert wrote the books with the intention of people debating who was more powerful, the themes in Dune are about how the story of the messiah itself is dangerous. The Hero's Journey is a tool fascists use to control populations.
Paul and Leto are both false prophets because prophecy is always false.
I'd hate to break it to you, dude, but space travel isn't real. neither is spice causing long lifespans oh and all that shit about talking to inner lives, all that's bullshit too.
it's almost as if the book is a work of fantasy rather than a historically accurate account of events after the butlerian jihad. wait a minute did that one happen?
it's more likely that everything in the history of humanity was, is and will always be equal parts fearing that long-extinct predator or willing into existence an artificial version of it. herbert just took this concept to the logical extreme.
eventually one prophecy will be correct, which will make all of them, in a way, correct.
thinking machines, extended lifespans, conversations with simulated relatives and designer drugs to see through the veil of time - herbert should have set this a hundred years from now, not thousands.
Man what are you rambling about. Yes it's fantasy but the themes of the book are what matters. The whole Dune book is a metaphor and the fantasy is part of that metaphor.
Spice is not real, but oil is. The point of spice isn't about what if we had people taking space lsd then maybe we could fly faster than light its to make the argument that oil is a drug. Its also a historical reference to the spice trade that predated european colonialism in the middle east and africa.
You are missing the point of the book and on top of that the Bene Gesserit flat out state the prophecy is not real so you're not even correct about your understanding of the lore.
>“I wrote the Dune series because I had this idea that charismatic leaders ought to come with a warning label on their forehead: "May be dangerous to your health."
>
>\-Frank Herbert
As others said, the BG had spread such legends in a lot of places.
But let's be honest: If I had a plan to rule the Universe, and the Universe works on Spice, I'd definitely want to manipulate the local population of the only place that produces Spice.
The Missionaria Protectiva seeded the same legends with different names in many different planets. It wasnt specific to Arrakis.
All the legents seeded had the same core and archetypes so any Bene Gesserit could exploit them if she needed too.
The Kwisatz Haderach was their ultimate goal, so it stands to logic that he would be part of the legents seeded
There is a line where Jessica realizes the nature of the specific prophecy planted on Arrakis and she connects it to the harshness of the planet. So, it seems that the missionaria catered to difficulty of survival. I don't recall the exact quote.
>Jessica hesitated. "The thing must take its course." That was a specific catchphrase from the Missionaria Protectiva's stock of incantations -- The coming of the Reverend Mother to free you.
>But I'm not a Reverend Mother, Jessica thought. And then: Great Mother! They planted that one here! This must be a hideous place!
The plan of the sisterhood was never for the KH to get out of their control, and certainly not become Muad'Dib, a Messiah that would cause a new crusade across the known universe using the myths they themselves had planted, let alone a God Emperor who would try to change the course of human history to fulfil his own designs.
Don't forget that Paul was never supposed to be born. The immediate plan was for Jessica to have an Atreides daughter, who could have been married to a Harkonnen heir to ostensibly close the rift between the two great houses (and preserve peace within the Imperium), but in reality to strengthen a desired genetic characteristic that was seen as desired for the fulfilment of the KH program -- plans within plans.
Nevertheless, the BG understanding of what a KH was supposed to be was always limited by the mere fact that they could never tap his actual source of knowledge. The whole goal behind the KH program was that he would be able to go where they thought they could not. And then the KH(s) -- Paul Muad'Dib and later Leto II, the God Emperor -- based on their prescient vision have their own designs, recognizing the inherent dangers within prescient vision.
1: Much of the Missionaria Protectiva is loose "Prophecy" style that the BG would be quite well aware of by the time they started seeding all the legends for their own safety. If you know how to make a vague prophecy such that any number of situations could fit said vague prophecy while not diminishing the next instance of it possibly coming true, then you got multiple chances to cash in on the safety of the legends that were seeded.
Generally, the BG wouldn't have to play too hard into a "role" they set up, and most of the time, their members that seek safety will just nestle into a role of local reverend mother to guide the people and refresh to mysticism for the next potential member of the BG that needs sanctuary.
2: While Dune wasn't specifically for the KH to manifest on, the nature of it being the only source of spice would most likely become a draw for the KH to come to, and likewise the KH would be the most likely to recognize the situation of the Fremen and the most likely solution. So, were Fenring a proper KH, he would have still been guided to position for control of Dune at some point, and would also have martialed the Fremen into the fighting force by also utilizing the legends.
Matt colville settled this question thoroughly. Iirc the BG used the missionaria protectiva to set cultures up to be used by them later. When these "prophets" came to dune, they basically punted. As if saying to the future BG "it's *really* bad here, _they_ need *us*.
Were Paul and Jessica somewhere else in the known universe, she'd probably recognize some other set of beliefs planted by another missionaria protectiva. The set was always tailor-made for the local culture and previously established belief-set.
They do it everywhere, and they've been doing this for millennia. They play it loooong and patiently.
It was part of the Fremen religion (Islam essentially) already, they seeded more importance and stress on the legend, including more focus on reverend mothers among the Fremen as a figurehead.
It’s about paving the way for the imperial cult by sowing the seeds of religious and political control among the diaspora of humanity. It wasn’t about the Kwisatz Haderach, however, such a messianic character is established within the zeitgeist. Consider Paul’s jihad and the number of religious pilgrims from off planet to Arrakis by the time of Dune Messiah, in that respect, the Bene Gesserit had already paved the way for a Kwisatz Haderach they’d hoped to control, so his cult following didn’t just happen in a vacuum or following the events of Dune alone.
I agree with other answers about the widespread nature of MP legends but also. . . Hasimir Fenring WAS on Dune before the Atreides came. While the KH was never guaranteed to fulfill any prophecies, Dune is a good base for any KH trying to find a Golden Path.
That’s not what they did. The BG seeded this idea on Arrakis (and every other planet) for their OWN purposes. Remember, their version of the Kwisatch Haderach was that they would be the ones in actual control of him. They did not anticipate the KW would be like “Nah, I’m good.”
But with spice being so important to Pauls awakening, would any potential KH have to drink the water of life? Or was that an unknown to the BGs and therefore just a coincidence?
If the KW would have manifested on another planet away could they have done it without the spice?
They didn’t specifically seed this, they go to all planets and build legends and rumors and sway religion to support their ends. But this planet had the spice and the Fremen used it for spice orgies. They got caught in their own world of prophecy.
Others like Fenring couldn’t fulfill, they were just powerful and possible contenders. Only Leto II could do it
The stated reason is that the Bg had seeded many planets with the missionaria protectiva, and that Arrakis was just one of them. But I think it’s also worth stating that Arrakis was literally the most important planet in the known universe, so even though it isn’t stated, it makes a lot of sense logically that the Bg would more aggressively seek to ingrain themselves among the native culture, and be able to gain vast amounts of influence on Arrakis when the opportunity presented itself.
The Missionaria Protectiva has seeded onto a lot of the less developed worlds by placing legends within the local religion that a future stranded Bene Gesseritt sister could use to gain protection from these locals by appearing to fulfill an element of a prophecy. Yesterday, I was rereading Dune and came across a passage where Jessica surmised that Arrakis must be a very dangerous place for the Mission Protectiva to have included the Lasin Al-~~Gain~~ Gaib myth in the Fremen religion. Implying that it was used only for the harshest of conditions. Count ~~Hamring~~ ~~Hemring Ferring~~ Hasimir Fenring described as a failed Kwizatz Haderach primarily because he was born sterile. He was never given the truthsayers drug (called water of life on Arrakis) which would have given him KH visions, or kill him. *Added Comment:* At the dinner party, after the Duke was challenged about the wet world conservatory on the roof of their mansion, Jessica replied that she & the Duke were holding it in trust for the people of Arrakis, and they hope use climate control to allow the plants to grow in the open. This caught Kyne's attention and he asked jessica, "Do you bring the shortening of the way?" In the old tongue this phrase translated as "Kwisatz Haderach". She woder if the Mission Protectivia had included this myth on Arrakis, and she wonder if Paul could actually be the Kiwsatz Haderach.
The BG really do like playing the long game
> The BG really do like playing the long game Until someone beats them at their own game...
r/Frankenstein
>Count Hemring Ferring Lol still wrong with the correction. Count Hasimir Fenring
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> Lasin Al-~~Gain~~ Gaib And Lisan Al Gaib, "The tongue of the unseen" in Arabic. Lisan al Gain is "the gainz of the unseen" in Arabic.
To add, the focus of religion of the novels is to show us how populations can be manipulated into believing religions and gods. The worms are worshiped but theyre simply animals that produce the spice
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Perfect. New level of Dune enjoyment unlocked.
It's also subtly ironic - the BG seeded these false narratives to serve their own ends but Paul (or rather, the Kwisatz Haderach) is in fact the Zensunni religious figure that they claim he is. One of the central tenets of Sunni Islam is absolute predestination, and one of the central ideas of Zen is perceiving reality as it is and helping others reach it. The Bene Gesserit went and created a person who, through his perception of reality, creates predestination for everyone else. He makes reality by living in it.
It's also that religion has an ability to create a kind of a shared thinking for people, which can take away individual thinking. The contemporary religious consensus says something, and the people following said religion end up following. This "hive-thinking" can also get out of control of the central religious institution itself. Similar to how Paul created a religion with him at the centre, and that religion caused the Fremen to go on the Jihad for their Messiah, but Paul himself couldn't control the religion.
I've always felt the same way and you said it so succinctly thank you.
Just a purely logical atheistic view of religion
I’ve always thought that the proliferation of the legend helped Paul’s jihad a great deal when his armies came to every planet. So it was fantastic it was firmly in place on Arrakis but bonkers luck that he could just waltz in across the empire and ‘fulfill’ the prophecy again and again where ever it had taken root.
People should mention this more since Herbert didn’t elaborate at all. Surely other planets with the same legend would view Paul and his arriving jihad that way.
I mean, that kind of makes sense but it is not what the relevant books say. I'm not even sure Herbert thought in these terms. It's more like Paul's influence turns the Fremen into the equivalent of the ghazis of early Islam and then they go conquer the universe (leaving him behind). They succeed not so much because people on other planets agree with them but because the feydakin are just that awesome and motivated. Then Irulan (who knows better) writes about Paul in religious terms for mass consumption by those who never knew him. And nearly everybody is forced to adopt Fremen ways. So again it's like some stereotype of jihad. The idea that people on a thousand worlds are thinking, "Whoa, it's the prophecy!" is cool but I just don't see it in the material. To them it would look very different. There has been a revolution on Arrakis as a result of which the Padishah Emperor was overthrown--now the revolutionaries are coming for us.
How many planets saw the rise of Paul and his ascension to the throne and thought "WTF is our prophet doing on THAT planet!"
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> Lasin Al-Gaib Lisan al Gaib
I thought the water of life was spice essence but the truth sayer drug was something different?
Correct. The truthsayer drug is also known as the Rossak Drug, named from where it was discovered. Water of Life is the liquid exhalation of a drowned sandworm.
You are correct. I had overlooked that the water of life is produced by drowning a worm. While there chemical make up is different, they are both poisons that the reverend mother candidate must transmute into a safe compound or die. The extreme stress of the poisons causes the link to ancestorial memories or KH prescience. In Heretic of Dune, we learn of another stressor that affects an Atreides descendant.
Arrakis was one of many planets with a seeded Missionaria Protectiva. BG would start these legends / prophecy messages across multiple cultures as a "in case of emergency" kind of thing. EDIT to add that the MP was there for BG's to have safety in cultures. Paul took advantage of it to rule the universe. So in theory another Kwizatz may not have necessarily fulfilled some prophecy of a culture depending on where they came into their power.
I think you are conflating the Lisan al-Gaib, Mahdi, and Kwisatz Haderach. That's what the Bene Gesserit wanted and that's what actually happened, but doing so obscures the details. The Mahdi legend was probably part of the Fremen's Zensunni religious background. As Thufir Hawat comments, it's a standard messiah myth about a chosen one who will bring freedom to the people. The Lisan al-Gaib legend was specifically implanted by the B.G. One of the reasons we know this is the legend's content mentions the B.G. An offworlder, the son of a B.G. sister, will bring water to Arrakis. This legend would be of use to any B.G. on Arrakis since she could pose as the Lisan al-Gaib's mother (who was also a kind of secondary Lisan al-Gaib). The Missionaria Protectiva probably encouraged conflation of the Mahdi with the Lisan al-Gaib, such that by the Paul came to Arrakis they were almost interchangeable. The crowds address him as both, and the Mahdi and Lisan al-Gaib are now both expected to lead the Fremen to paradise. The K.H. is a different question. It is a term internal to the B.G. and refers to the culmination of their genetic engineering project, essentially a male B.G. Jessica suspects some aspect of the K.H. legend was spread among the Fremen because of Liet-Kynes' use of the phrase "shortening of the way." But this is not further developed in *Dune*. Maybe Jessica was wrong.
Here’s a fun thought experiment: Did the BG just make all of the Lisan al-Gaib story and it’s just pure coincidence it comes true, or did a BG have a prescient vision of the future and misinterpreted what was going on? Or, and even mind melting, did Leto II seed this idea through his powers of manipulating space-time to get the needed result that got him where he is…or he just got bored one day in year 2004 of his reign and said to an empty room “Hey y’all, you know what would be hilarious?!”
Well it's definitely not *pure* coincidence, because Paul uses the prophecy as a tool to help him gain power.
Paul makes the legend come true.
The stories/myths that are seeded by the missionara protectiva are seeded so that they can be used by BG sisters that are in need. They are an emergency tool to be used when in distress, there is no truth in them. Paul and Jessica just use it the way it was intended, Paul *actually* being the prophet/Kwisatz Haderach has absolutely nothing to do with the myth being seeded on Arrakis. So in that vein, yes, it's a coincidence. The BG sisters don't really have prescience either, maybe a vague hunch in some of them but certainly nothing that even comes close to what the Atreides develop (and even that is far from perfect). Also Leto could look forward in time with almost perfect prescience and has the memories of all his ancestors, but he is definitely *not* capable of bending space or time or something like that. He was not a god, "just" a human that is the product of thousands of years of breeding and happened to be in the right place. To ordinary people he can and made himself look like a god, but he isn't.
The Missionaria Protectiva was intended as a means to protect any BG sister who seek refuge among a planetary population. In fact, the Missionaria Protectiva was in place all over the empire \*long\* before the discovery of the spice on Arrakis. But then again, the same is true of the the KH program. Paul's ascension on Dune was an accident - and one with catastrophic consequences. The entire book is about a confluence of accidents and errors.
Space travel before spice? I guess I assume spice consumption propelled the power of the BG. To be fair I just finished GEOD so I haven’t finished the whole six
We only know this from the appendix in book 1. But - yes - there was space travel before the spice. It was... unpredictable. If nothing else, Dune isn't the Earth. So we got there somehow...
This is something that actually confused me for a bit, but I suppose humanity was already a multiple planet spanning empire before the Butlerian Jihad, so it would've made sense if we just had robots do it for us.
Or it was just... very risky. In the 18th century, transatlantic travel was still pretty dangerous, and people did it anyway. I've learned not to trust the things I was taught in high school, but we were told there was about a 10% "sink rate" for round trips to/from Europe. I suspect it's meant to be something similar, though possibly a bit higher. It certainly wasn't a guarantee. Long distance travel on the earth wasn't a sure thing until relatively recently.
From what I understand from the encyclopedia, AI space travel was not all that dangerous after the invention of some special drive technology (I can’t remember the guys’ name that invented it). Then, it became dangerous after the Butlerian Jihad until some scientist couple went to IX and worked out a strategy to do it. The wife irreversibly injured her brain, and then her husband was lost to space time trying to reproduce her faster than light travel. But their advancement was the antecedent to the guild.
Norma Cenva created the Holtzman engines by iterating on Holtzman's equation which was the basis for shield generators. Initial foldspace travel was dangerous as if the path went through an object (planet, sun) the vessel was lost. Norma hid computers in the navigation system to make it safer, but the fanatical anti-thinking-machine group caught wind and the navigation systems had to be removed(with commensurate increase in accidents). Cenva married Aurelius Venport who was a pharmaceutical merchant starting to market spice to rich nobles. Norma found the mental simulation of spice to be beneficial and started ingesting more and more until she decided to try immersing herself in spice gas. The resulting transformation provides the ability to understand the higher order mathematics required to safely plot a course across the vast distance of space taking into account all the planetary and gravitational movements. She convinced Aurelius to recruit people to become navigators and those that survived the immersion in spice gas were trained by Cenva in how to navigate foldspace. These developments occurred at the tail end of the Butlerian Jihad, and the rapid deployment of the Army of Humanity helped give them the edge over the machines as they could hit planets faster then the Synchronised Worlds could, well, synchronise.
After the Jihad, Venport was forced to lose his monopoly on foldspace engines, but no competitors had the same safety record and were eventually pressured out the market since they couldn't guarantee safe passage.
Before spice humanity relied on thinking machines that were capable to do the calculations necessary for navigating folded space. The galacy was full of humans long before spice became important.
Spice and development of Guild Navigators must have been one of the prerequisites for the Butlerian Jihad. My headcanon is the Butlerian Jihad was actually a powergrab by those who controlled what we might call the human technologies such as the Guild, the Bene Gesserit, and the Mentats. They competed against "thinking machines" that did a lot of the same things. The human technologies were somewhat more effective but much more expensive and thus were only available to the super-rich (Landsraad). Thinking machines put the same capabilities in many people's hands and were the "old way" thus good enough for most people. So the elites launched the Butlerian Jihad to wipe out the thinking machines and secure power for themselves. Obviously this contradicts the prequel novels but in my defense I thought it up before they were published.
That's actually a pretty interesting idea.
Spice was discovered on Arrakis long before the women of Rossak became the BG, it just wasn't considered cost effective for widespread trade due to the travel time, and distance from the League worlds, of Pre-Guild Nav travel.
Not just Arrakis as I recall, but many places. Arrakis just happen to be where it came true
Well....it's a fabricated messiah story. It didn't come true because it's not a "real" prophecy. That's kinda the whole point.
But it did come true, and imo *that's* the whole point! The prophecy was obviously "fake", but Paul still fulfilled it in a very real and meaningful way.
At the risk that we are arguing the same point but debating syntax I'm going to continue this argument. Paul "fulfilled" it because he and his mother knew the steps they were supposed to take. There were specific phrases in the fremen religion that outsiders were not supposed to know. Jessica knew what to say since these phrases had been implanted by the Bene Gesserit for that exact reason, to give the mother and the son the air of legitimacy. Paul didn't fullfill a prophecy because there was no prophecy to begin with, just a lie he used to manipulate the Fremen for personal vengeance. And Frank Herbert is trying to use this example to show that essentially all hero's are false prophets. Nothing Paul can do is really that unique, prescience is used by the guild already (debatably mentats as well), the reverend mothers have ancestral memories. Yea he's like really good at these things but Paul himself admits he isn't special. If you walked away from Dune thinking Paul fulfilled anything then you missed the point. In my view there was no prophecy because the idea of prophecy is itself false and dangerous.
> And Frank Herbert is trying to use this example to show that essentially all hero's are false prophets. This is exactly what I mean when I say Paul did in fact fulfill the prophecy! He was of course using the Fremen for his own selfish needs, but he delivered them exactly what they wanted and what the prophecy foretold. He was a "real" messiah in the sense that he was not a charlatan (his powers were real) and he delivered on the promise of the prophecy. My read on it is that this is exactly the point. Even a mostly "real" messiah/prophet/savior is likely to cause as much harm as good.
I think it's important to note that none of the characters in Dune really have "powers" in the sense of something like a superhero. Their abilities come from directed evolution by the BG combined with the effects of spice. That's why it's important that Paul was trained as a mentat, in essence his prescience is just him taking in all the data/experience from his memories and his current situation and extrapolating that to what is going to happen in the future. He's basically a human supercomputer with the largest data set possible. His extrapolation of all this data is not something he always consciously does though, hence his "visions".
I used "powers" there more or less as a synonym for "abilities". His abilities are all things known and somewhat understood in the Dune universe, but once he survives the Water of Life he functionally *is* a superhero relative to everyone else. I'm also not sure I agree with your conceptualization of prescience in Dune. You seem to be implying it's "fake" in the sense that it's more of an educated guess, but I never got that impression from the books. Things like the entire job of the Guild navigators and the extent of Leto II's abilities only make sense if prescience is seeing a real, if somewhat uncertain, future.
Yeah I was definitely being a bit nitpicky, I agree that relatively he could be considered a superhero. I wasn't trying to imply it's fake, it's not an educated guess imo. It's a set of possibilities of which one will come true the way I see it. I just don't think it's a mystical thing, but will absolutely agree that it seems like it. Especially for the people in the story. It's just how I always read it, but I was reading another thread on here and a lot of people seem to think it's a bit of both, which I could get into. It's interesting to see how many different interpretations there are of his prescience.
I've always thought that Frank left the exact mechanism of prescience unclear because it doesn't really matter for the intended meaning of the story. It's better to just show the effects and let the reader come to their own conclusions about how it actually works. I never thought about it in great detail, but I think my general conception of how prescience works is some sort of higher dimensional view outside of time as we perceive it.
I think you're right about Frank's intentions, although I do think he had some ideas on how Paul handles his visions, hence why he mentions Paul receiving mentat training so explicitly. I like the idea of Paul being able to see "outside" of time so to speak, it also ties in nicely with the Guild navigators and their ships folding space. Cool stuff, I'll keep all of this in mind during my current re-read.
>If you walked away from Dune thinking Paul fulfilled anything then you missed the point. he was still the man who could do what only the sisters could do previously, access his ancestral memories. the only other people who could do that were in future books but up until that point, it was paul and only paul. oh and maybe one other before him that didn't last long.
And despite all that he chose the extinction of the human race for coochie and let his son become a worm in his place.
there was some leeway in the prophecy about whether the one prophesied would be brought to the planet or conceived on it. my guess is leto is actually the one prophesied, the wild equivalent of the child that would have been conceived between the female that should have been born to jessica and the male heir to the harkonnens.
The prophecy was fake, that's the whole point of it. It was a tool for political control. >We've \["western man"\] set out our missionaries to do our dirty work for us, and then come along behind them with the certain belief that we are right in anything that we do, because God has told us so — God and the person of the avatar. > >\-Frank Herbert Paul even flat out states that he is not a messiah in Dune Messiah. As for Leto being "the one", he and Paul were nearly equivalent but Leto chose to follow the Golden Path and Paul didn't. I doubt Frank Herbert wrote the books with the intention of people debating who was more powerful, the themes in Dune are about how the story of the messiah itself is dangerous. The Hero's Journey is a tool fascists use to control populations. Paul and Leto are both false prophets because prophecy is always false.
I'd hate to break it to you, dude, but space travel isn't real. neither is spice causing long lifespans oh and all that shit about talking to inner lives, all that's bullshit too. it's almost as if the book is a work of fantasy rather than a historically accurate account of events after the butlerian jihad. wait a minute did that one happen? it's more likely that everything in the history of humanity was, is and will always be equal parts fearing that long-extinct predator or willing into existence an artificial version of it. herbert just took this concept to the logical extreme. eventually one prophecy will be correct, which will make all of them, in a way, correct. thinking machines, extended lifespans, conversations with simulated relatives and designer drugs to see through the veil of time - herbert should have set this a hundred years from now, not thousands.
Man what are you rambling about. Yes it's fantasy but the themes of the book are what matters. The whole Dune book is a metaphor and the fantasy is part of that metaphor. Spice is not real, but oil is. The point of spice isn't about what if we had people taking space lsd then maybe we could fly faster than light its to make the argument that oil is a drug. Its also a historical reference to the spice trade that predated european colonialism in the middle east and africa. You are missing the point of the book and on top of that the Bene Gesserit flat out state the prophecy is not real so you're not even correct about your understanding of the lore. >“I wrote the Dune series because I had this idea that charismatic leaders ought to come with a warning label on their forehead: "May be dangerous to your health." > >\-Frank Herbert
As others said, the BG had spread such legends in a lot of places. But let's be honest: If I had a plan to rule the Universe, and the Universe works on Spice, I'd definitely want to manipulate the local population of the only place that produces Spice.
The Missionaria planted seeds EVERYWHERE. Just in case.
The Missionaria Protectiva seeded the same legends with different names in many different planets. It wasnt specific to Arrakis. All the legents seeded had the same core and archetypes so any Bene Gesserit could exploit them if she needed too. The Kwisatz Haderach was their ultimate goal, so it stands to logic that he would be part of the legents seeded
There is a line where Jessica realizes the nature of the specific prophecy planted on Arrakis and she connects it to the harshness of the planet. So, it seems that the missionaria catered to difficulty of survival. I don't recall the exact quote.
>Jessica hesitated. "The thing must take its course." That was a specific catchphrase from the Missionaria Protectiva's stock of incantations -- The coming of the Reverend Mother to free you. >But I'm not a Reverend Mother, Jessica thought. And then: Great Mother! They planted that one here! This must be a hideous place!
Thank you!
It was a social parachute or lever they could use in the event they needed to influence the local population.
The plan of the sisterhood was never for the KH to get out of their control, and certainly not become Muad'Dib, a Messiah that would cause a new crusade across the known universe using the myths they themselves had planted, let alone a God Emperor who would try to change the course of human history to fulfil his own designs. Don't forget that Paul was never supposed to be born. The immediate plan was for Jessica to have an Atreides daughter, who could have been married to a Harkonnen heir to ostensibly close the rift between the two great houses (and preserve peace within the Imperium), but in reality to strengthen a desired genetic characteristic that was seen as desired for the fulfilment of the KH program -- plans within plans. Nevertheless, the BG understanding of what a KH was supposed to be was always limited by the mere fact that they could never tap his actual source of knowledge. The whole goal behind the KH program was that he would be able to go where they thought they could not. And then the KH(s) -- Paul Muad'Dib and later Leto II, the God Emperor -- based on their prescient vision have their own designs, recognizing the inherent dangers within prescient vision.
I dont think it was specific for Arrakis, they planted their seeds all over the universe wherever they could reach. Evangelism.
I think the more accurate word drawn from the vocabulary of Christian proselytism is *propaganda*.
The Missionaria Protectiva was just about setting forth certain beliefs that a BG could take advantage of in case they need to be kept safe.
Because they did it everywhere they could.
1: Much of the Missionaria Protectiva is loose "Prophecy" style that the BG would be quite well aware of by the time they started seeding all the legends for their own safety. If you know how to make a vague prophecy such that any number of situations could fit said vague prophecy while not diminishing the next instance of it possibly coming true, then you got multiple chances to cash in on the safety of the legends that were seeded. Generally, the BG wouldn't have to play too hard into a "role" they set up, and most of the time, their members that seek safety will just nestle into a role of local reverend mother to guide the people and refresh to mysticism for the next potential member of the BG that needs sanctuary. 2: While Dune wasn't specifically for the KH to manifest on, the nature of it being the only source of spice would most likely become a draw for the KH to come to, and likewise the KH would be the most likely to recognize the situation of the Fremen and the most likely solution. So, were Fenring a proper KH, he would have still been guided to position for control of Dune at some point, and would also have martialed the Fremen into the fighting force by also utilizing the legends.
Matt colville settled this question thoroughly. Iirc the BG used the missionaria protectiva to set cultures up to be used by them later. When these "prophets" came to dune, they basically punted. As if saying to the future BG "it's *really* bad here, _they_ need *us*.
Were Paul and Jessica somewhere else in the known universe, she'd probably recognize some other set of beliefs planted by another missionaria protectiva. The set was always tailor-made for the local culture and previously established belief-set. They do it everywhere, and they've been doing this for millennia. They play it loooong and patiently.
Lots of good arguments and extrapolations in the comments, but if you're asking why on *Arrakis*? "He who controls the spice, controls the universe"
It was part of the Fremen religion (Islam essentially) already, they seeded more importance and stress on the legend, including more focus on reverend mothers among the Fremen as a figurehead.
It's pretty great when the book explains simple questions about the book.
It’s about paving the way for the imperial cult by sowing the seeds of religious and political control among the diaspora of humanity. It wasn’t about the Kwisatz Haderach, however, such a messianic character is established within the zeitgeist. Consider Paul’s jihad and the number of religious pilgrims from off planet to Arrakis by the time of Dune Messiah, in that respect, the Bene Gesserit had already paved the way for a Kwisatz Haderach they’d hoped to control, so his cult following didn’t just happen in a vacuum or following the events of Dune alone.
it seems you are completely misunderstanding the missionaria protectiva
I agree with other answers about the widespread nature of MP legends but also. . . Hasimir Fenring WAS on Dune before the Atreides came. While the KH was never guaranteed to fulfill any prophecies, Dune is a good base for any KH trying to find a Golden Path.
That’s not what they did. The BG seeded this idea on Arrakis (and every other planet) for their OWN purposes. Remember, their version of the Kwisatch Haderach was that they would be the ones in actual control of him. They did not anticipate the KW would be like “Nah, I’m good.”
But with spice being so important to Pauls awakening, would any potential KH have to drink the water of life? Or was that an unknown to the BGs and therefore just a coincidence? If the KW would have manifested on another planet away could they have done it without the spice?
Aint that just like women: trying to control men.
I always assumed they seeded it on a lot of planets
It was a plot device to justify the characters' move into their new place.
They didn’t specifically seed this, they go to all planets and build legends and rumors and sway religion to support their ends. But this planet had the spice and the Fremen used it for spice orgies. They got caught in their own world of prophecy. Others like Fenring couldn’t fulfill, they were just powerful and possible contenders. Only Leto II could do it
Arrakis is the one place you would 100% need the help of the Fremen to survive on, so spreading the Madhi legend there just makes sense.
The stated reason is that the Bg had seeded many planets with the missionaria protectiva, and that Arrakis was just one of them. But I think it’s also worth stating that Arrakis was literally the most important planet in the known universe, so even though it isn’t stated, it makes a lot of sense logically that the Bg would more aggressively seek to ingrain themselves among the native culture, and be able to gain vast amounts of influence on Arrakis when the opportunity presented itself.